PSYC 385 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Baldwin Effect, Heredity, Frequency-Dependent Selection
22 Jun 2018
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Psyc 385 – Lecture 12 notes
Developmental induction and the nature of nature-nurture
E.g. A fresh water snail
When you raise snails in an environment with predators it induces certain
characteristics
The shell may become smaller (rounder) which will make it resist the
predators
In a crayfish environment – instead snails elongate the shell which makes it
difficult for the crayfish to capture the snail with their pinchers
Different phenotypes get induced in different environments – evolution is
selecting for plasticity
The “Baldwin” Effect
“non-Lamarckian way” > not direct inheritance of acquired characteristics
Copying the behaviour of another, e.g., running up a tree to escape a predator
(can be adaptive i.e. keeping you alive and helps you reproduce) > phenotype
directing genotype = social learning
Baldwin effect – directing selection, evolution being directed by how the
evolution of the organism unfolds, e.g. , learning the escape behaviours of
another
- genetic assimilation – a mutation comes along that can replace the
behaviour so social heredity become genetic heredity… successful phenotype
exists first then mutation comes along that can replace it and it becomes a
part of genes
Reverses the direction of causality
The evolution of social learning
Individual learning is trial & error learning, relying on own individual
intelligence or behaviour
Social learning – use social information to change how you interact with
environment (e.g., if you see someone eat a berry and they die, you will avoid
eating that berry…copy their successful behaviour to your advantage)
How did this emerge?
B) when social learning is uncommon it has an advantage over individual
learning (negative frequency dependent selection), but as the proportion of
social learners increases the efficiency of this decreases
C) with a fairly slow change of environmental change there is a benefit to
social learning, info won’t get out-dated easily
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