TY  - JOUR
A1  - Elsner, Birgit
A1  - Schellhas, Bernd
T1  - The acquisition of flexible tool use in preschoolers the impact of prior experience
JF  - Zeitschrift für Psychologie = Journal of psychology
N2  - To investigate how preschoolers acquire a tool use strategy and how they adapt their tool use to a changed situation, 2- to 4-year-olds were asked to retrieve chips from a transparent box with a rod, either by stabbing and lifting through a top opening or by pushing through a front and a back opening. In both conditions, about 40% of the children acquired effective tool use by individual learning, and 90% of the other children learned this by observing only one demonstration. When confronted with a changed situation (i.e., previous opening covered, alternative opening uncovered), children perseverated with the recently learned, but now ineffective tool use strategy. Neither age nor acquisition type of the first strategy affected preschoolers' perseverations. Results indicate that prior tool use experiences have differential effects in situations that require either transferring known functions to novel objects or using a familiar tool for an alternative purpose.
KW  - tool use
KW  - preschoolers (2-4 years)
KW  - learning
KW  - transfer
KW  - action planning
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000090
SN  - 2190-8370
VL  - 220
IS  - 1
SP  - 44
EP  - 49
PB  - Hogrefe
CY  - Göttingen
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Scheiner, Ricarda
T1  - Birth weight and sucrose responsiveness predict cognitive skills of honeybee foragers
JF  - Animal behaviour
N2  - Honeybees, Apis mellifera, can differ considerably in their birth weights but the consequences of these weight differences for behaviour are unknown. I investigated how these birth weight differences affected their cognitive skills when the bees reached foraging age. Individual sucrose responsiveness measured by the proboscis extension response is a strong determinant of appetitive olfactory learning performance in honeybees. Most of the observed learning differences between individuals or between genetic bee strains correlate with differences in their sucrose responsiveness. My second aim was therefore to investigate whether the sucrose responsiveness of newly emerged bees could predict the learning behaviour of the bees 3 weeks later. Both birth weight and sucrose responsiveness measured at emergence could predict olfactory learning scores as demonstrated by significant positive correlations. Heavy bees and bees with high sucrose responsiveness later learned better than lighter individuals or bees with lower responsiveness to sucrose at emergence. These results demonstrate for the first time a fundamental relationship between sensory responsiveness and morphology at emergence and later cognitive skills in insects. Because sensory responsiveness is closely linked to division of labour in honeybees, differences in weight and sucrose responsiveness at emergence might be involved in regulating division of labour.
KW  - Apis mellifera
KW  - birth weight
KW  - division of labour
KW  - foraging
KW  - honeybee
KW  - learning
KW  - maternal provisioning
KW  - sucrose responsiveness
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.05.011
SN  - 0003-3472
VL  - 84
IS  - 2
SP  - 305
EP  - 308
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - London
ER  -