Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture

François Osiurak (), Salomé Lasserre, Julie Arbanti, Joël Brogniart, Alexandre Bluet, Jordan Navarro and Emanuelle Reynaud
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François Osiurak: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Salomé Lasserre: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Julie Arbanti: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Joël Brogniart: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Alexandre Bluet: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Jordan Navarro: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon
Emanuelle Reynaud: Laboratoire d’Étude des Mécanismes Cognitifs, Université de Lyon

Nature Human Behaviour, 2021, vol. 5, issue 12, 1643-1651

Abstract: Abstract Human technology has evolved in an unparalleled way, allowing us to expand across the globe. One fascinating question is, how do we understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon, which is known as cumulative technological culture (CTC)? The dominant view posits that CTC results from our unique ability to learn from each other. The cultural niche hypothesis even minimizes the involvement of non-social cognitive skills in the emergence of CTC, claiming that technologies can be optimized without us understanding how they work, but simply through the retention of small improvements over generations. Here we conduct a partial replication of the experimental study of Derex et al. (Nature Human Behaviour, 2019) and show that the improvement of a physical system over generations is accompanied by an increased understanding of it. These findings indicate that technical-reasoning skills (non-social cognitive skills) are important in the acquisition, understanding and improvement of technical content—that is, specific to the technological form of cumulative culture—thereby making social learning a salient source of technical inspiration.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01159-9

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