The accumulated copying error (ACE) model exploits the fact that limits to human visual perception introduce proportional copying errors during cultural transmission of a continuous trait, such as the length of a tool. Archaeologists have used ACE to infer the mechanisms of cultural transmission employed in the past. But ACE's predictions apply only under “idealized” conditions in which the population contains infinitely many vertical transmission chains and the continuous trait can take any positive value. Here, I relax each assumption to show: (1) the mean and variance of a vertically transmitted continuous trait are functions of population size and number of transmission events, and (2) functional constraints weaken the cumulative effects of proportional copying error. Incorporating the effects of population size and functional constraints in future work will reduce Type I errors (falsely rejecting a true null) when inferring the cultural transmission mechanisms responsible for population‐level variation in continuous traits. [cultural evolution, cultural transmission, finite population size, functional constraints, Paleolithic, simulation, social learning]

中文翻译：

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协调和重新评估累积复制错误模型对连续文化特征的人口水平预测

累积复制误差（ACE）模型利用了这样一个事实，即对人类视觉感知的限制会在连续性状（例如工具的长度）的文化传播过程中引入成比例的复制误差。考古学家已经使用ACE来推断过去采用的文化传播机制。但是ACE的预测仅在“理想化”条件下适用，在这种情况下，人口包含无限多的垂直传播链，连续性状可以取任何正值。在这里，我放松每个假设以表明：（1）垂直传播的连续性状的均值和方差是种群数量和传播事件数量的函数，（2）功能约束削弱了比例复制误差的累积影响。在推断造成连续性状种群水平变异的文化传播机制时，将种群规模和功能限制的影响纳入未来的工作中将减少I型错误（错误地拒绝真正的零值）。[文化演变，文化传播，有限的人口规模，功能限制，旧石器时代，模拟，社会学习]