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Restricted Access to Working Memory Does Not Prevent Cumulative Score Improvement in a Cultural Evolution Task
Juliet Dunstone1, Mark Atkinson2, Elizabeth Renner3
1Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
|March 25, 2022
Summary
Human cumulative culture may not solely rely on explicit metacognition. Taxing working memory (WM) slightly impeded performance on a cultural evolution task but did not prevent cumulative score improvement.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Human cumulative culture is theorized to depend on explicit, system-2, metacognitive processes.
- Working memory (WM) is crucial for complex cognitive tasks and metacognition.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if working memory access is necessary for cumulative cultural evolution.
- To determine if restricting WM impacts performance in cultural evolution and metacognitive tasks.
Main Methods:
- A dual-task paradigm was used to restrict working memory access in 247 adult participants.
- Participants completed a grid search task (cultural evolution simulation) or a metacognitive monitoring task under WM load or control conditions.
Main Results:
- Restricting working memory slightly impeded performance on the cultural evolution task but did not prevent cumulative score improvement.
- Scores plateaued without reaching maximum, and metacognitive efficiency was low with no dual-task interference.
- More errors were observed under WM load, but simulation showed similar cumulative score improvement across conditions.
Conclusions:
- Working memory load does not prevent, but slightly impedes, cumulative score improvement in this task.
- No evidence was found that WM manipulation impacted explicit metacognition or supported the explicit metacognition theory of cumulative culture.
- The study offers empirical approaches for testing theories of cumulative culture and metacognition.
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