TY  - BOOK
AU  - Osiurak, Francois
AU  - Federico, Giovannie 
AU  -  Bryche, Chloe
AU  - Bluet, Alexandre 
AU  - Metaireau, Maximilien 
AU  - Tran, Eleonore 
AU  - Brogniart, Joel 
AU  - Claidiere, Nicolas 
TI  - The role of explanation in the evolution of technology
SN  - 0002-9556
KW  - causal understanding
KW  - cultural evolution
KW  - social learning
KW  - teaching
N1  - One way to pass on our own causal understanding about how a physical system works is to provide a verbal explanation about it, raising the question of the role of explanations in the transmission and evolution of technology. Here we address this question by conducting new analyses on the data collected in 3 previously published microsociety studies, in which participants organized into transmission chains had to improve a technology. In 3 of the 6 conditions reported, the participants were also asked to generate verbal explanations about how the technology works. In 1 of these conditions, these explanations were transmitted to the next participant. Our results indicated that the participants improved the technology and gained a better understanding of it over generations, although they were unable to elaborate on its hidden causes using scientific language. When the explanations were analyzed as instructions, we did find an increase in the quality of the explanations over generations, which was linked to participants' causal understanding. However, this increase had no direct impact on the transmission of the technical content. These findings open interesting avenues for future research on the role of explanation in the evolution of technology and raise the question of whether (explanation-based) teaching is an opportunity for the teacher to increase their own causal understanding

ER  -