The "Molecular Genetics" of Social Learning: Skill Acquisition and Individual Differences in Learning

Summary

Although commonly glossed as social "transmission," the acquisition of knapping skills requires extended interactions between social inputs and individual practice better termed social "reproduction." Individual differences in learning aptitude during this process provide both the raw material for neurocognitive evolution and a potentially significant source of variability in the lithic products used to infer patterns and mechanisms of Paleolithic social learning. Here we present results from an experimental neuroarchaeology study of individual variation in handaxe-making skill acquisition. Naïve subjects received ~100 hrs training over several months, accompanied by regular behavioral, psychometric, and MRI assessments. To quantify skill, knapping performance was observed after every 10 hrs training and rated using a systematic rubric. We fit a multivariate model of artifact metrics to these ratings to derive an objective "quality" score and regressed quality scores on hours practice per subject to derive individual learning curves. The multivariate model identifies morphological correlates of knapping performance whereas parameters and values from individual learning curves can be directly compared with individual differences in brain structure and psychometric performance. Our results are an initial step toward better understanding the roles of skill acquisition and differential aptitude in generating lithic variability and shaping human neurocognitive evolution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21369