Human cumulative culture has been suggested to depend on human-unique cognitive mechanisms, explaining its apparent absence in other species. We show that the potential for exhibiting cumulative culture depends on the cognitive abilities of the agents and the demands associated with using information generated by others’ activity. 154 children aged 3–6 years played a searching game (“Find the Treasure”), taking their turn after a puppet demonstrator. The puppet’s attempt revealed information about the contents of the locations searched, which could be exploited to target rewarded locations, and avoid unrewarded ones. Two conditions were presented, intended to capture realistic variation in the transience of the cues generated by another individual’s activity. In one condition, the puppet’s demonstration provided transient information – boxes were opened, seen to be rewarded or not, and then closed. In the other condition the puppet’s chosen boxes remained partially open, providing an enduring visible cue as to whether that location was rewarded. Children undertook three trials of varying demonstration success, and we used patterns of performance to infer the potential for improvement over multiple generations of transmission. In the Enduring Cues condition, children’s performance demonstrated the potential for cumulative culture. In contrast, in the Transient Information condition, only older children showed improved performances following higher success demonstrations and overall performance was not compatible with the possibility of improvements over generations of social transmission. We conclude that under certain conditions cumulative culture could occur in many species, but in a broader range of contexts in humans.

人类累积文化被认为依赖于人类独特的认知机制，这解释了其他物种中明显缺失的原因。我们表明，展示累积文化的潜力取决于代理人的认知能力以及与使用他人活动产生的信息相关的需求。154 名 3 至 6 岁的儿童玩了一个搜索游戏（“寻找宝藏”），轮到他们跟随一个木偶示威者。傀儡的尝试揭示了有关搜索位置内容的信息，这些信息可用于瞄准有奖励的位置，并避开无奖励的位置。提出了两个条件，旨在捕捉由另一个人的活动产生的线索瞬态的真实变化。在一种情况下，木偶的示范提供了短暂的信息——盒子被打开，看到是否得到奖励，然后关闭。在另一种情况下，木偶选择的盒子保持部分打开状态，提供了关于该位置是否获得奖励的持久可见线索。儿童进行了三项不同示范成功的试验，我们使用表现模式来推断多代传播的改进潜力。在持久线索条件下，儿童的表现展示了累积文化的潜力。相比之下，在瞬态信息条件下，只有年龄较大的孩子在更高的成功示范后表现出改善的表现，并且整体表现与几代社会传播的改善可能性不相容。