The dominant view of cumulative technological culture suggests that high-fidelity transmission rests upon a high-fidelity copying ability, which allows individuals to reproduce the tool-use actions performed by others without needing to understand them (i.e., without causal reasoning). The opposition between copying versus reasoning is well accepted but with little supporting evidence. In this article, we investigate this distinction by examining the cognitive science literature on tool use. Evidence indicates that the ability to reproduce others’ tool-use actions requires causal understanding, which questions the copying versus reasoning distinction and the cognitive reality of the so-called copying ability. We conclude that new insights might be gained by considering causal understanding as a key driver of cumulative technological culture.

累积性技术文化的主流观点认为，高保真传播依赖于高保真复制能力，这种能力允许个体复制他人所执行的工具使用行为，而无需理解它们（即无需因果推理）。复制与推理之间的对立已被广泛接受，但缺乏支持证据。在本文中，我们通过研究有关工具使用的认知科学文献来研究这种区别。有证据表明，复制他人工具使用行为的能力需要因果理解，这对复制与推理的区别以及所谓复制能力的认知现实提出了质疑。我们的结论是，通过将因果理解视为累积技术文化的关键驱动力，可能会获得新的见解。