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Related Concept Videos

Instinctive Drift01:05

Instinctive Drift

Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...

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Related Experiment Video

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A System for Tracking the Dynamics of Social Preference Behavior in Small Rodents
08:38

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Published on: November 21, 2019

Grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) show a feature-negative effect specific to social learning.

Lucy J Hopewell1, Lisa A Leaver, Stephen E G Lea

  • 1School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. l.j.hopewell@exeter.ac.uk

Animal Cognition
|July 10, 2009
PubMed
Summary

Eastern grey squirrels learn better when observing a conspecific’s unsuccessful foraging attempts. This social learning is influenced by prior expectations of food availability.

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Last Updated: Jun 21, 2026

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Published on: January 25, 2018

Area of Science:

  • Animal behavior
  • Cognitive ethology
  • Social learning

Background:

  • Observational learning studies suggest animals may learn better from unsuccessful demonstrators.
  • This could be due to differential association or the presence of food during demonstrations.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate social learning in eastern grey squirrels using a feature-negative discrimination task.
  • To determine if prior experience with a cue affects observational learning outcomes.

Main Methods:

  • Eastern grey squirrels observed conspecifics interacting with food pots.
  • Task involved learning to choose pots based on demonstrator actions (successful vs. unsuccessful).
  • A control group used a card cue instead of a conspecific demonstrator.

Main Results:

  • Squirrels learned faster when rewarded for choosing the opposite pot to the demonstrator (feature-negative effect).
  • No significant difference in learning occurred when a card cue indicated the reward.
  • This suggests prior expectations about the conspecific cue influenced learning.

Conclusions:

  • Eastern grey squirrels demonstrate social learning influenced by prior experience.
  • Observational learning effectiveness depends on the predictability and familiarity of the demonstrator cue.
  • Learners associate outcomes more readily with novel cues than familiar ones with established expectations.