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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Online Access: | https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.170367 |
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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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