ABSTRACT
In recent years, an increasing number of behavioral scientists have begun to study the problems of animal learning from a much more ecological, or naturalistic, perspective than has typically been the case in the past. Some workers have been impressed by data from laboratory studies of learning that were difficult or impossible to accommodate within the traditional theoretical frameworks of psychology, and that seemed to demand, in particular, an ecological interpretation (e.g., Bolles, 1970; Rozin & Kalat, 1971). Others have been studying problems of learning that were initially encountered in a naturalistic context and so demanded an ecological approach from the outset (e.g., Pyke, 1981; Vander Wall, 1982). The ecological study of animal learning is one area in which the oft-heralded synthesis between ethology and comparative psychology has proven fertile: Ethological techniques provide a description of behavior as it occurs in the ecological setting (answering the question "What behavior might be learned?"), allowing psychological analyses to determine the mechanisms by which the behavior arises (answering the question "How is it learned'?"). Numerous studies, especially in the area of foraging behavior (e.g., Kamil & Sargeant, 1981; see the chapter by Pietrewicz, this volume), testify to the success of this cooperative endeavour.
