Identifying social learning through peering: predictions and recommendations

Elisa Bandini, Elliot Howard-Spink, T Revathe , Caroline Schuppli 

Many species exhibit the capacity for social learning. However, the importance of social learning for wild individuals’ daily lives and its role in the emergence of animal culture remains to be uncovered. As observing conspecifics may provide a relatively safe and efficient means of learning, visual species may use observational learning to acquire various types of information from others. However, identifying precisely when social observation leads to information transmission can be challenging. A behaviour known as “peering” (i.e., “close-range and sustained observation of the activities of conspecifics”) is being studied increasingly frequently across primate species in the wild as a potential indicator of social learning. Growing individual-level observational datasets of peering behaviour and its contexts present unique opportunities to study if and how peering leads to learning. However, to determine whether peering leads to observational social learning, researchers must systematically and carefully validate whether peering events facilitate information transmission between individuals, and do not solely serve social functions unrelated to learning. In this piece, we outline key predictions and limitations associated with identifying learning through peering, and provide concrete recommendations for the collection and analysis of data to evaluate our predictions. Despite focusing primarily on primates, our predictions and recommendations can be applied to any visual species that acquires parts of their cultural repertoire via observational social learning.