Social Learning Mechanisms and Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Is Imitation Necessary?
Social Learning Mechanisms and Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Is Imitation Necessary?
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02469.x
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发表时间：
2009-12-01
影响因子：
8.2
通讯作者：
Millen, Ailsa E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Caldwell, Christine A.;Millen, Ailsa E.
累积的文化进化被认为是将现代人类与解剖学上相似的祖先区分开来的关键认知和行为属性，但研究人员尚未确定哪些认知机制负责这种学习，以及它们是否是人类独有的。在这里，我们表明，人类参与者的累积学习并不总是依赖于通常被认为是必不可少的社会信息来源。700名参与者被组织成70个微型社会，并完成了一项制作纸飞机的任务。我们操纵了模仿（再现行为）、仿真（再现最终结果）和教学的机会。每种条件都足以让参与者表现出累积的学习。由于竞争性学习可以引起累积文化在这项任务上，我们的结论是，人类文化的物种独特的学习机制方面的不寻常的复杂性的帐户目前还没有提供完整的解释，其他因素可能参与。
Cumulative cultural evolution has been suggested to account for key cognitive and behavioral attributes that distinguish modern humans from their anatomically similar ancestors, but researchers have yet to establish which cognitive mechanisms are responsible for this kind of learning and whether they are unique to humans. Here, we show that human participants' cumulative learning is not always reliant on sources of social information commonly assumed to be essential. Seven hundred participants were organized into 70 microsocieties and completed a task involving building a paper airplane. We manipulated the availability of opportunities for imitation (reproducing actions), emulation (reproducing end results), and teaching. Each condition was independently sufficient for participants to show cumulative learning. Because emulative learning can elicit cumulative culture on this task, we conclude that accounts of the unusual complexity of human culture in terms of species-unique learning mechanisms do not currently provide complete explanations and that other factors may be involved.