Abstract
The goal of this article is to describe a number of original experiments dating from the late 1960s which remain largely unknown to English-speaking readers because they were published mainly in Russian. In general they deal with investigations of the ability of individual insects to adequately use a past experience in new situations. The experiments demonstrate complex, higher-order learning in bees (Apis mellifera L) and wasps (Paravespula spp.). They test the ability to recognise or use abstract features and to transfer experience to novel situations. The methodology, multistage learning, is based on repeated training and testing with different examples of a class of objects. The results support the conclusion that insect behaviour sometimes reflects more than simple associative learning.
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Mazokhin-Porshnyakov, G.A., Kartsev, V.M. (2000). Learning in Bees and Wasps in Complicated Experimental Tasks. In: Cruse, H., Dean, J., Ritter, H. (eds) Prerational Intelligence: Adaptive Behavior and Intelligent Systems Without Symbols and Logic, Volume 1, Volume 2 Prerational Intelligence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Behavior of Natural and Artificial Systems, Volume 3. Studies in Cognitive Systems, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0870-9_56
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0870-9_56
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