End State Copying by Humans (Homo sapiens): Implications for a Comparative Perspective on Cumulative Culture
End State Copying by Humans (Homo sapiens): Implications for a Comparative Perspective on Cumulative Culture
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DOI：
10.1037/a0026828
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发表时间：
2012-05-01
影响因子：
1.4
通讯作者：
Hopper, Lydia M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Caldwell, Christine A.;Schillinger, Kerstin;Hopper, Lydia M.
有人提出，人类累积文化的独特性可能归因于与产品（仿真）相比，人类更倾向于复制行为过程（模仿），从而产生了特别高保真的传播。根据先前的研究表明，成人参与者可以在产品复制的基础上表现出累积学习，我们现在研究这种学习是否涉及高保真传播。80名成年人类（智人）参与者被要求完成一项先前在实验条件下被证明可以引发累积学习的任务，其中包括用意大利面和粘土模型建造一座塔。每个参与者都看到了两座完工的塔楼，表面上是由之前的参与者建造的，但实际上是按照实验者预先指定的设计建造的。这种最终状态的信息要么以照片的形式提供，要么以实际塔的存在提供。在这两种演示条件下，与这些最终状态的高保真度匹配是显而易见的，即使对于一个与任务目标（最大化塔高）相关的设计也是如此。我们得出的结论是，尽管高保真传播可能与累积文化有关，但行为复制并不总是发生的必要条件。此外，由于黑猩猩明显地复制行为过程和产品，并以高保真度传递行为，因此在非人类中明显缺乏积累文化的明确例子可能归因于模仿能力以外的因素。
It has been proposed that the uniqueness of human cumulative culture may be attributable to humans' greater orientation toward copying the process of behavior (imitation), as compared with the products (emulation), resulting in particularly high fidelity transmission. Following from previous work indicating that adult human participants can exhibit cumulative learning on the basis of product copying alone, we now investigate whether such learning involves high fidelity transmission. Eighty adult human (Homo sapiens) participants were presented with a task previously shown to elicit cumulative learning under experimental conditions, which involved building a tower from spaghetti and modeling clay. Each participant was shown two completed towers, ostensibly built by previous participants, but actually built to prespecified designs by the experimenter. This end state information was provided either in the form of photographs, or the presence of actual towers. High fidelity matching to these end states was apparent in both demonstration conditions, even for a design that was demonstrably suboptimal with regard to the goal of the task (maximizing tower height). We conclude that, although high fidelity transmission is likely to be implicated in cumulative culture, action copying is not always necessary for this to occur. Furthermore, since chimpanzees apparently copy behavioral processes and well as products, and also transmit behavior with high fidelity, the stark absence of unequivocal examples of cumulative culture in nonhumans may be attributable to factors other than imitative ability.