On 27 November, the GRCDI had the pleasure of hosting Professor Christine Caldwell from the University of Stirling for a fascinating lecture exploring the cognitive challenges in human cumulative cultural evolution. This hybrid event brought together staff and postgraduate students from across the University, alongside GRCDI members joining from around the world, creating a lively and interdisciplinary audience for an afternoon of rich discussion.
Professor Caldwell presented a series of studies carried out within her research group, investigating relationships between cognitive development and behaviours associated with both acquiring and passing on social information. In most of their experimental work they have endeavoured to capture the kinds of challenges likely to be present in real world cases of cumulative cultural evolution in humans. They find that there are indeed significant cognitive challenges associated with effective accumulation of knowledge via social learning, illustrated by striking differences in performance between children from different age groups, with competency continuing to build relatively late into childhood. This late development supports the view that human cultural transmission may implicate advanced cognitive abilities unavailable to other species. However, the cognitive resources required may not be specific to cultural transmission, likely including general-purpose cognitive abilities as well as broader socio-cognitive skills used in other contexts such as communication and cooperation.