Limitations to the cultural ratchet effect in young children

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Volumn 126, Issue , 2014, Pages 152-160

  Tennie, Claudio ^a,b   Walter, Victoria ^a   Gampe, Anja ^a,c   Carpenter, Malinda ^a,d   Tomasello, Michael ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY   (Germany)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^c UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH   (Switzerland)

^d UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Accumulation; Cultural evolution; Diffusion chain; Imitation; Ratchet effect; Social learning

Indexed keywords

CHILD BEHAVIOR; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; FEMALE; HUMAN; LEARNING; MALE; PRESCHOOL CHILD; PROBLEM SOLVING; PSYCHOLOGY; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; TASK PERFORMANCE;

CHILD BEHAVIOR; CHILD, PRESCHOOL; CULTURE; FEMALE; HUMANS; LEARNING; MALE; PROBLEM SOLVING; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; TASK PERFORMANCE AND ANALYSIS;

EID: 84902500319     PISSN: 00220965     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.04.006     Document Type: Article

References (25)

1. Bangerter A. Transformation between scientific and social representations of conception: The method of serial reproduction. British Journal of Social Psychology 2000, 39:521-535.
2. Caldwell C.A., Millen A.E. Studying cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 2008, 363:3529-3539.
3. Caldwell C.A., Millen A.E. Social learning mechanisms and cumulative cultural evolution: Is imitation necessary?. Psychological Science 2009, 20:1478-1483.
4. Csibra G., Gergely G. Social learning and social cognition: The case for pedagogy. Processes of change in brain and cognitive development: Attention and performance XXI 2006, 249-274. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Y. Munakata, M.H. Johnson (Eds.).
5. Dean L.G., Vale G.L., Laland K.N., Flynn E., Kendal R.L. Human cumulative culture: A comparative perspective. Biological Reviews 2014, 89:284-301.
6. Flynn E. Investigating children as cultural magnets: Do young children transmit redundant information along diffusion chains?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 2008, 363:3541-3551.
7. Flynn E., Whiten A. Cultural transmission of tool use in young children: A diffusion chain study. Social Development 2008, 17:699-718.
8. Haun D.B.M., Tomasello M. Conformity to peer pressure in preschool children. Child Development 2011, 82:1759-1767.
9. Hopper L.M., Flynn E.G., Wood L.A.N., Whiten A. Observational learning of tool use in children: Investigating cultural spread through diffusion chains and learning mechanisms through ghost displays. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 2010, 106:82-97.
10. Horner V., Whiten A., Flynn E., de Waal F.B.M. Faithful replication of foraging techniques along cultural transmission chains by chimpanzees and children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2006, 103:13878-13883.
11. Kirby S., Cornish H., Smith K. Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2008, 105:10681-10686.
12. Legare, C. H., Whitehouse, H., Herrmann, P., & Wen, N. (2014). Imitative foundations of cultural learning. Unpublished manuscript. http://www.ccdlab.net/.
13. Lyons D.E., Young A.G., Keil F.C. The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2007, 104:19751-19756.
14. McGuigan N., Graham M. Cultural transmission of irrelevant tool actions in diffusion chains of 3- and 5-year-old children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology 2009, 7:561-577.
15. Mesoudi A., Whiten A. The hierarchical transformation of event knowledge in human cultural transmission. Journal of Cognition and Culture 2004, 4:1-24.
16. Nielsen M., Blank C. Imitation in young children: When who gets copied is more important than what gets copied. Developmental Psychology 2011, 47:1050-1053.
17. Nielsen M., Cucchiaro J., Mohamedally J. When the transmission of culture is child's play. PLoS One 2012, 7:e34066.
18. Nielsen M., Simcock G., Jenkins L. The effect of social engagement on 24-month-olds' imitation from live and televised models. Developmental Science 2008, 11:722-731.
19. Nielsen M., Tomaselli K. Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman children and the origins of human cultural cognition. Psychological Science 2010, 21:729-736.
20. Over H., Carpenter M. Priming third-party ostracism increases affiliative imitation in children. Developmental Science 2009, 12:F1-F8.
21. Over H., Carpenter M. Putting the social into social learning: Explaining both selectivity and fidelity in children's copying behavior. Journal of Comparative Psychology 2012, 126:182-192.
22. Tennie C., Call J., Tomasello M. Ratcheting up the ratchet: On the evolution of cumulative culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 2009, 364:2405-2415.
23. Tomasello M. The cultural origins of human cognition 1999, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
24. Tomasello M., Kruger A.C., Ratner H.H. Cultural learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1993, 16:495-511.
25. Wood L.A., Kendal R.L., Flynn E.G. Whom do children copy? Model-based biases in social learning. Developmental Review 2013, 33:341-356.