Social influence in pigeons (Columba livia): the role of differential reinforcement.
Social learning needs differential reinforcement; the observer must gain something for matching the model.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with pairs of pigeons. One bird served as the demonstrator. The other bird watched.
The observer bird earned food only if it pecked after the demonstrator pecked. If the demonstrator did nothing, pecking was ignored. This is differential reinforcement.
The researchers also tested long delays. The observer still had to wait for the demonstrator’s cue before pecking.
What they found
The observer pigeons learned to peck right after the demonstrator pecked. The demonstrator’s action became a green-light signal.
Even with a delay, the birds waited for that signal. Social learning happened only because reinforcement followed the correct match.
How this fits with other research
Dove (1976) seems to disagree. That study used differential reinforcement to stop pigeons from pecking. The birds got food when they did NOT peck. Here, the same type of schedule made pecking grow. The difference is which response earns food.
Dodd (1984) showed pigeons can tell DRL from DRO schedules. Katz et al. (2003) extends that idea. The birds could tell “peck after partner” from “do nothing.”
Semb (1974) first showed how reinforcement shapes tiny steps before a peck. This new work adds a social twist. The cue can be another bird’s peck, not just a light.
Why it matters
The study reminds us that social cues only work if we reinforce the learner for using them. Want a child to copy a peer’s request? Reinforce the child right after the copy. Without that payoff, the peer’s words stay background noise.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Socially-influenced learning was studied in observer pigeons that observed a demonstrator in an adjacent chamber performing a target response comprising standing on a box and pecking a key 10 times. In Experiment 1 there was no evidence for social learning in the absence of reinforcement of the observer's behavior. When the target response was already established in the observer's repertoire, but was not differentially reinforced in relation to the demonstrator's behavior, rates of extinction were not influenced by the demonstrator's behavior (Experiment 2). Reinforcement of the observer's target response in the presence of the modeled target response, and not in its absence, resulted in control of the observer's responding by the behavior of the demonstrator (Experiments 3 and 4). This control was extended in Experiment 5 to deferred responses that occurred following a delay since the demonstrator's target responses. The acquisition of social influence depended on differential reinforcement of the observer's target response, with the demonstrator's target behavior serving as the explicit discriminative stimulus.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2003 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2003.79-175