Journal
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 375, Issue 1805, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0442
Keywords
social learning; sequence learning; ritual; children; apes; ghost control
Categories
Funding
- Leakey Foundation
- National Science Foundation [BCS-0748717]
- ERC [648841]
- European Research Council (ERC) [648841] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Sequence learning underlies many uniquely human behaviours, from complex tool use to language and ritual. To understand whether this fundamental cognitive feature is uniquely derived in humans requires a comparative approach. We propose that the vicarious (but not individual) learning of novel arbitrary sequences represents a human cognitive specialization. To test this hypothesis, we compared the abilities of human children aged 3-5 years and orangutans to learn different types of arbitrary sequences (item-based and spatial-based). Sequences could be learned individually (by trial and error) or vicariously from a human (social) demonstrator or a computer (ghost control). We found that both children and orangutans recalled both types of sequence following trial-and-error learning; older children also learned both types of sequence following social and ghost demonstrations. Orangutans' success individually learning arbitrary sequences shows that their failure to do so in some vicarious learning conditions is not owing to general representational problems. These results provide new insights into some of the most persistent discontinuities observed between humans and other great apes in terms of complex tool use, language and ritual, all of which involve the cultural learning of novel arbitrary sequences. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.
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