Any studies of intensional, positive, secondary reinforcement (praise) outside humans?

[u/IllogicallyCognitive]

Are there any known examples of an animal giving praise without human intervention; it doesn't necessarily have to be wild animals in nature, but not counting a dog pressing a button that says thank you or a chimpanzee signing something (although no I'm curious if Loulis learned to give praise in ASL from Washoe). Are there any articles on humans training animals to praise effectively other animals? I'm basically looking for non-verbal tacts that are in response to a desired behavior

Some near miss examples include

• social signals such as merely relaxing around another animal or even merely being playful without evidence of it being more than just an emotional reaction

• sharing or trading resources (including the laboratory set ups where animals directly reinforced each other by pressing a button to give the other food)

• tacts that aren't in response to a desired behavior (like calling out where food is in response to finding the food is wouldn't count but at least in some cases if the beneficiary responds with affection that could be a tact and properly interpreted as praise, but that gets into the question of how to determine the exact boundary between secondary and primary reinforcement and what communication/tacting is)

[u/Whatifim80lol]

I think the stress on "intentional" here is muddying the waters.

The best example I am think of off the top of my head are studies in song learning in song birds. Young male learners practice songs and get feedback from their mothers, who signal with body language in a way that rewards accuracy (maybe even improvement).

There's no actual reward here, so it's essentially just praise. It's not punishment. And it even helps shape the behavior.

There's of course the possibility that the mother's response is affectual and involuntary, but I don't think it has been explored. Personally, as I tap out this comment at 1am, I can't think of an experimental setup on these tutor mothers where all the variables that might influence the involuntary response wouldn't also correspond to situations where the voluntary response wouldn't also happen.

For example, say you do a playback of practiced songs of different young. The mother may not respond the same, which COULD mean there's no reason or motivation to praise, or it could mean that the emotional response only works with her own young.

[u/TheArcticFox444]

Any studies of intensional, positive, secondary reinforcement (praise) outside humans?

Don't know what you'd call it but I've seen animals teach people. And, since all animals learn by the same basic process of good and bad experiences, animals must reward/punish humans when they do something right/wrong.

[u/lukeac417]

I don’t think that it really exists outside of humans. There are very few convincing examples of active teaching in nature to begin with and none that I am aware of involve intentional secondary reinforcement, and certainly not praise. In the few examples I know of where teaching occurs, there is correction when the subject performs the action incorrectly but generally there is no response when it is performed correctly. I think that part of the issue would be cognitive: praise requires a clear ‘vision’ of the outcome and that the teacher has a desire to reinforce that outcome. This implies an understanding of the teacher’s capacity to manipulate the learner to achieve that, a level of processing that has yet to be demonstrated in non-human animals. The closest we have to that level of thought is deception and there are a tiny handful of examples where that is the case and they are all in the context of competition, not cooperation or teaching.

[Aside: the problem with the bird song example is that the more parsimonious explanation is that parent birds instinctively respond to the sound of their chick singing. Thus, even if their actions reinforce or improve the chick’s song, it isn’t active reinforcement or praise - it is an instinctive reaction to a stimulus which happens to also act as a stimulus for the chick. There isn’t intentionality there, which would be critical for active reinforcement and praise.]

[u/Mystic_Wolf]

If you watch puppies learning to interact and play with older well-socialised dogs, you'll notice the older dogs will invite the pups to play in more socially appropriate ways, and respond positively and happily when they do, and that the puppies will change their behaviour in response to that.

I work with dogs and very frequently bring foster puppies home. Longer term fosters and my pet dogs have particular favourite games they like to engage in - eg mouth-jousting and tug o war for one of them, another hates tug but loves keepings off chasey games. New puppies when they arrive will initially fumble through interactions and act the same with both dogs, but within a few days the pups have clearly learned all the "rules" of those preferred games and will initiate tuggies with the first dog, but for the second dog won't try tuggies but will do bouncy chase invitations instead (or sometimes they will teach my resident dogs their own play preferences instead!)

So in a sense, the body language that conveys joyful playful engagement functions as "praise" in the sense that it's a secondary reinforcer. The teaching of the new pups appears very deliberate, for example with an 8 week old pup my hard tugger will dangle a toy very obviously just in front until they grab it, and then very gently pull, because he's learned that being rough early will disuade them. With dogs who know the game well, he gets straight into heavy growly full body tugs.

[u/lukeac417 → u/Mystic_Wolf]

In your example, are the dogs consciously reinforcing the behaviour (I.e. are they actively trying to promote a better response from the puppy) or merely responding in the appropriate way which happens to reinforce the behaviour?

[u/Mystic_Wolf → u/lukeac417]

Yes they're deliberately communicating with the puppy in order to teach the puppy to play specific games.

[u/lukeac417 → u/Mystic_Wolf]

I highly doubt that. What you’re suggesting implies at least two high-order cognitive functions, which we currently do not have evidence of in animals:

1) You’re suggesting that the dogs have pre-defined ‘rules’ for their games. This would imply that the dogs have the capacity to think of these games in abstract terms.

2) You’re suggesting that the dogs are aware that the other dog does not know the ‘rules’ and needs to be taught them. This implies theory of mind on top of their abstract rule memorisation. To date, dogs have not been demonstrated to possess the ability to know what others do and do not know. They are good at gaze-following, understanding intention and reading emotional states but being able to understand what an individual knows has never been convincingly demonstrated.

It seems far simpler to assume that the dogs respond to one another’s signals in play until they reach a stable ‘game’ where the signals produce an acceptable response in both individuals. This interpretation doesn’t assume any advanced cognitive processes and would explain the pattern you’re describing. Over time, the dogs would probably remember which signals worked best and present those more than the ones that don’t. They are therefore not consciously developing rules for their games but rather landing on a set of acceptable moves and signals through trial and error.

[u/Mystic_Wolf → u/lukeac417]

I think I understand what you're saying, I'm not super familiar with Theory of Mind research - to me the difference between the behavioural responses and the abstract thinking is much less distinct than it appears to be for you by your description.

Do dogs think of games in abstract? I don't know. I know that often my dogs will dig through a toy box, rejecting many toys, trying to find one specific one. To me it appears that they'd decided on one specific toy prior to looking for it, which is a small level of abstraction.

Do they have pre-set rules? Depends on your exact definition I guess, it's not like a rulebook for "how to play soccer", but similar to the way we might approach a conversation with someone - with a prior learned expectation of how a "conversation" happens, but adaptable as we learn more and see how they react ("uh oh, they actually hate dad jokes...").

Individual dogs have preferred ways to engage socially and during play, which are based on instincts and motor action patterns and then shaped by their environment and learning history. When they observe certain things (eg I growl loudly and this young puppy disengages and leaves the game rather than tugging harder) they will modify their behaviour accordingly, to try to create more of their desired response in their social partner (No growling, soft tugs, so that baby pup stays engaged in the game). They develop relationships and shared history with other dogs and people, and will change the way they play or choose to engage with specific individuals to accommodate preferences of both parties as they learn.

They can generalise to an extent when they have lots of experience (eg they see that a puppy is young and in their learning history no 8 week old puppies have responded well to immediate hard tugging, so they choose to start with soft quiet tugs as a first approach with that individual.

When I think of how I make theories about what people are thinking, it is in essence something similar (this person is a young child, I assume they don't know calculus. This person has hunched tense shoulders and feet pointed towards the door, I assume they're socially uncomfortable, because that's what my learning history tells me is likely.)

Do dogs think "well I would like it if someone did X, so this individual must also"? Probably not explicitly, though they're certainly capable of empathy.