Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture

Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature human behaviour Vol. 5; no. 12; pp. 1643 - 1651
Main Authors: Osiurak, François, Lasserre, Salomé, Arbanti, Julie, Brogniart, Joël, Bluet, Alexandre, Navarro, Jordan, Reynaud, Emanuelle
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01-12-2021
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Research
Subjects:
631/181/1403
631/477/2811
Adolescent
Behavior
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Cognitive science
Cognitive skills
Culture
Experimental Psychology
Female
Humans
Life Sciences
Male
Microeconomics
Neurosciences
Personality and Social Psychology
Problem Solving
Social cognitive skills
Social Learning
Social skills
Technology
Understanding
Young Adult
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Summary: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. In this micro-society study, Osiurak et al. show that the improvement of a physical system over generations is accompanied by an increased understanding of it, showing the role of technical reasoning in cumulative technological culture.
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ISSN:2397-3374
2397-3374
DOI:10.1038/s41562-021-01159-9