Abstract

Culture evolution requires both modification and faithful replication of behaviour, thus it is essential to understand how individuals choose between social and asocial learning. In a quasi-experimental design, 3- and 5-year-olds (176), and adults (52) were presented individually with two novel artificial fruits, and told of the apparatus' relative difficulty (easy versus hard). Participants were asked if they wanted to attempt the task themselves or watch an experimenter attempt it first; and then had their preference either met or violated. A significant proportion of children and adults (74%) chose to learn socially. For children, this request was efficient, as observing a demonstration made them significantly quicker at the task than learning asocially. However, for 5-year-olds, children who selected asocial learning were also found to be highly efficient at the task, showing that by 5 years children are selective in choosing a learning strategy that is effective for them. Adults further evidenced this trend, and also showed selectivity based on task difficulty. This is the first study to examine the rates, performance outcomes and developmental trajectory of preferences in asocial and social learning, ultimately informing our understanding of innovation.

Highlights

  • Cultural evolution requires both accurate replication of cultural behaviours and products, as well as innovation, which improves those behaviours and products [1]

  • The benefit of our design was to measure both learning style preference and how this affected subsequent performance; this meant we had a quasi-experimental design in which learning preference subdivided participants into conditions for the performance measures

  • After an initial data collection (n 1⁄4 96), preliminary analyses were conducted and it was found that a substantial bias for social learning preference meant conditions needed to be filled-up further to allow proper tests of performance

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Summary

Introduction

Cultural evolution requires both accurate replication (high-fidelity transmission) of cultural behaviours and products, as well as innovation, which improves those behaviours and products [1]. We assess whether individuals preferred to learn socially or asocially, and whether this was related to age, task difficulty and order of presentation. For 3-yearolds, AF difficulty had no effect on learning preference; 70% asked to learn socially with the easy SB, and 68% with the hard PP, Fisher’s exact test, p 1⁄4 1.000.

Results
Conclusion

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