Centro Asociado de Madrid, UNED, Centro Andrés Manjón, C/Francos Rodríguez 77, 28039 Madrid, Spain.
Departamento de Producción Animal, ETS Ingenieros Agrónomos, UPM, Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
J Theor Biol. 2014 Apr 21;347:74-83. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.01.006. Epub 2014 Jan 14.
In humans, cultural transmission occurs usually by cumulative inheritance, generating complex adaptive behavioral features. Cumulative culture requires key psychological processes (fundamentally imitation and teaching) that are absent or impoverished in non-human primates. In this paper we analyze the role that teaching has played in human cumulative cultural evolution. We assume that a system of cumulative culture generates increasingly adaptive behaviors, that are also more complex and difficult to imitate. Our thesis is that, as cultural traits become more complex, cumulative cultural transmission requires teaching to ensure accurate transmission from one generation to the next. In an increasingly complex cultural environment, we consider that individuals commit errors in imitation. We develop a model of cumulative cultural evolution in a changing environment and show that these errors hamper the process of cultural accumulation. We also show that a system of teaching between parents and offspring that increases the fidelity of imitation unblocks the accumulation and becomes adaptive whenever the gain in fitness compensates the cost of teaching.
在人类中，文化传播通常通过累积遗传发生，产生复杂的适应性行为特征。累积文化需要关键的心理过程（从根本上说是模仿和教学），而这些过程在非人类灵长类动物中是缺失或匮乏的。在本文中，我们分析了教学在人类累积文化进化中所扮演的角色。我们假设，一个累积文化系统会产生越来越适应环境的行为，这些行为也会变得更加复杂和难以模仿。我们的论点是，随着文化特征变得更加复杂，累积文化传播需要教学来确保从上一代到下一代的准确传递。在一个日益复杂的文化环境中，我们认为个体在模仿过程中会犯错误。我们在不断变化的环境中建立了一个累积文化进化模型，并表明这些错误会阻碍文化积累的过程。我们还表明，父母和子女之间的教学系统可以提高模仿的保真度，从而在适应度增益补偿教学成本时，解除积累并变得适应。
