Who knows what they know? An experimental investigation into the impact of explicit metacognition on cumulative cultural evolution

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying human cumulative culture using a novel testing paradigm. Specifically, it experimentally tests the proposal that explicit, metacognitive processes are a requisite capacity for cumulative cultural evolution due to their facilitation of selective copying strategies. This proposal is referred to as the Explicitly Metacognitive Cumulative Culture hypothesis (EMCC, chapter 1). The experimental paradigm used throughout the four studies presented in this thesis aimed to restrict access to explicit, metacognitive processes via the use of dual-tasks. In chapter 2 a series of studies examined the role of task-switching in simple search tasks that required flexible strategies in order to be solved successfully. The final study in chapter 2 also looked at the impact of the same task-switching task on metacognitive monitoring. In chapter 3 the impact of working-memory restriction on selective copying strategies and cumulative score improvement, as well as metacognitive monitoring, was examined. Overall the findings from this thesis indicate that working memory resources may play a role in facilitating efficient, selective copying strategies. Optimal use of selective strategies resulted in ratcheting over generations, but the addition of concurrent tasks reduced this ratcheting. Metacognitive monitoring did not appear to be affected by a concurrent dual-task. However, there was some indication that metacognitive control strategies could play a role in selective copying, which may not have been tapped by the metacognitive monitoring task. The novel methods used throughout this thesis have laid important groundwork for future empirical testing of this hypothesis, and the final chapter considers the new research opportunities opened up by these studies.