Since the 1950s, researchers have examined how differences in the social and asocial environment affect learning in rats, mice, and, more recently, a variety of other species. Despite this large body of research, little has been done to synthesize these findings and to examine if social and asocial environmental factors have consistent effects on cognitive abilities, and if so, what aspects of these factors have greater or lesser impact. Here, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis examining how different external environmental features, including the social environment, impact learning (both speed of acquisition and performance). Using 531 mean-differences from 176 published articles across 27 species (with studies on rats and mice being most prominent) we conducted phylogenetically corrected mixed-effects models that reveal: (i) an average absolute effect size |d| = 0.55 and directional effect size d = 0.34; (ii) interventions manipulating the asocial environment result in larger effects than social interventions alone; and (iii) the length of the intervention is a significant predictor of effect size, with longer interventions resulting in larger effects. Additionally, much of the variation in effect size remained unexplained, possibly suggesting that species differ widely in how they are affected by environmental interventions due to varying ecological and evolutionary histories. Overall our results suggest that social and asocial environmental factors do significantly affect learning, but these effects are highly variable and perhaps not always as predicted. Most notably, the type (social or asocial) and length of interventions are important in determining the strength of the effect.

中文翻译：

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环境和社会因素对学习能力的影响：荟萃分析

自 1950 年代以来，研究人员已经研究了社会和非社会环境的差异如何影响大鼠、小鼠以及最近的各种其他物种的学习。尽管有大量的研究，但很少有人对这些发现进行综合，并检查社会和非社会环境因素是否对认知能力有一致的影响，如果是，这些因素的哪些方面具有更大或更小的影响。在这里，我们进行了系统回顾和荟萃分析，研究不同的外部环境特征，包括社会环境，如何影响学习（获取速度和表现）。使用来自 27 个物种的 176 篇已发表文章的 531 个平均差异（对大鼠和小鼠的研究最为突出），我们进行了系统发育校正的混合效应模型，结果显示：（i ) 平均绝对效应大小 | d | = 0.55 和方向效应大小d  = 0.34；( ii ) 操纵非社会环境的干预措施比单独的社会干预措施产生更大的影响；和（三) 干预时间长短是效果大小的重要预测指标，干预时间越长，效果越大。此外，影响大小的大部分变化仍然无法解释，这可能表明由于不同的生态和进化历史，物种在如何受到环境干预的影响方面存在很大差异。总体而言，我们的结果表明，社会和非社会环境因素确实会显着影响学习，但这些影响是高度可变的，并且可能并不总是如预期的那样。最值得注意的是，干预的类型（社会或非社会）和干预时间对于确定效果的强度很重要。