Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures

Children are skilful at acquiring tool-using skills by faithfully copying relevant and irrelevant actions performed by others, but poor at innovating tools to solve problems. Five- to twelve-year-old urban French and rural Serbian children (N = 208) were exposed to a Hook task; a jar containing a re...

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Main Authors: Aurélien Frick, Fabrice Clément, Thibaud Gruber
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Royal Society 2017-01-01
Series:Royal Society Open Science
Subjects:
Online Access:https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.170367
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spelling doaj-98547f35e9c440c69bae4f096bd085d92020-11-25T03:41:24ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032017-01-0141210.1098/rsos.170367170367Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across culturesAurélien FrickFabrice ClémentThibaud GruberChildren are skilful at acquiring tool-using skills by faithfully copying relevant and irrelevant actions performed by others, but poor at innovating tools to solve problems. Five- to twelve-year-old urban French and rural Serbian children (N = 208) were exposed to a Hook task; a jar containing a reward in a bucket and a pipe cleaner as potential recovering tool material. In both countries, few children under the age of 10 made a hook from the pipe cleaner to retrieve the reward on their own. However, from five onward, the majority of unsuccessful children succeeded after seeing an adult model manufacturing a hook without completing the task. Additionally, a third of the children who observed a similar demonstration including an irrelevant action performed with a second object, a string, replicated this meaningless action. Children's difficulty with innovation and early capacity for overimitation thus do not depend on socio-economic background. Strikingly, we document a sex difference in overimitation across cultures, with boys engaging more in overimitation than girls, a finding that may result from differences regarding explorative tool-related behaviour. This male-biased sex effect sheds new light on our understanding of overimitation, and more generally, on how human tool culture evolved.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.170367overimitationinnovationtool-usecross-culturalsex differencescumulative culture
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Aurélien Frick
Fabrice Clément
Thibaud Gruber
spellingShingle Aurélien Frick
Fabrice Clément
Thibaud Gruber
Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
Royal Society Open Science
overimitation
innovation
tool-use
cross-cultural
sex differences
cumulative culture
author_facet Aurélien Frick
Fabrice Clément
Thibaud Gruber
author_sort Aurélien Frick
title Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
title_short Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
title_full Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
title_fullStr Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
title_full_unstemmed Evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
title_sort evidence for a sex effect during overimitation: boys copy irrelevant modelled actions more than girls across cultures
publisher The Royal Society
series Royal Society Open Science
issn 2054-5703
publishDate 2017-01-01
description Children are skilful at acquiring tool-using skills by faithfully copying relevant and irrelevant actions performed by others, but poor at innovating tools to solve problems. Five- to twelve-year-old urban French and rural Serbian children (N = 208) were exposed to a Hook task; a jar containing a reward in a bucket and a pipe cleaner as potential recovering tool material. In both countries, few children under the age of 10 made a hook from the pipe cleaner to retrieve the reward on their own. However, from five onward, the majority of unsuccessful children succeeded after seeing an adult model manufacturing a hook without completing the task. Additionally, a third of the children who observed a similar demonstration including an irrelevant action performed with a second object, a string, replicated this meaningless action. Children's difficulty with innovation and early capacity for overimitation thus do not depend on socio-economic background. Strikingly, we document a sex difference in overimitation across cultures, with boys engaging more in overimitation than girls, a finding that may result from differences regarding explorative tool-related behaviour. This male-biased sex effect sheds new light on our understanding of overimitation, and more generally, on how human tool culture evolved.
topic overimitation
innovation
tool-use
cross-cultural
sex differences
cumulative culture
url https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.170367
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