Many animals exhibit social learning and behavioural traditions, but human culture exhibits unparalleled complexity and diversity, and is unambiguously cumulative in character. These similarities and differences have spawned a debate over whether animal traditions and human culture are reliant on homologous or analogous psychological processes. Human cumulative culture combines high‐fidelity transmission of cultural knowledge with beneficial modifications to generate a ‘ratcheting’ in technological complexity, leading to the development of traits far more complex than one individual could invent alone. Claims have been made for cumulative culture in several species of animals, including chimpanzees, orangutans and New Caledonian crows, but these remain contentious. Whilst initial work on the topic of cumulative culture was largely theoretical, employing mathematical methods developed by population biologists, in recent years researchers from a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, biology, economics, biological anthropology, linguistics and archaeology, have turned their attention to the experimental investigation of cumulative culture. We review this literature, highlighting advances made in understanding the underlying processes of cumulative culture and emphasising areas of agreement and disagreement amongst investigators in separate fields.
Observational studies of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have revealed population-specific differences in behavior, thought to represent cultural variation. Field studies have also reported behaviors indicative of cultural learning, such as close observation of adult skills by infants, and the use of similar foraging techniques within a population over many generations. Although experimental studies have shown that chimpanzees are able to learn complex behaviors by observation, it is unclear how closely these studies simulate the learning environment found in the wild. In the present study we have used a diffusion chain paradigm, whereby a behavior is passed from one individual to the next in a linear sequence in an attempt to simulate intergenerational transmission of a foraging skill. Using a powerful three-group, two-action methodology, we found that alternative methods used to obtain food from a foraging device (''lift door'' versus ''slide door'') were accurately transmitted along two chains of six and five chimpanzees, respectively, such that the last chimpanzee in the chain used the same method as the original trained model. The fidelity of transmission within each chain is remarkable given that several individuals in the no-model control group were able to discover either method by individual exploration. A comparative study with human children revealed similar results. This study is the first to experimentally demonstrate the linear transmission of alternative foraging techniques by non-human primates. Our results show that chimpanzees have a capacity to sustain local traditions across multiple simulated generations.culture ͉ diffusion chain ͉ social learning ͉ tradition L ong-term observational studies of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) across Africa have revealed a diverse range of behavioral differences between populations, thought to represent local traditions (1-3). The inference that the differences are socially learned is based on (i) patterns of distribution that appear incompatible with genetic or simple environmental explanations; (ii) records of close observation of adults by infants as well as matching of mother-offspring foraging styles (4-7); and (iii) studies of both wild (8-10) and captive chimpanzees (11)(12)(13)(14)(15) showing that social learning from conspecifics can affect the acquisition of tool-use skills. Each wild chimpanzee community exhibits a distinct profile defined by several different kinds of putative traditions that have been described as cultures.
Effective information transfer requires social communication skills. As autism is clinically defined by social communication deficits, it may be expected that information transfer between autistic people would be particularly deficient. However, the Double Empathy theory would suggest that communication difficulties arise from a mismatch in neurotype; and thus information transfer between autistic people may be more successful than information transfer between an autistic and a non-autistic person. We investigate this by examining information transfer between autistic adults, non-autistic adults and mixed autistic-with-non-autistic pairs. Initial participants were told a story which they recounted to a second participant, who recounted the story to a third participant and so on, along a ‘diffusion chain’ of eight participants ( n = 72). We found a significantly steeper decline in detail retention in the mixed chains, while autistic chains did not significantly differ from non-autistic chains. Participant rapport ratings revealed significantly lower scores for mixed chains. These results challenge the diagnostic criterion that autistic people lack the skills to interact successfully. Rather, autistic people effectively share information with each other. Information transfer selectively degrades more quickly in mixed pairs, in parallel with a reduction in rapport. Lay abstract Sharing information with other people relies on the ability to communicate well. Autism is defined clinically by deficits in social communication. It may therefore be expected that autistic people find it difficult to share information with other people. We wanted to find out whether this was the case, and whether it was different when autistic people were sharing information with other autistic people or with non-autistic people. We recruited nine groups, each with eight people. In three of the groups, everyone was autistic; in three of the groups, everyone was non-autistic; and three of the groups were mixed groups where half the group was autistic and half the group was non-autistic. We told one person in each group a story and asked them to share it with another person, and for that person to share it again and so on, until everyone in the group had heard the story. We then looked at how many details of the story had been shared at each stage. We found that autistic people share information with other autistic people as well as non-autistic people do with other non-autistic people. However, when there are mixed groups of autistic and non-autistic people, much less information is shared. Participants were also asked how they felt they had got on with the other person in the interaction. The people in the mixed groups also experienced lower rapport with the person they were sharing the story with. This finding is important as it shows that autistic people have the skills to share information well with one another and experience good rapport, and that there are selective problems when autistic and non-autistic people are interacting.
Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Developmental Review. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A denitive version was subsequently published in Developmental Review, 33, 4, December 2013, 10.1016/j.dr.2013.002. Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. to the frequency at which they are practiced (Rendell et al., 2011). 15The adaptive value of model-based biases have been investigated in disciplines such 16 as evolutionary biology, anthropology and non-developmental domains of psychology. 17Model-based biases have been described as "who" biases (Laland, 2004) In this section we make five propositions regarding the adaptive value of model-based biases. 54To begin, we examine children"s biases towards models whose behaviour indicates their 55 desire to transfer information, namely children"s receptiveness to pedagogical cueing. 2 for instances where this does not happen). indicating that children may select information from those more genetically related to them. 140Familiarity is a confound to this interpretation, yet familiarity itself can be a marker of in- the history of the stranger is unknown and, therefore, the information they provide may not 150 be relevant for the child"s particular environment. they stated that they "liked" rather than peers they stated that they did "not like". Likewise, 200McGuigan (2013) found that the higher the status of the model (the child"s head teacher 201 versus a known researcher) the greater the number of irrelevant actions were copied. 202Whether a model is observed by others may, in itself, be a marker of prestige; four-203 year-old children use bystanders" silent reactions to models such that a model who was 204"endorsed" by bystanders through nods and smiles was copied more for labelling novel biased copying from prestigious models is, in some circumstances, limited to behaviour
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