eprintid: 49965 rev_number: 10 eprint_status: archive userid: 1482 importid: 105 dir: disk0/00/04/99/65 datestamp: 2024-12-18 09:48:51 lastmod: 2024-12-18 09:49:19 status_changed: 2024-12-18 09:48:51 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Derex, Maxime creators_name: Edmiston, Pierce creators_name: Lupyan, Gary creators_name: Mesoudi, Alex creators_idrefppn: 146232739 creators_idrefppn: 124045537 creators_idrefppn: 157498107 creators_halaffid: 1002422;506116;441569 title: Trade-offs, control conditions, and alternative designs in the experimental study of cultural evolution ispublished: pub subjects: subjects_ECO abstract: Although the theoretical foundations of the modern field of cultural evolution have been in place for over 50 y, laboratory experiments specifically designed to test cultural evolutionary theory have only existed for the last two decades. Here, we review the main experimental designs used in the field of cultural evolution, as well as major findings related to the generation of cultural variation, content- and model-based biases, cumulative cultural evolution, and nonhuman culture. We then identify methodological advances that demonstrate the iterative improvement of cultural evolution experimental methods. Finally, we focus on one common critique of cultural evolution experiments, the appropriate individual learning control condition needed to demonstrate cumulative culture, and present an original experimental investigation relevant to this critique. Participants completed a combinatorial innovation task allowing for cumulative improvement over time in one of four commonly used experimental designs/conditions: social learners in chains, social learners in groups, individual learners experiencing an extended session lasting the same accumulated time as an entire chain or group, and individual learners experiencing repeated sessions adding up to the same total time. We found that repeated individual learning resulted in superior performance to any other condition. We discuss these findings in light of the relevance of the specific criticism of previous experimental studies that purport to have demonstrated cumulative culture. We also use our findings to discuss the broad trade-offs that participants face when learning individually and socially in different contexts, including variable acquisition costs, redundancy of effort in groups, and cognitive and motivational fatigue. date: 2024-11-18 date_type: published publisher: National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America id_number: 10.1073/pnas.2322886121 official_url: http://tse-fr.eu/pub/129985 faculty: tse divisions: tse language: en has_fulltext: TRUE doi: 10.1073/pnas.2322886121 view_date_year: 2024 full_text_status: restricted publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America volume: vol. 121 number: n° 48 refereed: TRUE issn: 0027-8424 oai_identifier: oai:tse-fr.eu:129985 harvester_local_overwrite: pending harvester_local_overwrite: creators_idrefppn harvester_local_overwrite: note harvester_local_overwrite: issn harvester_local_overwrite: publication harvester_local_overwrite: creators_halaffid harvester_local_overwrite: publisher harvester_local_overwrite: number harvester_local_overwrite: volume harvester_local_overwrite: date harvester_local_overwrite: hal_id harvester_local_overwrite: hal_version harvester_local_overwrite: hal_url harvester_local_overwrite: hal_passwd oai_lastmod: 2024-12-16T10:39:05Z oai_set: tse site: ut1 hal_id: hal-04845101 hal_passwd: 0yyju@02 hal_version: 1 hal_url: https://hal.science/hal-04845101 citation: Derex, Maxime , Edmiston, Pierce, Lupyan, Gary and Mesoudi, Alex (2024) Trade-offs, control conditions, and alternative designs in the experimental study of cultural evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 121 (n° 48). document_url: https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/49965/1/49965_derex.pdf