End state copying by humans (Homo sapiens): Implications for a comparative perspective on cumulative culture.

Abstract

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.

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

“…Experimental studies of artifact reproduction in humans suggest that the required fidelity and relevant mechanisms depend on the complexity and difficulty of the production process. Transmission chains building spaghetti towers and paper airplanes achieve sufficient fidelity for cumulative improvement even in purely end-state emulative (i.e., reverse engineering) conditions (23), whereas more challenging tasks-such as designing virtual "fishing nets" (24), building real weight-bearing devices (25), and reproducing particular artifact forms (26)-may require imitative copying of specific actions or processes. Interactions between particular tasks demands, required fidelity, and sufficient mechanisms are critical to the interpretation of comparative and evolutionary evidence, yet remain underexplored and undertheorized.…”

The impact of imitative versus emulative learning mechanisms on artifactual variation: implications for the evolution of material culture

“…86 Hence, in discussions concerning which social processes might potentially explain the 87 emergence of stable artifactual traditions, debate has often centered on the social learning 88 cultural evolution, they have been primarily employed as tools for investigation of the social 121 and psychological mechanisms involved in learning and transmission of cultural variants, 122 rather than as a means of studying the impact of social learning mechanisms on artifactual 123 variation for their own sake (e.g., Caldwell and Millen, 2009;Caldwell et al, 2012;124 Wasielewski, 2014). However, such studies are essential if we are to connect cultural 125 evolutionary models to long-term empirical datasets such as the archaeological record.…”

Production bias in cultural evolution: An examination of cubic dice variation in experimental and archaeological contexts

“…Production bias should be especially present and measurable among novice producers of a particular item or technology (see Ferguson, 2008), but may persist even among experts. It will be especially prevalent in social learning contexts where people attempt to produce a particular end product (i.e., emulation), but are less familiar with all the steps during production (i.e., ''imitation''; see Caldwell et al, 2012). In this respect, manufacturers focused on emulation may be less aware of the specific steps they take to reach that end, allowing a production bias to introduce some degree of standardization.…”