ArticleScience advances2022
Technical reasoning bolsters cumulative technological culture through convergent transformations.
Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Simultaneous real-time EEG-fMRI neurofeedback: A systematic review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Pooled it
- Article
- The technical-reasoning network is recruited when people observe others make or teach how to make tools: An fMRI study.iScience · 2025Article
- Human culture is uniquely open-ended rather than uniquely cumulative.Nature human behaviour · 2025Review
- Cultural attraction in pottery practice: Group-specific shape transformations by potters from three communities.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Cognitive Archeology and the Attentional System: An Evolutionary Mismatch for the GenusJournal of Intelligence · 2023Article
- Autism-Related Differences in Cortical Activation When Observing, Producing, and Imitating Communicative Gestures: An fNIRS Study.Brain sciences · 2023Article
- Eating Russula mushrooms is a matter of semantic knowledge. Comment on "The elicitation of affordance depends on conceptual attributes: evidence from a virtual reality study" by Lai et al. (2023).Experimental brain research · 2023Article
- fNIRS-Based Differences in Cortical Activation during Tool Use, Pantomimed Actions, and Meaningless Actions between Children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).Brain sciences · 2023Article
- The Area Prostriata may play a role in technical reasoning.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2022Article
- The cortical thickness of the area PF of the left inferior parietal cortex mediates technical-reasoning skills.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Understanding the evolution of human technology is key to solving the mystery of our origins. Current theories propose that technology evolved through the accumulation of modifications that were mostly transmitted between individuals by blind copying and the selective retention of advantageous variations. An alternative account is that high-fidelity transmission in the context of cumulative technological culture is supported by technical reasoning, which is a reconstruction mechanism that allows individuals to converge to optimal solutions. We tested these two competing hypotheses with a microsociety experiment, in which participants had to optimize a physical system in partial- and degraded-information transmission conditions. Our results indicated an improvement of the system over generations, which was accompanied by an increased understanding of it. The solutions produced tended to progressively converge over generations. These findings show that technical reasoning can bolster high-fidelity transmission through convergent transformations, which highlights its role in the cultural evolution of technology.
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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.