Data from: Social learning and the replication process: an experimental investigation

Human cultural traits typically result from a gradual process that has been described as analogous to biological evolution. This observation has led pioneering scholars to draw inspiration from population genetics to develop a rigorous and successful theoretical framework of cultural evolution. Social learning, the mechanism allowing information to be transmitted between individuals, has thus been described as a simple replication mechanism. Although useful, the extent to which this idealization appropriately describes the actual social learning events has not been carefully assessed. Here, we used a specifically developed computer task to evaluate (i) the extent to which social learning leads to the replication of an observed behaviour and (ii) the consequences it has for fitness landscape exploration. Our results show that social learning does not lead to a dichotomous choice between disregarding and replicating social information. Rather, it appeared that individuals combine and transform information coming from multiple sources to produce new solutions. As a consequence, landscape exploration was promoted by the use of social information. These results invite us to rethink the way social learning is commonly modelled and could question the validity of predictions coming from models considering this process as replicative.

人类文化特质通常源自一个被描述为类似生物演化的渐进过程。这一观察结论促使先驱学者从群体遗传学（population genetics）中汲取灵感，构建了一套严谨且成熟的文化演化理论框架。社会学习作为实现个体间信息传递的机制，因此被视作一种简单的复制机制。尽管该理想化模型具备实用价值，但它能否准确刻画真实的社会学习事件，尚未得到充分严谨的评估。本研究通过一款定制开发的计算机任务，开展了两项评估：一是社会学习在多大程度上会导致观测行为的复制；二是社会学习对适应度景观（fitness landscape）探索的影响。研究结果表明，社会学习并非仅在“忽略社会信息”与“复制社会信息”之间进行二元选择。恰恰相反，个体实则会整合并转化来自多源的信息，以生成全新的解决方案。因此，社会信息的使用能够推动适应度景观的探索进程。上述研究结果促使我们重新审视社会学习的通用建模范式，同时也对那些将社会学习视为复制过程的模型所做出的预测的有效性提出了质疑。