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

Cultural Evolution in Animals

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Invertebrate Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large.

scholarly journals Cultural accumulation and improvement in online fan fiction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Pianzola ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Simone Rebora
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Harry Potter ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution Theory ◽  
Digital Literary Studies

We analyse stories in Harry Potter fan fiction published on Archive of Our Own (AO3), using concepts from cultural evolution. In particular, we focus on cumulative cultural evolution, that is, the idea that cultural systems improve with time, drawing on previous innovations. In this study we examine two features of cumulative culture: accumulation and improvement. First, we show that stories in Harry Potter’s fan fiction accumulate cultural traits—unique tags, in our analysis—through time, both globally and at the level of single stories. Second, more recent stories are also liked more by readers than earlier stories. Our research illustrates the potential of the combination of cultural evolution theory and digital literary studies, and it paves the way for the study of the effects of online digital media on cultural cumulation.

scholarly journals Rationalization enables cooperation and cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Levy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Future Planning ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Abstract Cushman argues that the function of rationalization is to attribute mental representations to ourselves, thereby making these representations available for future planning. I argue that such attribution is often not necessary and sometimes maladaptive. I suggest a different explanation of rationalization: making representations available to other agents, to facilitate cooperation, transmission, and the ratchet effect that underlies cumulative cultural evolution.

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 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 Efficiency fosters cumulative culture across species

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Gruber ◽  
M. Chimento ◽  
L. M. Aplin ◽  
D. Biro
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Evolution Of Complexity ◽  
Diverse Species ◽  
Iterated Learning ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Definition Of

Recent studies in several taxa have demonstrated that animal culture can evolve to become more efficient in various contexts ranging from tool use to route learning and migration. Under recent definitions, such increases in efficiency might satisfy the core criteria of cumulative cultural evolution (CCE). However, there is not yet a satisfying consensus on the precise definition of efficiency, CCE or the link between efficiency and more complex, extended forms of CCE considered uniquely human. To bring clarity to this wider discussion of CCE, we develop the concept of efficiency by (i) reviewing recent potential evidence for CCE in animals, and (ii) clarifying a useful definition of efficiency by synthesizing perspectives found within the literature, including animal studies and the wider iterated learning literature. Finally, (iii) we discuss what factors might impinge on the informational bottleneck of social transmission, and argue that this provides pressure for learnable behaviours across species. We conclude that framing CCE in terms of efficiency casts complexity in a new light, as learnable behaviours are a requirement for the evolution of complexity. Understanding how efficiency greases the ratchet of cumulative culture provides a better appreciation of how similar cultural evolution can be between taxonomically diverse species—a case for continuity across the animal kingdom. 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 value of teaching increases with tool complexity in cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1939) ◽  
pp. 20201885
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Lucas ◽  
Michael Kings ◽  
Devi Whittle ◽  
Emma Davey ◽  
Francesca Happé ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Force ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Tool Types

Human cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is recognized as a powerful ecological and evolutionary force, but its origins are poorly understood. The long-standing view that CCE requires specialized social learning processes such as teaching has recently come under question, and cannot explain why such processes evolved in the first place. An alternative, but largely untested, hypothesis is that these processes gradually coevolved with an increasing reliance on complex tools. To address this, we used large-scale transmission chain experiments (624 participants), to examine the role of different learning processes in generating cumulative improvements in two tool types of differing complexity. Both tool types increased in efficacy across experimental generations, but teaching only provided an advantage for the more complex tools. Moreover, while the simple tools tended to converge on a common design, the more complex tools maintained a diversity of designs. These findings indicate that the emergence of cumulative culture is not strictly dependent on, but may generate selection for, teaching. As reliance on increasingly complex tools grew, so too would selection for teaching, facilitating the increasingly open-ended evolution of cultural artefacts.

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 Analogy as the core of cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Olivia Brand ◽  
Alex Mesoudi ◽  
Paul Smaldino
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Cognitive Tools ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
Cognition And Culture ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Analogies map novel concepts onto familiar concepts, making them essential for perception, reasoning, and communication. We argue that analogy-building served a critical role in the evolution of cumulative culture, by allowing humans to learn and transmit complex behavioural sequences that would otherwise be too cognitively demanding or opaque to acquire. The emergence of a protolanguage consisting of simple labels would have provided early humans with the cognitive tools to build explicit analogies and to communicate them to others. This focus on analogy-building can shed new light on the coevolution of cognition and culture, and addresses recent calls for better integration of the field of cultural evolution with cognitive science.

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