Culture-Gene Coevolutionary Theory and Children’s Selective Social Learning

Abstract

Human cognition is unique in the degree to which it is shaped by social learning and cumulative cultural evolution. To learn efficiently children cannot just passively absorb all the information others provide, they need to be sensitive to when, if, and who is a good source of information. Several lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry are probing the cognitive mechanisms that underlie humans’ flair for cultural learning. Among these, Culture-Gene Coevolutionary (CGC) theory focuses on the evolutionary dynamics our emerging cultural species faced and the learning biases that likely resulted from these selection pressures. CGC theory specifies a suite of hypotheses about which learning biases most effectively extract adaptive information. Here we review the intersection between these and developmental psychologists’ recent empirical insights into children’s social learning. We focus on two types of biases: ‘relative model biases’ which help learners identify which models are likely to possess information that is applicable for them given the particular social groups to which they belong; and ‘absolute model biases’ which help learners select those models most likely to possess objectively better information. In light of recent developmental findings we advocate CGC theory as a useful framework for organizing, understanding, and generating research on children’s selective social learning.

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