Social science provides essential knowledges and skill to develop into responsibles adults capable of reffleting their experience in time of need discuss
Answers
Answer:
Social science provides essential knowledge at skills to develop into responsible adults capable of reflecting their experience in time of need.
Explanation:
As in human societies, social learning may play an important role in shaping individual and group characteristics in other mammals. Here, we review research on non-primate mammals, concentrating on work at our long-term meerkat study site, where longitudinal data and field experiments have generated important insights into the role of social learning under natural conditions. Meerkats live under high predation pressure and occupy a difficult foraging niche. Accordingly, pups make extensive use of social information in learning to avoid predation and obtain food. Where individual learning is costly or opportunities are lacking, as in the acquisition of prey-handling skills, adults play an active role in promoting learning through teaching. Social learning can also cause information to spread through groups, but our data suggest that this does not necessarily result in homogeneous, group-wide traditions. Moreover, traditions are commonly eroded by individual learning. We suggest that traditions will only persist where there are high costs of deviating from the group norm or where skill development requires extensive time and effort. Persistent traditions could, theoretically, modify selection pressures and influence genetic evolution. Further empirical studies of social learning in natural populations are now urgently needed to substantiate theoretical claims.
Keywords: culture, development, evolution, mammals, social learning, traditions
1. INTRODUCTION
In human societies, the ability to learn from others (‘social learning’) promotes the development of individual skills and shapes the behaviour of groups, giving rise to varied local cultures [1]. Understanding the extent to which social learning has similar effects in other species is one of the most fundamental questions in the life sciences. Theoretical models suggest that social learning may have major ecological and evolutionary implications, promoting the spread of adaptive information within groups and between generations, dissociating behavioural traits from ecological conditions and modifying selection pressures [2–4]. Furthermore, comparative studies of social learning are critical for understanding the biological basis of human culture [5–7].
In recognition of these implications, social learning has become a major research topic in recent years. Studies in captivity have revealed mechanisms of social learning across a range of taxa and shown that information can spread across chains of individuals and diffuse through groups, forming group-level behavioural characteristics or traditions [8]. However, patterns of social learning in artificial groups of animals in close proximity to one another, with freely available food and no predation pressure may not adequately reflect those found in nature. Descriptive, observational studies of animals in their natural environment provide greater ecological validity, but cannot generate unequivocal evidence that social learning shapes individual or group behaviour [9]. Consequently, the role of social learning in nature remains rather poorly understood.