Suganuma Hidezo, Naito Aoi, Katahira Kentaro, Kameda Tatsuya
Department of Social Psychology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
School of Environmental Society, Institute of Science Tokyo, 3-3-6 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0023, Japan.
Evol Hum Sci. 2025 Jan 20;7:e2. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2024.29. eCollection 2025.
Striking a balance between individual and social learning is one of the key capabilities that support adaptation under uncertainty. Although intergenerational transmission of information is ubiquitous, little is known about when and how newcomers switch from learning loyally from preceding models to exploring independently. Using a behavioural experiment, we investigated how social information available from a preceding demonstrator affects the timing of becoming independent and individual performance thereafter. Participants worked on a 30-armed bandit task for 100 trials. For the first 15 trials, participants simply observed the choices of a demonstrator who had accumulated more knowledge about the environment and passively received rewards from the demonstrator's choices. Thereafter, participants could switch to making independent choices at any time. We had three conditions differing in the social information available from the demonstrator: choice only, reward only or both. Results showed that both participants' strategies about when to stop observational learning and their behavioural patterns after independence depended on the available social information. Participants generally failed to make the best use of previously observed social information in their subsequent independent choices, suggesting the importance of direct communication beyond passive observation for better intergenerational transmission under uncertainty. Implications for cultural evolution are discussed.
在个体学习和社会学习之间取得平衡是支持在不确定性下适应的关键能力之一。尽管信息的代际传递无处不在，但对于新手何时以及如何从忠实地模仿前辈模式转向独立探索，我们却知之甚少。通过一项行为实验，我们研究了从先前示范者那里获得的社会信息如何影响独立的时机以及此后的个体表现。参与者在一个有30个选项的老虎机任务上进行了100次试验。在前15次试验中，参与者只是观察一个对环境积累了更多知识的示范者的选择，并被动地从示范者的选择中获得奖励。此后，参与者可以随时转向做出独立选择。我们设置了三种条件，示范者提供的社会信息各不相同：仅选择信息、仅奖励信息或两者皆有。结果表明，参与者关于何时停止观察学习的策略以及他们独立后的行为模式都取决于可用的社会信息。参与者在随后的独立选择中通常未能充分利用先前观察到的社会信息，这表明在不确定性下，除了被动观察之外，直接交流对于更好的代际传递至关重要。我们还讨论了其对文化进化的影响。
