How learning and evolution interact: The case of a learning task which differs from the evolutionary task

It has been reported recently that learning has a beneficial effect on evol ution even if the learning involved the acquisition of an ability which is different from the ability for which individuals were selected (Nolfi, Elma n & Parisi, 1994). This effect was explained as the result of the interacti on between learning and evolution. In a successive paper, however, the effe ct was explained as a form of recovery from weight perturbation caused by m utations (Harvey, 1996, 1997). In this paper, I provide additional data tha t show how the effect, at least in the case considered in the paper, can on ly be explained as a result of the interaction between learning and evoluti on as originally hypothesized.