Learning auditory discriminations from observation is efficient but less robust than learning from experience

Narula, Gagan; Herbst, Joshua A.; Rychen, Joerg; Hahnloser, Richard H R

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05422-y

Citations

Citation copied

Narula, G., Herbst, J. A., Rychen, J., & Hahnloser, R. H. R. (2018). Learning auditory discriminations from observation is efficient but less robust than learning from experience. Nature Communications, 9, 3218. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05422-y

Abstract

Social learning enables complex societies. However, it is largely unknown how insights obtained from observation compare with insights gained from trial-and-error, in particular in terms of their robustness. Here, we use aversive reinforcement to train “experimenter” zebra finches to discriminate between auditory stimuli in the presence of an “observer” finch. We show that experimenters are slow to successfully discriminate the stimuli, but immediately generalize their ability to a new set of similar stimuli. By contrast, observers su