Bringing cumulative technological culture beyond copying versus reasoning

F Osiurak, N Claidière, G Federico - Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2023 - cell.com
The dominant view of cumulative technological culture suggests that high-fidelity
transmission rests upon a high-fidelity copying ability, which allows individuals to reproduce …

To watch is to work: A review of neuroimaging data on tool use observation network

E Reynaud, J Navarro, M Lesourd, F Osiurak - Neuropsychology Review, 2019 - Springer
Since the discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s, many neuroimaging studies have
tackled the issue of action observation with the aim of unravelling a putative homolog human …

The elephant in the room: What matters cognitively in cumulative technological culture

F Osiurak, E Reynaud - Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2020 - cambridge.org
Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and
complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating …

Technition: When tools come out of the closet

F Osiurak, M Lesourd, J Navarro… - Perspectives on …, 2020 - journals.sagepub.com
People are ambivalently enthusiastic and anxious about how far technology can go.
Therefore, understanding the neurocognitive bases of the human technical mind should be …

The cortical thickness of the area PF of the left inferior parietal cortex mediates technical-reasoning skills

G Federico, E Reynaud, J Navarro, M Lesourd… - Scientific Reports, 2022 - nature.com
Most recent research highlights how a specific form of causal understanding, namely
technical reasoning, may support the increasing complexity of tools and techniques …

Technical reasoning is important for cumulative technological culture

F Osiurak, S Lasserre, J Arbanti, J Brogniart… - Nature Human …, 2021 - nature.com
Human technology has evolved in an unparalleled way, allowing us to expand across the
globe. One fascinating question is, how do we understand the cognitive origins of this …

On the psychological origins of tool use

M Mangalam, DM Fragaszy, JB Wagman… - Neuroscience & …, 2022 - Elsevier
The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and
philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans' …

The pedagogue, the engineer, and the friend: From whom do we learn?

F Osiurak, C Cretel, N Duhau-Marmon, I Fournier… - Human Nature, 2020 - Springer
Humans can follow different social learning strategies, sometimes oriented toward the
models' characteristics (ie, who-strategies). The goal of the present study was to explore …

The technical-reasoning network is recruited when people observe others make or teach how to make tools: An fmri study

A Bluet, E Reynaud, G Federico, C Bryche, M Lesourd… - iScience, 2025 - cell.com
Cumulative technological culture is defined as the increase in efficiency and complexity of
tools over generations. The role of social cognitive skills in cultural transmission has been …

From Beethoven to Beyoncé: Do changing aesthetic cultures amount to “cumulative cultural evolution?”

NC Sinclair, J Ursell, A South, L Rendell - Frontiers in Psychology, 2022 - frontiersin.org
Culture can be defined as “group typical behaviour patterns shared by members of a
community that rely on socially learned and transmitted information”(, p. 151). Once thought …