Intentional transmission of knowledge optimises cumulative cultural evolution

Abstract Human evolutionary success has been attributed to the capacity to accumulate knowledge and skills over generations, via cultural transmission. But explanations for the distinctiveness of human culture remain heavily debated. Accounts appealing to human cognitive sophistication must explain users’ limited mechanistic understanding of many cultural traits, whereas accounts that emphasise cultural adaptations as emergent outcomes of selective retention over generations must explain what precludes this in other species. In humans the transmission process itself may implicate cognitive capacities not available to other species, but to date there has been little direct evidence linking differences in cognitive capacity with differences in social transmission behaviour that impact the accumulation of cultural information. Using an experimental task, here we show that adults, but not young children, exhibit strategic preferences in the information they transmit to potential learners. This strategic selection promoted the cultural accumulation of beneficial discoveries, relative to randomly selected task information. Children, despite task competence, did not show such strong strategic transmission preferences, and accordingly obtained no additional benefit from intentional, over inadvertent, knowledge transmission until 9–10 years old. This late development supports the view that human cultural transmission may implicate cognitive abilities dependent on cultural experience, unavailable to other species. Funding This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 648841 RATCHETCOG ERC-2014-CoG. Author information Authors and Affiliations Corresponding authors Ethics declarations Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests. Ethical approval Experiment 1 (Adults) was approved by the University of Stirling General University Ethics Panel with approval reference number GUEP 295, and all participants gave full informed, written consent before the experiment took place. Experiment 2 (Children) was approved by the University of Stirling General University Ethics Panel with approval reference number GUEP 557. Formal consent to conduct Experiment 2 was obtained from the Highland Council education manager, and all head teachers gave consent for the experimenter to enter the school. Full informed, written consent was obtained from each child’s parent or legal guardian prior to testing, confirming that the child was permitted to take part in the experiment, and that this could be done during class time. Participants and their teachers also gave verbal consent before the participant left the classroom to participate in the study. All experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Additional information Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary Information Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. About this article Cite this article Mackintosh, G., Atkinson, M., Renner, E. et al. Intentional transmission of knowledge optimises cumulative cultural evolution. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-62734-6 Received: Accepted: Published: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-62734-6