The Importance Of Imitation And Social Learning

As human beings, culture has taken a huge part in our lives, it shapes our perspective, beliefs and behaviors. In our lecture on “Culture in Animals,” for a behavior to be considered a culture, it is important for that behavior to spread in a social group. Usually, such behavior is spread through imitation or social learning. It is apparent that imitation and social learning often go together. According to the lecture in class, imitation is the precise replication of a novel motor action in the absence of the demonstrator while social learning is copying the demonstrator or motor matching due to context. Social learning also provides the flexibility of learning and decreases the chances of the animal to make future errors (Zentall, 2003).

For instance, an interesting experiment by several researchers with wild birds showed that even wild birds have the capacity to imitate. These researchers obtained 2 wild birds then showed them two options of solving a puzzle box. The first option is pushing the blue part to receive food, and the second option is to push the red part to receive food. Later, these birds were then set free. What these researchers found intriguing was that other birds imitated the two birds and followed this strategy of obtaining food which they continue to spread to larger group of birds. This suggests that birds are capable of imitation and even social learning. At the end of the study, there were more than 400 birds that have learned the technique of getting food. In addition to that interesting study, it was discovered that birds first observed in Japan used cars as a tool to crack walnuts, now this behavior can be spotted in Santa Monica across large number of different birds.

I began to wonder how can an observer detect a specific behavior by a non-human animal and confirm that an animal is capable of imitating others? As I was researching about imitation in animals, I stumbled across an article, “Imitation by Animals: How Do They Do it?” by a psychologist in University of Kentucky. This article explains the importance of identifying imitation and other behaviors that may seem to qualify as imitation