The Joint Log-Lift Task: A Social Foraging Paradigm
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rault J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8542970 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Acquiring information via observation of others can be an efficient way to respond to changing situations or learn skills, particularly for inexperienced individuals. Many bat species are gregarious, yet few studies have investigated their capacity for learning from conspecifics. We tested whether big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) can learn a novel foraging task by interacting with knowledgeable conspecifics. In experimental trials 11 naïve bats (7 juveniles, 4 adults) interacted freely with trained bats that were capturing tethered mealworms, while in control trials 11 naïve bats (7 juveniles, 4 adults) flew with untrained bats. Naïve bats were then assessed for their ability to capture tethered mealworms. While no bat in the control group learned the task, a significant number of experimental bats, including juveniles with little or no experience foraging, showed evidence of learning. Eighty-two per cent of experimental bats and 27% of control bats directed feeding buzzes (echolocation calls associated with prey capture) at the mealworm. Furthermore, seven experimental bats (64%) showed evidence of learning by attacking and/or capturing the mealworm, while no bat in the control group attacked or captured the prey. Analyses of high-speed stereo video recordings revealed increased interaction with demonstrators among bats attacking or capturing the mealworm. At the time they displayed evidence of learning, bats flew closer together during feeding buzzes than during other portions of trials. Our results demonstrate that social interaction with experienced bats, and listening to feeding buzzes in particular, may play an integral role in development of foraging skills in bats.
| S-EPMC3274777 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In Drosophila melanogaster, natural genetic variation in the foraging gene affects the foraging behaviour of larval and adult flies, larval reward learning, adult visual learning, and adult aversive training tasks. Sitters (for(s)) are more sedentary and aggregate within food patches whereas rovers (for(R)) have greater movement within and between food patches, suggesting that these natural variants are likely to experience different social environments. We hypothesized that social context would differentially influence rover and sitter behaviour in a cognitive task. We measured adult rover and sitter performance in a classical olfactory training test in groups and alone. All flies were reared in groups, but fly training and testing were done alone and in groups. Sitters trained and tested in a group had significantly higher learning performances compared to sitters trained and tested alone. Rovers performed similarly when trained and tested alone and in a group. In other words, rovers learning ability is independent of group training and testing. This suggests that sitters may be more sensitive to the social context than rovers. These differences in learning performance can be altered by pharmacological manipulations of PKG activity levels, the foraging (for) gene's gene product. Learning and memory is also affected by the type of social interaction (being in a group of the same strain or in a group of a different strain) in rovers, but not in sitters. These results suggest that for mediates social learning and memory in D. melanogaster.
| S-EPMC3861308 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In recent years, digital communication and social media have taken an indispensable role in human society. Social interactions are no longer bound to real-life encounters, but more often happen from behind a screen. Mimicking an online communication platform, we developed a new, fMRI compatible, social threat paradigm to investigate sex differences in reactions to social rejection. During the Verbal Interaction Social Threat Task (VISTTA), participants initiate 30 short conversations by selecting one of four predefined opening sentences. Two computerized interlocutors respond to the opening sentence mostly with negative comments and rejections toward the participant, which should induce social-evaluative threat. Physiological and subjective responses were measured, before, during, and after the VISTTA in 61 (29 male and 32 female) first year students who received either mostly negative (n = 31; threat group) or neutral comments (n = 30; control group). Two-level behavioral validation included social threat-induced mood changes in participants, and interlocutor evaluation. The latter consisted of multiple variables such as "willingness to cooperate" after every conversation, an overall fairness evaluation of interlocutors, and evaluations per reaction indicating how positive or negative it was received. We acquired additional physiological measures including cortisol assays via saliva samples, heart rate, and blood pressure. Confirming our hypotheses, peer rejection and exclusion during the VISTTA led to less willingness to cooperate and lower fairness evaluation of interlocutors. It also induced feelings of anger and surprise and lower happiness in the social-threat group. Women showed overall higher emotion ratings compared to men. Contrary to our a priori hypothesis, the VISTTA did not induce cortisol and heart rate increases. However, the stable cortisol response in women in the threat group does not follow the circadian decline and might reflect an endocrinological response. The decline in cortisol response in men in both the threat and control group could indicate faster habituation to the VISTTA. Taken together, these findings indicate effects of social-evaluative threat on a behavioral level, and more moderate effects on the emotional and physiological level. Sex differences in affective and cortisol responses may indicate that women are more susceptible for the social-evaluative threat than men. With a realistic implementation of verbal, interactive, and social components, the VISTTA is designed as an fMRI paradigm that can be applied to elucidate the neural representation of social-evaluative threat.
| S-EPMC6692967 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Creative exploration is central to science, art and cognitive development. However, research on creative exploration is limited by a lack of high-resolution automated paradigms. To address this, we present such an automated paradigm, the creative foraging game, in which people search for novel and valuable solutions in a large and well-defined space made of all possible shapes made of ten connected squares. Players discovered shape categories such as digits, letters, and airplanes as well as more abstract categories. They exploited each category, then dropped it to explore once again, and so on. Aligned with a prediction of optimal foraging theory (OFT), during exploration phases, people moved along meandering paths that are about three times longer than the shortest paths between shapes; when exploiting a category of related shapes, they moved along the shortest paths. The moment of discovery of a new category was usually done at a non-prototypical and ambiguous shape, which can serve as an experimental proxy for creative leaps. People showed individual differences in their search patterns, along a continuum between two strategies: a mercurial quick-to-discover/quick-to-drop strategy and a thorough slow-to-discover/slow-to-drop strategy. Contrary to optimal foraging theory, players leave exploitation to explore again far before categories are depleted. This paradigm opens the way for automated high-resolution study of creative exploration.
| S-EPMC5540595 | biostudies-other
Project description:Laboratory studies of decision making often take the form of two-alternative, forced-choice paradigms. In natural settings, however, many decision problems arise as stay/go choices. We designed a foraging task to test intertemporal decision making in rats via stay/go decisions. Subjects did not follow the rate-maximizing strategy of choosing only food items associated with short delays. Instead, rats were often willing to wait for surprisingly long periods, and consequently earned a lower rate of food intake than they might have by ignoring long-delay options. We tested whether foraging theory or delay discounting models predicted the behavior we observed but found that these models could not account for the strategies subjects selected. Subjects' behavior was well accounted for by a model that incorporated a cost for rejecting potential food items. Interestingly, subjects' cost sensitivity was proportional to environmental richness. These findings are at odds with traditional normative accounts of decision making but are consistent with retrospective considerations having a deleterious influence on decisions (as in the "sunk-cost" effect). More broadly, these findings highlight the utility of complementing existing assays of decision making with tasks that mimic more natural decision topologies.
| S-EPMC3657802 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundExtensive studies have been carried out over the years to determine the maximum acceptable weight that a worker is capable of lifting in a given situation among Occidental populations across Europe and US. Nonetheless, studies that place emphasis on using lifting frequency as the quantifying task parameter, especially in developing countries such as Malaysia, appear to be in scarcity. Hence, this study determined the maximum acceptable frequency of lift (MAFL) for combined manual material handling (MMH) tasks amongst Malaysian males.MethodTwo lifting loads were considered in this study: 1 kg and 5 kg. Each subject adjusted his frequency of lifting using a psychophysical approach. The subjects were instructed to perform combined MMH task as fast as they could over a period of 45 minutes without exhausting themselves or becoming overheated. The physiological response energy expenditure was recorded during the experimental sessions. The ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) for four body parts (forearms, upper arm, lower back and entire body) were recorded after the subjects had completed the instructed task.ResultsThe mean frequencies of the MMH task had been 6.8 and 5.5 cycles/minute for lifting load of 1 and 5 kg, respectively, while the mean energy expenditure values were 4.16 and 5.62 kcal/min for 1 and 5 kg load, respectively. These displayed a significant difference in the Maximum Acceptable Frequency of Lift (MAFL) between the two loads, energy expenditure and RPE (p < 0.05) whereby the subjects appeared to work harder physiologically for heavier load.ConclusionIt can be concluded that it is significant to assess physiological response and RPE in determining the maximum acceptable lifting frequency at varied levels of load weight. The findings retrieved in this study can aid in designing tasks that do not exceed the capacity of workers in order to minimise the risk of WRMSDs.
| S-EPMC6541240 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Studies indicate that social status influences people's social perceptions. Less information is available about whether induced social status influences dyadic coordination during motor interactions. To explore this issue, we designed a study in which two confederates obtained high or low competence-based status by playing a game together with the participant, while the participant always occupied the middle position of the hierarchy. Following this status-inducing phase, participants were engaged in a joint grasping task with the high- and low-status confederates in different sessions while behavioural (i.e., interpersonal asynchrony and movement start time) indexes were measured. Participants' performance in the task (i.e., level of interpersonal asynchrony) when interacting with the low-status partner was modulated by their preference for him. The lower participants' preference for a low- relative to a high-status confederate, the worse participants' performance when interacting with the low-status confederate. Our results show that participants' performance during motor interactions changes according to the social status of the interaction partner.
| S-EPMC7935999 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Humans and other animals have a variety of psychological abilities tailored to the demands of asocial foraging, that is, foraging without coordination or competition with other conspecifics. Human foraging, however, also includes a unique element, the creation of resource pooling systems. In this type of social foraging, individuals contribute when they have excess resources and receive provisioning when in need. Is this behavior produced by the same psychology as asocial foraging? If so, foraging partners should be judged by the same criteria used to judge asocial patches of resources: the net energetic benefits they provide. The logic of resource pooling speaks against this. Maintaining such a system requires the ability to judge others not on their short-term returns, but on the psychological variables that guide their behavior over the long-term. We test this idea in a series of five studies using an implicit measure of categorization. Results showed that (1) others are judged by the costs they incur (a variable not relevant to asocial foraging) whereas (2) others are not judged by the benefits they provide when benefits provided are unrevealing of underlying psychological variables (despite this variable being relevant to asocial foraging). These results are suggestive of a complex psychology designed for both social and asocial foraging.
| S-EPMC3498050 | biostudies-other
Project description:Stories are a powerful means to change recipients' views on themselves by being transported into the story world and by identifying with story characters. Previous studies showed that recipients temporarily change in line with a story and its characters (assimilation). Conversely, assimilation might be less likely when recipients are less identified with story protagonists or less transported into a story by comparing themselves with a story character. This may lead to changes, which are opposite to a story and its characters (contrast). In two experiments, we manipulated transportation and experience taking via two written reviews (Experiment 1; N = 164) and by varying the perspective of the story's narrator (Experiment 2; N = 79) of a short story about a negligent student. Recipients' self-ratings in comparison to others, motives, and problem-solving behavior served as dependent variables. However, neither the review nor the perspective manipulation affected transportation or experience taking while reading the story. Against our expectations, highly transported recipients (in Study 1) and recipients with high experience taking (in Study 2) showed more persistency working on an anagram-solving task, even when controlling for trait conscientiousness. Our findings are critically discussed in light of previous research.
| S-EPMC6200851 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Contact seeking with humans is documented in some domestic animals, mainly dogs, which have advanced communication skills. Domestication as a companion animal is thought to underlie this ability. However, also domesticated horses and goats display similar human-directed behaviors. This suggests either a broader effect of domestication on contact-seeking behavior, or alternatively, that social interactions with humans can result in the development of human contact seeking. As part of another study, we observed contact-seeking behavior in juvenile red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) chicks exposed to behavioral training since hatching, during a foraging task, where chicks were singly required to collect food rewards in a familiar arena using odor cues. If chicks left the arena, we recorded if they approached and looked up at the experimenter, or if they approached other objects (including another human). Chicks approached the experimenter significantly more often than they approached other objects. This behavior was not linked to a fast performance in the test arena, which gave some birds more time to explore the surroundings, or to learning ability measured in a cognitive task. Yet, the preference for the experimenter was lower for chicks that were handled more prior to the experiment. Also, approach probability was positively correlated with escape attempts in a novel arena test. The observed variation in approach behavior suggests a link to aspects of personality, and exposure to human interactions and experimental procedures. Our observations suggest that, although neither domesticated nor selectively bred, red junglefowl that are socialized with humans can potentially develop behavior used to describe contact seeking. Together with evidence from cognitive and behavioral studies, our results suggest that social experiences, not only domestication, can affect human-animal interactions. We propose how interactions between behavior, cognition and handling could be studied further in controlled settings to validate the preliminary findings of our study and uncover the underlying mechanisms.
| S-EPMC8260840 | biostudies-literature