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Animal Learning Psychology

It is very interesting to consider the way animals learn because this opens a window onto the complex learning strategies we employ.

The Russian physiologist Ivan Pavolv famously demonstrated respondent conditioning (associative learning) in dogs. In his experiment he associated a meaningless stimulus (bell ringing) with a meaningful stimulus (food) and demonstrated that the dogs made a stimulus association (acquisition of knowledge/meaning) because salivation eventually occurred only to the bell ringing.

Later, Burrhus Skinner, an American psychologist described operant conditioning (instrumental learning) which defines the modification of a voluntary behaviour (unlike the involuntary salivation Pavlov described). For the first time he showed that if an animal is consistently given good consequences to an action it will incorporate this action into it's activity.

Konrad Lorenz did some fascinating work on imprinting (template learning) which he memorably demonstrated in geese who followed him everywhere! This was not thought to be of much relevance in humans at the time but recent work has shown that 6 month-old babies are able to reliably recognise different individuals of any species whereas by 9 months and in adults this skill of discrimination only worked amongst fellow humans. This demonstrated an age related perceptual narrowing probably because of a change in neural networks (Pascalis, de Haan & Nelson 2002).

Other concepts that have now arisen are that of social learning where learning is much more that the transfer of knowledge and skills. Emotional contagion, the transfer of attitude, is a massive player in social learning. This concept, applicable to animals and humans, describes how emotions, good or bad, are easily passed on even if they are not voiced. Consideration of this phenomenon in teaching environments is essential.

Anther amusing but insightful animal psychological observation is that of a troop of Japanese macaques monkeys. They eat potatoes fresh from the ground but one day a young female washed hers in the river and because it tasted better she continued to do so. Her siblings began to copy her, followed by her cousins and other young and then the elder females. The significant observation was that the only the old males never adopted this new technique! This is a beautiful demonstration of the effect of ageing (and gender!) on learning.

So what sets us above animals where learning is concerned? Well, an awareness of self is quite significant. Stickleback fish, for instance never realise that a reflection is just a reflection and persistently try to warn it off! Most animals, in fact, do not learn about mirror images and this is becasue they are not fully aware of the movements they are making. Chimpanzees are one of the few species (including orang-utans, elephants and magpies) that realise this. Most other animals copy things not by imitation but by stimulus enhancement. They can only discover a solution for themselves by seeing others try while chimps ask the question what are they doing and how do they do it?