Understanding and Applying Visual Information
Fig. 4: Own work - Description of top-down processing
The high level of cognition and memory associated with learning in bees is due to their extremely active brains utilising “top-down processing”, or prior knowledge (Fig. 4). This behaviour is believed to be unusual for insects to exhibit because top-down processing isn’t applied in many larger vertebrates (Pockley 2001).
It is understood that differences in genetic makeup and gene expression are responsible for the different levels of learning and responsiveness to stimuli in all bees, similarly to humans (Behrends & Scheiner 2009).
Bees are able to increase the accuracy of their decisions and performances by increasing their decision time, especially when faced with a difficult task or unfamiliar stimuli. It is believed that bees utilise a longer inspection time of stimuli to reduce “signal-to-noise ratios”,which assists them in making the correct decision (Srinivasan 2010).
It is understood that differences in genetic makeup and gene expression are responsible for the different levels of learning and responsiveness to stimuli in all bees, similarly to humans (Behrends & Scheiner 2009).
Bees are able to increase the accuracy of their decisions and performances by increasing their decision time, especially when faced with a difficult task or unfamiliar stimuli. It is believed that bees utilise a longer inspection time of stimuli to reduce “signal-to-noise ratios”,which assists them in making the correct decision (Srinivasan 2010).