Adaptive strategies for cumulative cultural learning

The demographic and ecological success of our species is frequently attributed to our capacity for cumulative culture. However, it is not yet known how humans combine social and asocial learning to generate effective strategies for learning in a cumulative cultural context. Here we explore how cumulative culture influences the relative merits of various pure and conditional learning strategies, including pure asocial and social learning, critical social learning, conditional social learning and individual refiner strategies. We replicate the Rogers' paradox in the cumulative setting. However, our analysis suggests that strategies that resolved Rogers' paradox in a non-cumulative setting may not necessarily evolve in a cumulative setting, thus different strategies will optimize cumulative and non-cumulative cultural learning.

► We explore how cumulative culture influences the evolution of learning strategies.
► We find that Roger's paradox still applies in the cumulative setting.
► Results from models of non-cumulative culture may not apply in cumulative culture.
► Most strategies learn a surprisingly small amount of their behavior socially.
► Distribution and quality of solutions depends critically on the learning strategy.