Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JP, United Kingdom; email:
Annu Rev Psychol. 2017 Jan 3;68:129-154. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044108.
A few decades ago, we knew next to nothing about the behavior of our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, but long-term field studies have since revealed an undreamed-of richness in the diversity of their cultural traditions across Africa. These discoveries have been complemented by a substantial suite of experimental studies, now bridging to the wild through field experiments. These field and experimental studies, particularly those in which direct chimpanzee-child comparisons have been made, delineate a growing set of commonalities between the phenomena of social learning and culture in the lives of chimpanzees and humans. These commonalities in social learning inform our understanding of the evolutionary roots of the cultural propensities the species share. At the same time, such comparisons throw into clearer relief the unique features of the distinctive human capacity for cumulative cultural evolution, and new research has begun to probe the key psychological attributes that may explain it.
几十年前，我们对与人类关系最密切的动物——黑猩猩的行为几乎一无所知，但长期的野外研究揭示了它们在非洲各地文化传统多样性方面的丰富程度，这是我们之前难以想象的。这些发现得到了大量实验研究的补充，现在通过野外实验与野外研究联系起来。这些野外和实验研究，特别是那些进行了直接的黑猩猩与儿童比较的研究，描绘了在黑猩猩和人类的生活中，社会学习和文化现象之间越来越多的共同之处。这些社会学习方面的共性使我们能够更好地理解物种之间共享的文化倾向的进化根源。与此同时，这些比较更清楚地突出了人类独特的、累积的文化进化能力的独特特征，新的研究已经开始探讨可能解释这种能力的关键心理特征。
