Abstract
In humans, cultural evolutionary processes are capable of shaping our cognition, because the conceptual tools we learn from others enable mental feats which otherwise would be beyond our capabilities. This is possible because human culture supports the intergenerational accumulation of skills and knowledge, such that later generations can benefit from the experience and exploration efforts of their predecessors. However, it remains unclear how exactly human social transmission supports the accumulation of advantageous traits, and why we see little evidence of this in the natural behavior of other species. Thus, it is difficult to know whether the cognitive abilities of other animals might be similarly scaffolded by processes of cultural evolution. In this article, I discuss how experimental studies of cultural evolution have contributed to our understanding of human cumulative culture, as well as some of the limitations of these approaches. I also discuss how similar research designs can be used to evaluate the potential for cumulative culture in other species. Such research may be able to clarify what distinguishes human cumulative culture from related phenomena in nonhumans, shedding light on the issue of whether other species also have the potential to develop cognitive capacities that are outcomes of cultural evolution.
Highlights
There are many widely accepted examples of cultural transmission in nonhumans, so does it follow that some of the cognitive capacities of these animals might be influenced in nontrivial ways by cultural inputs? Or is human cultural evolution fundamentally different, and potentially capable of supporting the transmission of cognitive tools in ways that nonhuman cultural evolution cannot? In the current article, I examine how key features of human cultural evolution can be captured in experimental research designs, and I describe how such experimental methods can be used to shed light on what might distinguish human cultural evolution from similar phenomena in nonhumans
If it is true that cumulative culture-like effects in nonhumans are restricted to cases implicating one or other of these two routes to transmission fidelity, we are unlikely to observe these supporting the development of cognitive skill
If cumulative culture in humans relies heavily on explicitly metacognitive social learning (Heyes, 2018b), with learners actively seeking out relevant information based on their inferences and assumptions about others’ knowledge, this considerably broadens out the behavioral contexts for which increases in functionality could be observed over generations of social transmission, potentially opening up the possibility of the cultural evolution of more abstract cognitive functions
Summary
In considering the role of cultural evolution in shaping cognition, it is important to consider the scope and constraints of any such effects, including whether these are restricted to humans alone. There are many widely accepted examples of cultural transmission in nonhumans, so does it follow that some of the cognitive capacities of these animals might be influenced in nontrivial ways by cultural inputs? Is human cultural evolution fundamentally different, and potentially capable of supporting the transmission of cognitive tools in ways that nonhuman cultural evolution cannot? It is relatively uncontroversial to claim that at least some aspects of the cognition of modern humans are largely a consequence of cultural evolution, built up over generations of social transmission, rather than biological predispositions shaped primarily by genetic control. Some controversy remains over the extent to which cultural evolution might account for human capacities for theory of mind (e.g., compare Heyes & Frith’s, 2014, cultural evolutionary account, with claims of false belief attribution in infancy, for example, Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005). We are by no means the only species that exhibits cultural traditions (e.g., Whiten et al, 1999), so does this learning build and bolster cognitive capabilities in these animals too, as well as influencing their (more readily observable) behavioral traits?
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