Department of Primatology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.
Proc Biol Sci. 2010 Nov 7;277(1698):3363-72. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0705. Epub 2010 Jun 14.
Many animals are known to learn socially, i.e. they are able to acquire new behaviours by using information from other individuals. Researchers distinguish between a number of different social-learning mechanisms such as imitation and social enhancement. Social enhancement is a simple form of social learning that is among the most widespread in animals. However, unlike imitation, it is debated whether social enhancement can create cultural traditions. Based on a recent study on capuchin monkeys, we developed an agent-based model to test the hypotheses that (i) social enhancement can create and maintain stable traditions and (ii) social enhancement can create cultural conformity. Our results supported both hypotheses. A key factor that led to the creation of cultural conformity and traditions was the repeated interaction of individual reinforcement and social enhancement learning. This result emphasizes that the emergence of cultural conformity does not necessarily require cognitively complex mechanisms such as 'copying the majority' or group norms. In addition, we observed that social enhancement can create learning dynamics similar to a 'copy when uncertain' learning strategy. Results from additional analyses also point to situations that should favour the evolution of learning mechanisms more sophisticated than social enhancement.
许多动物被认为具有社会学习能力，也就是说，它们能够通过利用其他个体的信息来获得新的行为。研究人员区分了几种不同的社会学习机制，如模仿和社会增强。社会增强是一种简单的社会学习形式，在动物中最为普遍。然而，与模仿不同，关于社会增强是否能创造文化传统存在争议。基于最近对卷尾猴的一项研究，我们开发了一个基于代理的模型来检验以下假设：（i）社会增强可以创造和维持稳定的传统；（ii）社会增强可以创造文化趋同。我们的结果支持了这两个假设。导致文化趋同和传统形成的一个关键因素是个体强化和社会增强学习的重复相互作用。这一结果强调了文化趋同的出现并不一定需要认知复杂的机制，如“复制多数”或群体规范。此外，我们还观察到，社会增强可以创造类似于“不确定时复制”学习策略的学习动态。额外分析的结果也指出了一些情况，这些情况应该有利于比社会增强更复杂的学习机制的进化。
