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Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential
The cumulative nature of human culture is unique in the animal kingdom. Progressive improvements in tools and technologies have facilitated humanity’s spread across the globe and shaped human evolution, but the cognitive mechanisms enabling cultural change remain unclear. Here we show that, contrary...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4660383/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26606853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep16781 |
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author | Zwirner, Elena Thornton, Alex |
author_facet | Zwirner, Elena Thornton, Alex |
author_sort | Zwirner, Elena |
collection | PubMed |
description | The cumulative nature of human culture is unique in the animal kingdom. Progressive improvements in tools and technologies have facilitated humanity’s spread across the globe and shaped human evolution, but the cognitive mechanisms enabling cultural change remain unclear. Here we show that, contrary to theoretical predictions, cumulative improvements in tools are not dependent on specialised, high-fidelity social learning mechanisms. Participants were tasked with building a basket to carry as much rice as possible using a set of everyday materials and divided into treatment groups with differing opportunities to learn asocially, imitate, receive teaching or emulate by examining baskets made by previous chain members. Teaching chains produced more robust baskets, but neither teaching nor imitation were strictly necessary for cumulative improvements; emulation chains generated equivalent increases in efficacy despite exhibiting relatively low copying fidelity. People used social information strategically, choosing different materials to make their baskets if the previous basket in the chain performed poorly. Together, these results suggest that cumulative culture does not rest on high-fidelity social learning mechanisms alone. Instead, the roots of human cultural prowess may lie in the interplay of strategic social learning with other cognitive traits including the ability to reverse engineer artefacts through causal reasoning. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4660383 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-46603832015-12-02 Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential Zwirner, Elena Thornton, Alex Sci Rep Article The cumulative nature of human culture is unique in the animal kingdom. Progressive improvements in tools and technologies have facilitated humanity’s spread across the globe and shaped human evolution, but the cognitive mechanisms enabling cultural change remain unclear. Here we show that, contrary to theoretical predictions, cumulative improvements in tools are not dependent on specialised, high-fidelity social learning mechanisms. Participants were tasked with building a basket to carry as much rice as possible using a set of everyday materials and divided into treatment groups with differing opportunities to learn asocially, imitate, receive teaching or emulate by examining baskets made by previous chain members. Teaching chains produced more robust baskets, but neither teaching nor imitation were strictly necessary for cumulative improvements; emulation chains generated equivalent increases in efficacy despite exhibiting relatively low copying fidelity. People used social information strategically, choosing different materials to make their baskets if the previous basket in the chain performed poorly. Together, these results suggest that cumulative culture does not rest on high-fidelity social learning mechanisms alone. Instead, the roots of human cultural prowess may lie in the interplay of strategic social learning with other cognitive traits including the ability to reverse engineer artefacts through causal reasoning. Nature Publishing Group 2015-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4660383/ /pubmed/26606853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep16781 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Zwirner, Elena Thornton, Alex Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title | Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title_full | Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title_fullStr | Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title_full_unstemmed | Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title_short | Cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
title_sort | cognitive requirements of cumulative culture: teaching is useful but not essential |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4660383/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26606853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep16781 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT zwirnerelena cognitiverequirementsofcumulativecultureteachingisusefulbutnotessential AT thorntonalex cognitiverequirementsofcumulativecultureteachingisusefulbutnotessential |