Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Population size has been proposed to promote cumulative culture in humans. Experimental evidence from adult humanssuggests that this may be due to the potential for combining beneficial information from multiple models. However, it ispossible that such combinatory social learning requires cognitive capacities restricted to adult humans. In our task, childrenaged 5-10 years watched two models consecutively search a 3x3 grid for rewards. Models revealed different correct andincorrect reward locations. This information could be used by the child to maximise their own score on the same task. Wewere interested in childrens ability to select rewarded locations, and avoid unrewarded ones, revealed by both models. Wealso manipulated the spatial and temporal displacement of the information available. Childrens performance on the taskimproved with age. Most children could outperform the mean score of the two models, but outperforming the combinedscore occurred in only limited circumstances.