Cargando…

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...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zwirner, Elena, Thornton, Alex
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2015
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
_version_ 1782402790025330688
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