Data from: Social learners require process information to outperform individual learners

Humans exhibit a rich and complex material culture with no equivalent in
animals. Also, social learning, a crucial requirement for culture, is
particularly developed in humans and provides a means to accumulate
knowledge over time and to develop advanced technologies. However, the
type of social learning required for the evolution of this complex
material culture is still debated. Here, using a complex and opaque
virtual task, the efficiency of individual learning and two types of
social learning (product-copying and process-copying) were compared. We
found that (1) individuals from process-copying groups outperformed
individuals from product-copying groups or individual learners, whereas
access to product information was not a sufficient condition for providing
an advantage to social learners compared to individual learners; (2)
social learning did not seem to affect the exploration of the fitness
landscape; (3) social learning led to strong within-group convergence and
also to between-group convergence and (4) individuals used widely variable
social learning strategies. The implications of these results for
cumulative culture evolution are discussed.