Abstract
It has been hypothesized that opportunities for social learning affect the size and complexity of the adult skill set of birds and mammals, their learning ability, and thus ultimately also their innovation frequency. To test these predictions we compared rates of social learning, rates of independent exploration (independent learning) and innovation repertoires between individuals of a highly sociable population of Pongo abelii at Suaq Balimbing and a less sociable population of Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii at Tuanan. Suaq immatures showed significantly higher rates of peering, even after controlling for differences in association time and diet complexity, implying that they make disproportionally greater use of their increased opportunities for social learning. As predicted, we found that immatures and adults at Suaq also showed significantly higher rates of exploratory behaviour. The difference between the individuals of the two popuations remained when controlling for association time, suggesting persistent developmental effects, intrinsic differences, or both. Accordingly, Suaq animals had a larger set of learned skills and a higher mean dietary complexity. Our findings show that population level sociability, individual rates of exploration and population-wide repertoires of innovations are positively linked, as predicted.
Highlights
Cultural effects on cognitive development in humans have been documented for a long time and have reached the status of common knowledge: social inputs during childhood have a strong effect on the development of the cognitive skill set[1]
It is generally accepted that an important part of the explanation of these effects is that social learning is more efficient than independent learning
The net benefit per unit brain tissue is higher in lineages with social learning and it should be easier for selection to favour the evolution of increased learning ability in species that rely on social learning compared to species that solely rely on independent learning[21]
Summary
Cultural effects on cognitive development in humans have been documented for a long time and have reached the status of common knowledge: social inputs during childhood have a strong effect on the development of the cognitive skill set[1]. Studies on institutionalized children have shown that children raised with limited social inputs show deficits in a variety of domains, including language, social-emotional development and intelligence[2,3] These effects are evident in structural and functional changes in the brain[4,5]. The close links between the two learning mechanisms suggest that selection on social learning will automatically favour the evolution of the ability to learn independently This phenomenon is consistent with the cultural intelligence hypothesis, which predicts effects of opportunities for social learning on cognitive abilities, in both humans[29,30] and social animals more generally[21,31]. Based on the cognitive overlap between the two learning mechanisms, increased opportunities for social learning during development will lead to an enhanced independent learning ability. Populations containing more opportunities for social learning should exhibit overall larger and more complex repertoires of learned skills compared to populations with fewer opportunities
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