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The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance

The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cult...

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Autores principales: Acerbi, Alberto, Snyder, William Daniel, Tennie, Claudio
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9755256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36522390
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25646-9
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author Acerbi, Alberto
Snyder, William Daniel
Tennie, Claudio
author_facet Acerbi, Alberto
Snyder, William Daniel
Tennie, Claudio
author_sort Acerbi, Alberto
collection PubMed
description The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not—i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns—as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as “copying”). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining—even iconic—features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims—a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss.
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spelling pubmed-97552562022-12-17 The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance Acerbi, Alberto Snyder, William Daniel Tennie, Claudio Sci Rep Article The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not—i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns—as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as “copying”). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining—even iconic—features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims—a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9755256/ /pubmed/36522390 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25646-9 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Acerbi, Alberto
Snyder, William Daniel
Tennie, Claudio
The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title_full The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title_fullStr The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title_full_unstemmed The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title_short The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
title_sort method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9755256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36522390
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-25646-9
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