Sample Culture In Nonhuman Organisms Research Paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of research paper topics for more inspiration. iResearchNet offers academic assignment help for students all over the world: writing from scratch, editing, proofreading, problem solving, from essays to dissertations, from humanities to STEM. We offer full confidentiality, safe payment, originality, and money-back guarantee. Secure your academic success with our risk-free services. Whether or not nonhuman animals can be said to have ‘culture’ is a contentious issue that hangs on definitions of culture and the complexities of animal social behavior. However, it is well established that numerous animals have the ability to acquire from others skills, calls, and information concerning predators, mates, or resources. In some instances this information transmission is sufficient to propagate the diffusion of novel behavior patterns through animal populations, and to maintain distinct behavioral traditions between different populations of the same species. Such traditions are sometimes regarded as analogous to human culture in many respects, and have been described as ‘proto-culture.’ However, the use of this term indicates little more than that the behavior concerned has been learned socially, and does not necessarily imply that the animals concerned are unusually intelligent, or that they have exceptional linguistic or cognitive capabilities. 1. Social Learning In Animals Underlying culture in nonhuman animals is a capacity for ‘social learning.’ The term social learning refers to learning that is influenced by observation of, or interaction with, another animal (typically of the same species) or its products. Social learning is frequently contrasted with individual or asocial learning, in which animals learn exclusively on the basis of their own personal experience, without recourse to social cues or guidance. In any instantiation of social learning, the learner or receiver of information is generally de-scribed as the ‘observer,’ while the transmitter of information is called the ‘demonstrator.’ Social learning occurs when the communication of information between two animals results in the observer learning from the demonstrator. Frequently the observer learns through social interaction to perform the same behavior as that exhibited by the demonstrator and, if repeated amongst other animals, this process can result in the spread of a particular behavior pattern and behavioral conformity in a population. Less frequently, animals may learn by observation to perform a different behavior from that exhibited by the demonstrator. Social learning among animals has been of interest to scientists from a number of different disciplines. Psychologists traditionally have been interested in animal learning. Contemporary animal learning theory describes much learning in animals as resulting from associations formed between two external stimuli (stimulus-stimulus, or classical conditioning), or be-tween the behavior of an animal and an external stimulus (responsereinforcer, or operant conditioning). Arguments abound as to whether there will be anything different or special about social, compared with asocial learning, and whether social learning can be adequately explained in conditioning terms. Many psychologists have suggested those more complex forms of social learning might be indicative of the animal concerned possessing unusual or sophisticated psychological The post Culture In Nonhuman Organisms Research Paper appeared first on iResearchNet .