Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

Skills and motivations underlying children's cumulative cultural learning: case not closed

Reindl, E; Gwillians, A; Dean, L; Kendal, RL; Tennie, C

Skills and motivations underlying children's cumulative cultural learning: case not closed Thumbnail


Authors

Profile Image

Dr Eva Reindl eva.reindl@durham.ac.uk
Post Doctoral Research Associate

A Gwillians

L Dean

C Tennie



Abstract

The breakthrough study of Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) claimed that imitation, teaching, and prosociality were crucial for cumulative cultural learning. None of their child participants solved the final stage of their puzzlebox without social support, but it was not directly tested whether the solution was beyond the reach of individual children. We provide this missing asocial control condition, showing that children can reach the final stage of the puzzlebox without social support. We interpret these findings in the light of current understanding of cumulative culture: there are currently conflicting definitions of cumulative culture, which we argue can lead to drastically different interpretations of (these) experimental results. We conclude that the Dean et al. (Science 335:1114–1118, 2012) puzzlebox fulfils a process-focused definition, but does not fulfil the (frequently used) product-focused definition. Accordingly, the precise role of social support for the apparent taxonomic distribution of cumulative culture and its ontogeny warrants further testing.

Citation

Reindl, E., Gwillians, A., Dean, L., Kendal, R., & Tennie, C. (2020). Skills and motivations underlying children's cumulative cultural learning: case not closed. Palgrave communications, 6, Article 106. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 28, 2020
Online Publication Date May 28, 2020
Publication Date May 28, 2020
Deposit Date May 4, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Palgrave communications.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 6
Article Number 106
DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0483-7

Files


Published Journal Article (850 Kb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





You might also like



Downloadable Citations