scholarly journals Male African elephants discriminate and prefer vocalizations of unfamiliar females

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela S. Stoeger ◽  
Anton Baotic
Keyword(s):  
Social Information ◽  
Loxodonta Africana ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
African Elephants ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
High Association ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mating Opportunities ◽  
Vocal Discrimination

Abstract Gaining information about conspecifics via long-distance vocalizations is crucial for social and spatially flexible species such as the African elephant (Loxodonta africana). Female elephants are known to discriminate individuals and kin based on acoustic cues. Specifically, females approached the loudspeaker exclusively with playbacks of familiar individuals with high association indexes, intentionally fusing with their affiliates. For males, which are less bonded, gathering social information via vocalizations could still have important implications, but little is known about their vocal discrimination skills. We experimentally tested the ability of male African elephants to discriminate the social rumbles of familiar (from the same population) versus unfamiliar females. Male elephants discriminated and preferentially moved towards the rumbles of unfamiliar females, showing longer attentive reactions and significantly more orientating (facing and approaching the speaker) behavior. The increased orientating response of males towards playbacks of unfamiliar females is converse to the reaction of female subjects. Our results provide evidence that male elephants extract social information from vocalizations, yet with a different intention than females. Accordingly, males might use social cues in vocalizations to assess mating opportunities, which may involve selection to identify individuals or kin in order to avoid inbreeding.

scholarly journals No differences between autistic and non-autistic adults in social influence on risky decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Hickman ◽  
Connor Keating ◽  
Jennifer Cook ◽  
Elliot Andrew Ludvig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Risky Choice ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
The Social ◽  
Comparable Performance ◽  
Autistic Adults

Everyday risky decisions are susceptible to influence from a variety of sources, including the social context in which decisions take place. In the general population, people update their risk preferences based on knowledge of choices made by previous participants. In this study, we examined the influence of social information on the risky decision-making of autistic adults, a group in which differences in social processing have been observed. Autistic and non-autistic adults completed a risky decision-making task in the presence of both social and non-social information, either choosing for themselves or someone else on each trial. Notably, the social information comprised tokens that represented preferences of previous participants and was thus devoid of overt social cues such as faces or gestures. The non-social condition comprised a previously validated method where tokens represented “preferences” generated by weighted roulette wheels. Participants significantly shifted their choices when the influence (social or non-social) suggested a less risky choice. There were no group differences in risky decision-making when deciding for oneself compared to others. Interestingly, no differences in the effects of social and non-social influence were found between autistic and non-autistic adults. Considering previous evidence of social influence differences when using overtly social cues, we suggest that the removal of social cues in our paradigm led to comparable performance between the autistic and non-autistic groups. The current study paves the way for future studies investigating a confounding effect of social cues, which will lead to important insight for theories of social influence in autism.

scholarly journals Social transmission of egg rejection in a cuckoo host

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Canchao Yang ◽  
William E Feeney
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Brood Parasitism ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Egg Rejection ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Dissemination ◽  
Barn Swallows

AbstractSocial learning can enable the rapid dissemination of behaviors throughout a population. Rejection of foreign eggs is a key defense in hosts of avian brood parasites; however, whether social cues can inform whether a host rejects an egg remains unknown. Here, we aimed to determine whether access to social information can influence egg rejection behavior in semi-colonial barn swallows (Hirundo rustica). By manipulating the social information available from a neighboring nest, we found that swallows that had access to social information (i.e. neighbor recently rejected an egg) were more likely to reject a foreign egg compared to those that did not have access to social information (i.e. neighbor did not reject an egg). This result provides the first empirical evidence that egg rejection behavior can solely be informed by social information, and in doing so highlights the dynamic nature of defenses that hosts can deploy against brood parasitism.

scholarly journals The relationship between social behaviour and habitat familiarity in African elephants ( Loxodonta africana )

2008 ◽  
Vol 276 (1659) ◽  
pp. 1009-1014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noa Pinter-Wollman ◽  
Lynne A Isbell ◽  
Lynette A Hart
Keyword(s):  
Social Behaviour ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Loxodonta Africana ◽  
African Elephants ◽  
Conservation Practice ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
The Social ◽  
Novel Environments ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

Social associations with conspecifics can expedite animals' acclimation to novel environments. However, the benefits gained from sociality may change as the habitat becomes familiar. Furthermore, the particular individuals with whom animals associate upon arrival at a new place, familiar conspecifics or knowledgeable unfamiliar residents, may influence the type of information they acquire about their new home. To examine animals' social dynamics in novel habitats, we studied the social behaviour of African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) translocated into a novel environment. We found that the translocated elephants' association with conspecifics decreased over time supporting our hypothesis that sociality provides added benefits in novel environments. In addition, we found a positive correlation between body condition and social association, suggesting that elephants gain direct benefits from sociality. Furthermore, the translocated elephants associated significantly less than expected with the local residents and more than expected with familiar, but not necessarily genetically related, translocated elephants. The social segregation between the translocated and resident elephants declined over time, suggesting that elephants can integrate into an existing social setting. Knowledge of the relationship between sociality and habitat familiarity is highly important in our constantly changing world to both conservation practice and our understanding of animals' behaviour in novel environments.

scholarly journals Curiosity is Contagious: A Social Influence Intervention to Induce Curiosity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachit Dubey ◽  
Hermish Mehta ◽  
Tania Lombrozo
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Dramatic Effect ◽  
Social Cue ◽  
The Social ◽  
On Line ◽  
Subsequent Behavior ◽  
Scientific Questions

Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: the social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on-line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up-votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up-votes in reducing curiosity than of high up-votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity.

scholarly journals Extraction of social information from gait in schizophrenia

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 987-996 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Peterman ◽  
A. Christensen ◽  
M. A. Giese ◽  
S. Park
Keyword(s):  
Social Functioning ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Signal Intensity ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Human Gait ◽  
Emotional Cues ◽  
The Social ◽  
Healthy Control ◽  
And Gender

BackgroundThe human face and body are rich sources of socio-emotional cues. Accurate recognition of these cues is central to adaptive social functioning. Past studies indicate that individuals with schizophrenia (SZ) show deficits in the perception of emotion from facial cues but the contribution of bodily cues to social perception in schizophrenia is undetermined. The present study examined the detection of social cues from human gait patterns presented by computer-generated volumetric walking figures.MethodA total of 22 SZ and 20 age-matched healthy control participants (CO) viewed 1 s movies of a ‘digital’ walker's gait and subsequently made a forced-choice decision on the emotional state (angry or happy) or the gender of the walker presented at three intensity levels. Overall sensitivity to the social cues and bias were computed. For SZ, symptom severity was assessed.ResultsSZ were less sensitive than CO on both emotion and gender discrimination, regardless of intensity. While impaired overall, greater signal intensity did improve performance of SZ. Neither group differed in their response bias in either condition. The discrimination sensitivity of SZ was unrelated to their social functioning or symptoms but a bias toward perceiving gait as happy was associated with better social functioning.ConclusionsThese results suggest that SZ are impaired in extracting social information from gait but SZ benefited from increased signal intensity of social cues. Inaccurate perception of social cues in others may hinder adequate preparation for social interactions.

Long-distance communication of acoustic cues to social identity in African elephants

2003 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen McComb ◽  
David Reby ◽  
Lucy Baker ◽  
Cynthia Moss ◽  
Soila Sayialel
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
African Elephants ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Distance Communication

Roles of Self-Monitoring and Situational Ambiguity in the Social Information-Processing Model

1998 ◽  
Vol 83 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1447-1453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Head
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Social Information Processing ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Work Outcomes ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
Information Processing Model ◽  
Performance Task ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
The Social

A laboratory experiment was designed to assess the moderating effects of self-monitoring and situational ambiguity on the social cues with work outcomes relationships proposed by the Social Information Processing Model. In this 2 × 2 × 2 model, social cues were predicted to influence performance, task perceptions, and job satisfaction for high self-monitors on ambiguous tasks. Data from 130 subjects indicated moderate support for the 3-way model but only on the measure of satisfaction.

Does context matter? Effects of robot appearance and reliability on social attention differs based on lifelikeness of gaze task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulaziz Abubshait ◽  
Patrick P. Weis ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioral Features

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with non-human agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, which enhances the relevance of social cues and improves social-cognitive performance. The current ex-periments examine whether the effect of physical and behavioral influencers of mind perception on social-cognitive processing is modulated by the lifelikeness of a social interaction. Participants interacted with robots of varying degrees of physical (humanlike vs. robot-like) and behavioral (reliable vs. random) human-likeness while the lifelikeness of a social attention task was manipulated across five experiments. The first four experiments manipulated lifelikeness via the physical realism of the robot images (Study 1 and 2), the biological plausibility of the social signals (Study 3), and the plausibility of the social con-text (Study 4). They showed that humanlike behavior affected social attention whereas appearance affected mind perception ratings. However, when the lifelikeness of the interaction was increased by using videos of a human and a robot sending the social cues in a realistic environment (Study 5), social attention mechanisms were affected both by physical appearance and behavioral features, while mind perception ratings were mainly affected by physical appearance. This indicates that in order to understand the effect of physical and behavioral features on social cognition, paradigms should be used that adequately simulate the lifelikeness of social interactions.

scholarly journals Emotional States of African Elephants (Loxodonta africana) Kept for Animal–Visitor Interactions, as Perceived by People Differing in Age and Knowledge of the Species

Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 826
Author(s):  
Ilaria Pollastri ◽  
Simona Normando ◽  
Barbara Contiero ◽  
Gregory Vogt ◽  
Donatella Gelli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Loxodonta Africana ◽  
Procrustes Analysis ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
African Elephants ◽  
Daily Routines ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Behavioral Expression ◽  
Degree Of Separation

This study aimed to investigate how three groups of people of differing ages, and with differing knowledge of the species, perceived the emotional state of African elephants (Loxodonta africana) managed in captive and semi-captive environments. Fifteen video-clips of 18 elephants, observed during three different daily routines (release from and return to the night boma; interactions with visitors), were used for a free choice profiling assessment (FCP) and then analyzed with quantitative methods. A general Procrustes analysis identified two main descriptive dimensions of elephant behavioral expression explaining 27% and 19% of the variability in the children group, 19% and 23.7% in adults, and 21.8% and 17% in the expert group. All the descriptors the observers came up with showed a low level of correlation on the identified dimensions. All three observers’ groups showed a degree of separation between captive and semi-captive management. Spearman analyses showed that stereotypic “trunk swirling” behavior correlated negatively with first dimension (free/friendly versus sad/bored) in the children’s group; second dimension (agitated/confident versus angry/bored) amongst the adults; and first dimension (active/excited versus agitated/bored) amongst the experts. More studies are needed to investigate other potential differences in assessing elephants’ emotional states by visitors of different ages and backgrounds.

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