ArticleScience advances2020
Flexible learning, rather than inveterate innovation or copying, drives cumulative knowledge gain.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Payoff selectivity drives collective intelligence during dynamic resource tracking in humans.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Human prestige psychology can promote adaptive inequality in social influence.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Artificial intelligence self-efficacy and attitudes among nursing students: a multicenter network analysis of educational stratification.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Collective incentives reduce over-exploitation of social information in unconstrained human groups.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Multidisciplinary learning through collective performance favors decentralization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Capuchin monkeys learn to use information equally well from individual exploration and social demonstration.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- When does cultural evolution become cumulative culture? A case study of humpback whale song.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- What is the extent of a frequency-dependent social learning strategy space?Evolutionary human sciences · 2022Article
- Chimpanzees' behavioral flexibility, social tolerance, and use of tool-composites in a progressively challenging foraging problem.iScience · 2021Article
- Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture.PloS one · 2021Article
- Children and innovation: play, play objects and object play in cultural evolution.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Review
- Cultural adaptation is maximised when intelligent individuals rarely think for themselves.Evolutionary human sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Human technology is characterized by cumulative cultural knowledge gain, yet researchers have limited knowledge of the mix of copying and innovation that maximizes progress. Here, we analyze a unique large-scale dataset originating from collaborative online programming competitions to investigate, in a setting of real-world complexity, how individual differences in innovation, social-information use, and performance generate technological progress. We find that cumulative knowledge gain is primarily driven by pragmatists, willing to copy, innovate, explore, and take risks flexibly, rather than by pure innovators or habitual copiers. Our study also reveals a key role for prestige in information transfer.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.