Fast and frugal heuristics - simple rules for making decisions with realistic mental resources - are presented here. These heuristics can enable both living organisms and artificial systems to make smart choices, classifications, and predictions by employing bounded rationality. But when and how can such fast and frugal heuristics work? What heuristics are in the mind's adaptive toolbox, and what building blocks compose them? Can judgments based simply on a single reason be as accurate as those based on many reasons? Could less knowledge even lead to systematically better predictions than more knowledge? This book explores these questions by developing computational models of heuristics and testing them through experiments and analysis. It shows how fast and frugal heuristics can yield adaptive decisions in situations as varied as choosing a mate, dividing resources among offspring, predicting high school drop-out rates, and playing the stock market.

Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart

One view of heuristics is that they are imperfect versions of optimal statistical procedures considered too complicated for ordinary minds to carry out. In contrast, the authors consider heuristics to be adaptive strategies that evolved in tandem with fundamental psychological mechanisms. The recognition heuristic, arguably the most frugal of all heuristics, makes inferences from patterns of missing knowledge. This heuristic exploits a fundamental adaptation of many organisms: the vast, sensitive, and reliable capacity for recognition. The authors specify the conditions under which the recognition heuristic is successful and when it leads to the counterintuitive less-is-more effect in which less knowledge is better than more for making accurate inferences.

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Models of ecological rationality: the recognition heuristic.

Social Learning: B.G. Galef, Jr., Introduction. J. Terkel, Cultural Transmission of Feeding Behavior in the Black Rat (Rattus rattus). B.G. Galef, Jr., Social Enhancement of Food Preferences in Norway Rats: A Brief Review. D.M. Fragaszy and E. Visalberghi, Social Learning in Monkeys: Primate 'Primacy' Reconsidered. L.A. Dugatkin, Copying and Mate Choice. L. Lefebvre and L.-A. Giraldeau, Is Social Learning and Adaptive Specialization? K.N. Laland, P.J. Richeron, and R. Boyd, Developing a Theory of Animal Social Learning. M.E. West, Social Learning: Synergy and Songbirds. R.R. Provine, Contagious Yawning and Laughing: Significance for Sensory Feature Detection, Motor Pattern Generation, Imitation and the Evolution of Social Behavior. Imitation: C.M. Heyes, Introduction: Identifying and Defining Imitation. T.R. Zentall, An Analysis of Imitative Learning in Animals. B.R. Moore, The Evolution of Imitative Learning. M.A. Huffman, Acquisition of Innovative Cultural Behaviors in Nonhuman Primates: A Case Study of Stone Handling, a Socially Transmitted Behavior in Japanese Macaques. A. Whiten and D. Custance, Studies of Imitation in Chimpanzees and Children. M. Tomasello, Do Apes Ape? A. Meltzoff, The Human Infant as Imitative Generalist: A 20-Year Progressive Report. C.M. Heyes, Genuine Imitation? Chapter References. Author Index. Subject Index.

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Social learning in animals : the roots of culture

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1329369/17269386/1332456970607/animal+behaviour+61+315.pdf?token=nHOoEXClCS8gn33%2Fo9%2FgfdHIPoM%3D

Social influences on foraging in vertebrates: causal mechanisms and adaptive functions.

The last two decades have seen a virtual explosion in empirical research on the role of social interactions in the development of animals' behavioral repertoires, and a similar increase in attention to formal models of social learning. Here we first review recent empirical evidence of social influences on food choice, tool use, patterns of movement, predator avoidance, mate choice, and courtship, and then consider formal models of when animals choose to copy behavior, and which other animals' behavior they copy, together with empirical tests of predictions from those models.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055%5B0489:SLIAES%5D2.0.CO;2

Social Learning in Animals: Empirical Studies and Theoretical Models

Three experiments were undertaken to examine the effects of interactions with demonstrator rats made ill by injection of lithium chloride (LiCl) on the later food choices of their observers. We found that (1) observer rats that had been taught an aversion to an unfamiliar diet exhibited a substantial reduction of that aversion after interacting with poisoned demonstrators that had eaten the diet to which the observers had learned an aversion, (2) exposure of an observer rat to poisoned demonstrator rats that had eaten a diet interfered with later acquisition by the observer of an aversion to the diet that the poisoned demonstrators had eaten, and (3) after interacting with poisoned demonstrators that had eaten one of two diets, observers that ate both diets and were then made ill formed an aversion to whichever diet their respective, poisoned demonstrators had not eaten. The present experiments, like previous studies both in our laboratory and elsewhere, failed to provide any evidence that naive observer rats will learn to avoid a food as a result of interacting with demonstrator rats that had eaten the food and exhibit symptoms of toxicosis. To the contrary, observer rats in the present experiments exhibited an enhanced preference for foods eaten by sick demonstrators.

/pdf/further-evidence-that-norway-rats-do-not-socially-transmit-ap7ko1dp6w.pdf

Further evidence that Norway rats do not socially transmit learned aversions to toxic baits

Musical enculturation is a complex, multifaceted process that includes the development of perceptual processing specialized for the pitch and rhythmic structures of the musical system in the culture, understanding of esthetic and expressive norms, and learning the pragmatic uses of music in different social situations. Here, we summarize the results of a study in which 6-month-old Western infants were randomly assigned to 6 months of either an active participatory music class or a class in which they experienced music passively while playing. Active music participation resulted in earlier enculturation to Western tonal pitch structure, larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones, and a more positive social trajectory. Furthermore, the data suggest that early exposure to cultural norms of musical expression leads to early preferences for those norms. We conclude that musical enculturation begins in infancy and that active participatory music making in a positive social setting accelerates enculturation.

/pdf/becoming-musically-enculturated-effects-of-music-classes-for-5gs8sw8bs7.pdf

Becoming musically enculturated: effects of music classes for infants on brain and behavior

Interaction of social and individual learning in food preferences of Norway rats

Immediately after a recently fed rodentdemonstrator interacts with a conspecificobserver, the observer shows a substantially enhanced preference for whatever food its demonstrator ate. Here we show that (1) influence of a single, 30-min interaction with a demonstrator on an observer’s food preference lasts for at least 1 month, and (2) observers interacting on 2 successive days with a demonstrator fed a different diet on each day show significantly enhanced preferences for both diets a month later. Such enduring effects of single, brief interactions between a demonstrator rat and its observer provide an efficient means for studying physiological and behavioral substrates of long-term memory in rodents. Together with the results of previous studies of social influences on food choices of rats, the present results also suggest that rats may use information acquired from conspecifics to identify both toxic and safe foods for many weeks after they have acquired this information.

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Elaine E. Whiskin

Papers

Further evidence that Norway rats do not socially transmit learned aversions to toxic baits

Becoming musically enculturated: effects of music classes for infants on brain and behavior

Interaction of social and individual learning in food preferences of Norway rats

Socially transmitted food preferences can be used to study long-term memory in rats

Social learning of food preferences in 'dissatisfied' and 'uncertain' Norway rats