Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed

Eva Reindl; Ali Gwilliams; Lewis Dean; Rachel Kendal; Claudio Tennie

doi:10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed

Eva Reindl^*, Ali Gwilliams, Lewis Dean, Rachel Kendal, Claudio Tennie

^*Corresponding author for this work

School of Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The breakthrough study of Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) claimed that imitation, teaching, and prosociality were crucial for cumulative cultural learning. None of their child participants solved the final stage of their puzzlebox without social support, but it was not directly tested whether the solution was beyond the reach of individual children. We provide this missing asocial control condition, showing that children can reach the final stage of the puzzlebox without social support. We interpret these findings in the light of current understanding of cumulative culture: there are currently conflicting definitions of cumulative culture, which we argue can lead to drastically different interpretations of (these) experimental results. We conclude that the Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) puzzlebox fulfils a process-focused definition, but does not fulfil the (frequently used) product-focused definition. Accordingly, the precise role of social support for the apparent taxonomic distribution of cumulative culture and its ontogeny warrants further testing.

Original language	English
Article number	106
Number of pages	9
Journal	Palgrave Communications
Volume	6
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7
Publication status	Published - 28 May 2020

Bibliographical note

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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

Cumulative culture
Children
Social learning
Ratchet effect
Problem solving

Access to Document

10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning
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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Final published version, 830 KBLicence: CC BY 3.0

Cite this

@article{e62604842f5b4f20b0a62985faba4ec9,

title = "Skills and motivations underlying children{\textquoteright}s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed",

abstract = "The breakthrough study of Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) claimed that imitation, teaching, and prosociality were crucial for cumulative cultural learning. None of their child participants solved the final stage of their puzzlebox without social support, but it was not directly tested whether the solution was beyond the reach of individual children. We provide this missing asocial control condition, showing that children can reach the final stage of the puzzlebox without social support. We interpret these findings in the light of current understanding of cumulative culture: there are currently conflicting definitions of cumulative culture, which we argue can lead to drastically different interpretations of (these) experimental results. We conclude that the Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) puzzlebox fulfils a process-focused definition, but does not fulfil the (frequently used) product-focused definition. Accordingly, the precise role of social support for the apparent taxonomic distribution of cumulative culture and its ontogeny warrants further testing.",

keywords = "Cumulative culture, Children, Social learning, Ratchet effect, Problem solving",

author = "Eva Reindl and Ali Gwilliams and Lewis Dean and Rachel Kendal and Claudio Tennie",

note = "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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article{\textquoteright}s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.",

year = "2020",

month = may,

day = "28",

doi = "10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7",

language = "English",

volume = "6",

journal = "Palgrave Communications",

issn = "2055-1045",

publisher = "Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.",

number = "1",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed

AU - Reindl, Eva

AU - Gwilliams, Ali

AU - Dean, Lewis

AU - Kendal, Rachel

AU - Tennie, Claudio

N1 - 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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PY - 2020/5/28

Y1 - 2020/5/28

N2 - The breakthrough study of Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) claimed that imitation, teaching, and prosociality were crucial for cumulative cultural learning. None of their child participants solved the final stage of their puzzlebox without social support, but it was not directly tested whether the solution was beyond the reach of individual children. We provide this missing asocial control condition, showing that children can reach the final stage of the puzzlebox without social support. We interpret these findings in the light of current understanding of cumulative culture: there are currently conflicting definitions of cumulative culture, which we argue can lead to drastically different interpretations of (these) experimental results. We conclude that the Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) puzzlebox fulfils a process-focused definition, but does not fulfil the (frequently used) product-focused definition. Accordingly, the precise role of social support for the apparent taxonomic distribution of cumulative culture and its ontogeny warrants further testing.

AB - The breakthrough study of Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) claimed that imitation, teaching, and prosociality were crucial for cumulative cultural learning. None of their child participants solved the final stage of their puzzlebox without social support, but it was not directly tested whether the solution was beyond the reach of individual children. We provide this missing asocial control condition, showing that children can reach the final stage of the puzzlebox without social support. We interpret these findings in the light of current understanding of cumulative culture: there are currently conflicting definitions of cumulative culture, which we argue can lead to drastically different interpretations of (these) experimental results. We conclude that the Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) puzzlebox fulfils a process-focused definition, but does not fulfil the (frequently used) product-focused definition. Accordingly, the precise role of social support for the apparent taxonomic distribution of cumulative culture and its ontogeny warrants further testing.

KW - Cumulative culture

KW - Children

KW - Social learning

KW - Ratchet effect

KW - Problem solving

UR - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-0483-7

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85085703628&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

DO - 10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

M3 - Article

SN - 2055-1045

VL - 6

JO - Palgrave Communications

JF - Palgrave Communications

IS - 1

M1 - 106

ER -

Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this