Imagine a secret recipe that gets passed down from generation to generation. The traditional belief is that people simply copy the steps without fully understanding the reasons behind them. But is this really true? In this fascinating study, scientists delve into the world of tool use to investigate whether copying or reasoning plays a bigger role in our technological evolution. Surprisingly, the evidence challenges the popular notion of mindlessly copying actions. It suggests that in order to replicate someone else’s tool-use actions, we actually need to understand the underlying cause and effect. This raises intriguing questions about the so-called ‘copying ability’ that has long been accepted as a fundamental aspect of human culture. Want to dig deeper into this mind-bending research? Click the link below to explore the full article!

The dominant view of cumulative technological culture suggests that high-fidelity transmission rests upon a high-fidelity copying ability, which allows individuals to reproduce the tool-use actions performed by others without needing to understand them (i.e., without causal reasoning). The opposition between copying versus reasoning is well accepted but with little supporting evidence. In this article, we investigate this distinction by examining the cognitive science literature on tool use. Evidence indicates that the ability to reproduce others’ tool-use actions requires causal understanding, which questions the copying versus reasoning distinction and the cognitive reality of the so-called copying ability.

Read Full Article (External Site)