scholarly journals Ratcheting up the ratchet: on the evolution of cumulative culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1528) ◽  
pp. 2405-2415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Tennie ◽  
Josep Call ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Active Teaching ◽  
Social Motivations ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Some researchers have claimed that chimpanzee and human culture rest on homologous cognitive and learning mechanisms. While clearly there are some homologous mechanisms, we argue here that there are some different mechanisms at work as well. Chimpanzee cultural traditions represent behavioural biases of different populations, all within the species’ existing cognitive repertoire (what we call the ‘zone of latent solutions’) that are generated by founder effects, individual learning and mostly product-oriented (rather than process-oriented) copying. Human culture, in contrast, has the distinctive characteristic that it accumulates modifications over time (what we call the ‘ratchet effect’). This difference results from the facts that (i) human social learning is more oriented towards process than product and (ii) unique forms of human cooperation lead to active teaching, social motivations for conformity and normative sanctions against non-conformity. Together, these unique processes of social learning and cooperation lead to humans’ unique form of cumulative cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Complex foraging behaviours in wild birds emerge from social learning and recombination of components

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Wild ◽  
M. Chimento ◽  
K. McMahon ◽  
D. R. Farine ◽  
B. C. Sheldon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Recent well-documented cases of cultural evolution towards increasing efficiency in non-human animals have led some authors to propose that other animals are also capable of cumulative cultural evolution, where traits become more refined and/or complex over time. Yet few comparative examples exist of traits increasing in complexity, and experimental tests remain scarce. In a previous study, we introduced a foraging innovation into replicate subpopulations of great tits, the ‘sliding-door puzzle’. Here, we track diffusion of a second ‘dial puzzle’, before introducing a two-step puzzle that combines both actions. We mapped social networks across two generations to ask if individuals could: (1) recombine socially-learned traits and (2) socially transmit a two-step trait. Our results show birds could recombine skills into more complex foraging behaviours, and naïve birds across both generations could learn the two-step trait. However, closer interrogation revealed that acquisition was not achieved entirely through social learning—rather, birds socially learned components before reconstructing full solutions asocially. As a consequence, singular cultural traditions failed to emerge, although subpopulations of birds shared preferences for a subset of behavioural variants. Our results show that while tits can socially learn complex foraging behaviours, these may need to be scaffolded by rewarding each component. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals The evolution of high-fidelity social learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1928) ◽  
pp. 20200090
Author(s):  
Marcel Montrey ◽  
Thomas R. Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Bayesian Model ◽  
Individual Learning ◽  
High Fidelity ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

A defining feature of human culture is that knowledge and technology continually improve over time. Such cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) probably depends far more heavily on how reliably information is preserved than on how efficiently it is refined. Therefore, one possible reason that CCE appears diminished or absent in other species is that it requires accurate but specialized forms of social learning at which humans are uniquely adept. Here, we develop a Bayesian model to contrast the evolution of high-fidelity social learning, which supports CCE, against low-fidelity social learning, which does not. We find that high-fidelity transmission evolves when (1) social and (2) individual learning are inexpensive, (3) traits are complex, (4) individual learning is abundant, (5) adaptive problems are difficult and (6) behaviour is flexible. Low-fidelity transmission differs in many respects. It not only evolves when (2) individual learning is costly and (4) infrequent but also proves more robust when (3) traits are simple and (5) adaptive problems are easy. If conditions favouring the evolution of high-fidelity transmission are stricter (3 and 5) or harder to meet (2 and 4), this could explain why social learning is common, but CCE is rare.

scholarly journals Social learning and human mate preferences: a potential mechanism for generating and maintaining between-population diversity in attraction

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1563) ◽  
pp. 366-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony C. Little ◽  
Benedict C. Jones ◽  
Lisa M. DeBruine ◽  
Christine A. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Mate Preferences ◽  
Population Diversity ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
High Status ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Cross Cultural Differences ◽  
Physical Traits ◽  
Different Populations

Inspired by studies demonstrating mate-choice copying effects in non-human species, recent studies of attractiveness judgements suggest that social learning also influences human preferences. In the first part of our article, we review evidence for social learning effects on preferences in humans and other animals. In the second part, we present new empirical evidence that social learning not only influences the attractiveness of specific individuals, but can also generalize to judgements of previously unseen individuals possessing similar physical traits. The different conditions represent different populations and, once a preference arises in a population, social learning can lead to the spread of preferences within that population. In the final part of our article, we discuss the theoretical basis for, and possible impact of, biases in social learning whereby individuals may preferentially copy the choices of those with high status or better access to critical information about potential mates. Such biases could mean that the choices of a select few individuals carry the greatest weight, rapidly generating agreement in preferences within a population. Collectively, these issues suggest that social learning mechanisms encourage the spread of preferences for certain traits once they arise within a population and so may explain certain cross-cultural differences.

scholarly journals Shared intentionality, reason-giving and the evolution of human culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathal O'Madagain ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Shared Beliefs ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Collaborative Activities ◽  
Different Levels

The biological approach to culture focuses almost exclusively on processes of social learning, to the neglect of processes of cultural coordination including joint action and shared intentionality. In this paper, we argue that the distinctive features of human culture derive from humans' unique skills and motivations for coordinating with one another around different types of action and information. As different levels of these skills of ‘shared intentionality’ emerged over the last several hundred thousand years, human culture became characterized first by such things as collaborative activities and pedagogy based on cooperative communication, and then by such things as collaborative innovations and normatively structured pedagogy. As a kind of capstone of this trajectory, humans began to coordinate not just on joint actions and shared beliefs, but on the reasons for what we believe or how we act. Coordinating on reasons powered the kinds of extremely rapid innovation and stable cumulative cultural evolution especially characteristic of the human species in the last several tens of thousands of years. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Social learning in swarm robotics

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bredeche ◽  
Nicolas Fontbonne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Swarm Robotics ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Robot Swarms ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Robotic Tasks ◽  
Behavioural Strategies

In this paper, we present an implementation of social learning for swarm robotics. We consider social learning as a distributed online reinforcement learning method applied to a collective of robots where sensing, acting and coordination are performed on a local basis. While some issues are specific to artificial systems, such as the general objective of learning efficient (and ideally, optimal) behavioural strategies to fulfill a task defined by a supervisor, some other issues are shared with social learning in natural systems. We discuss some of these issues, paving the way towards cumulative cultural evolution in robot swarms, which could enable complex social organization necessary to achieve challenging robotic tasks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Evolución cultural acumulativa y ‘efecto trinquete’ en animales no humanos. Una objeción a Tomasello

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar David Caicedo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

RESUMEN:Michael Tomasello considera que, aunque todos los animales son el resultado (no acabado) de la evolución biológica y aunque en muchos animales no humanos la utilización de herramientas es latente (uno de los principales signos de rasgos culturales), solo en los humanos se produce la evolución cultural acumulativa y el efecto trinquete, esto es, la acumulación progresiva (e innovadora) de mejoras a lo largo de la historia sobre los artefactos creados. Contrario a esto, se sugiere em este artículo que algunos estudios recientes pueden utilizarse para, también en este aspecto, reafirmar el continuum animal-humano y extender la cultura acumulativa a otros animales. PALABRAS CLAVE: EVOLUCIÓN CULTURAL ACUMULATIVA, EFECTO TRINQUETE, IMITACIÓN, INNOVACIÓN.ABSTRACTMichael Tomasello believes that although all animals are the result (not finished) of biological evolution, and in many nonhuman animals using tools is latent (one of the main signs of culturaltraits), the cumulative cultural evolution and ratchet effect, i.e., progressive (and innovative) accumulation of improvements over history about the artifacts created, occur only in humans. Contrary to this, I believe that some recent studies can be used with the purpose of, also in this regard, reaffirming the animal-human continuum and extend the cumulative culture to other animals.KEYWORDS: CUMULATIVE CULTURAL EVOLUTION, RATCHET EFFECT, IMITATION, INNOVATION

scholarly journals A Guttman-Based Approach to Identifying Cumulativeness Applied to Chimpanzee Culture

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-314
Author(s):  
Robert Bates Graber ◽  
Dean R. De Cock ◽  
Michael L. Burton
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Traditional Methods ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Type Statistic ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Chimpanzee

Human culture appears to build on itself—that is, to be to some extent cumulative. Whether this property is shared by culture in the common chimpanzee is controversial. The question previously has been approached, qualitatively (and inconclusively), by debating whether any chimpanzee culture traits have resulted from individuals building on one another’s work (“ratcheting”). The fact that the chimpanzees at different sites have distinctive repertoires of traits affords a different avenue of approach: determining whether the traits accumulate, site to site, in a structure more orderly than would be expected by chance. Here we use Guttman scalograms and a gamma-type statistic to bring the first quantitative evidence to bear on the question. We show that while traditional methods provide apparent support for a cumulative tendency, our more rigorous methods do not. This may be because cumulativeness requires human-like social-learning mechanisms, or because culture generally is not sufficiently unidimensional to scale well. A cumulative tendency would be expected, however, under rather weak assumptions; therefore it seems more likely that chimpanzee culture is cumulative, but this data set is simply too small to evidence it.

scholarly journals Human cumulative culture and the exploitation of natural phenomena

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Derex
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Type I ◽  
Type Ii ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Over Time

Cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)—defined as the process by which beneficial modifications are culturally transmitted and progressively accumulated over time—has long been argued to underlie the unparalleled diversity and complexity of human culture. In this paper, I argue that not just any kind of cultural accumulation will give rise to human-like culture. Rather, I suggest that human CCE depends on the gradual exploitation of natural phenomena, which are features of our environment that, through the laws of physics, chemistry or biology, generate reliable effects which can be exploited for a purpose. I argue that CCE comprises two distinct processes: optimizing cultural traits that exploit a given set of natural phenomena (Type I CCE) and expanding the set of natural phenomena we exploit (Type II CCE). I argue that the most critical features of human CCE, including its open-ended dynamic, stems from Type II CCE. Throughout the paper, I contrast the two processes and discuss their respective socio-cognitive requirements. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Complex Dynamics From Simple Cognition: The Primary Ratchet Effect in Animal Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Brooke Mcelreath ◽  
Christophe Boesch ◽  
Hjalmar Kühl ◽  
Richard McElreath
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Cognitive Components ◽  
Common Foundation ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Animal Societies ◽  
Animal Culture

AbstractIt is often observed that human culture, unlike most other animal culture, is cumulative: human technology and behavior is more complex than any individual could invent in their own lifetime. Cumulative culture is often explained by appeal to a combination of high-fidelity social learning and innovation, the “ratchet effect.” What is often overlooked is that both human and other animal culture is supported by a more primary ratchet effect that retains and increases the prevalence of adaptive behavior. This primary ratchet can arise without appeal to specialized cognitive adaptations and is plausibly more widespread in animal societies. We use a simple model to highlight how simple forms of contingent social learning can create the primary ratchet effect, dramatically increasing the prevalence of adaptive, hard to invent behavior. We investigate some ways that demography may interact with the primary ratchet to generate patterns of cultural variation. As the primary ratchet may be common to many animal societies, its cognitive components and population dynamics provide a common foundation for the study of animal culture and a necessary foundation for understanding the origins of human cumulative culture.

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