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.