Time-dependent lateralization of social learning in the domestic chick (Gallus gallus domesticus): Effects of retention delays in the observed lateralization pattern

Day-old chicks have been shown capable of learning to avoid pecking by observation only of a conspecific showing a disgust reaction after pecking a bitter-tasting bead. This learning is lateralized: access to the right hemisphere appears necessary for successful performance 30 min after training. This is in contrast to the non-social learning version of this learning task, in which the left hemisphere appears to play the dominant role, although both the left and right hemispheres are, in turn, subject to brief windows of “enhanced recall” during memory formation. In our present work we wished to investigate whether such recall events are also prevalent in the social learning task. We investigated 3 such windows; 25 min (a right hemisphere event), 32 min (left-hemisphere event) and 64 min (a possible left-hemisphere event following an interconnection of both hemispheres allowing memory transfer between the two hemispheres).At 32 and 64 min after training we found no evidence of functional lateralization. At 25 min, however, we found right hemisphere dominance. We suggest that a lateralization effect occurs in the social version of the PAL (passive avoidance learning) only at time points associated with right hemisphere dominance. It seems that lateralization is not able to emerge at time points where a left-hemisphere event is expected, because the two “lateralization effects” (right hemisphere dominance associated with the social task and left-hemisphere dominance associated with the PAL task) are in conflict.