However, critics of the prosocial interpretation of Binti-Jua's behavior suggest that given her early exposure to doll play, an associative learning explanation is also possible.
Notoriously, Epstein et al. (1981) trained pigeons to peck at a mark on their own bodies that was visible only in a mirror, and they used this to call into question the attribution of "self-awareness" on the basis of the mirror-mark test, preferring an associative learning explanation.
The option bias methodology can therefore be thought of as a rigorous, quantitative version of the ethnographic method, by providing a probability that the observed levels of within-group homogeneity arose in the absence of social learning, and thereby allows judgements as to the plausibility of a social learning explanation to be based on consensual standards, rather than subjective judgements.
Our study demonstrates that students are enthusiastic about learning factual explanations about the origin and diversification of life, including humans, and that contact with biology courses determines their acceptance of evolutionary theory.
Our study demonstrates that students can be, and are, enthusiastic about learning factual explanations about the origin and diversification of life, including humans, and that contact with science education, particularly biology, determines their acceptance of evolutionary theory.
However, integrating instructional explanations into learning via self-explanations has a positive effect on learning [ 71].
It is possible that clinicians are a special case, because in their intensive initial training and continuing education, clinicians generally learn biological explanations for behavior in abstract form.
Once children have gained a level of vocabulary knowledge, new words are learned through explanations using familiar, or "old" words.
This is an example of an explanation-mediated vision system which has two important aspects for learning: expectations and explanations.
The implications of these findings for social-learning explanations of drinking behavior are discussed.
