How does stochasticity in learning impact the accumulation of knowledge and the evolution of learning?

Abstract

Learning is crucial for humans and other animals to acquire knowledge, enhancing survival and reproduction. In particular, individual and social learning allow populations to accumulate knowledge across generations. Here, we examine how stochasticity in the production and social acquisition of knowledge influences the evolution of learning strategies and cumulative knowledge. Using a mathematical model where learning is stochastic, we show that learning stochasticity enhances cumulative knowledge by generating variability in knowledge levels. This allows selection to enhance population knowledge: individuals who acquire more knowledge by chance are more likely to survive and reproduce, and therefore to transmit their knowledge to the next generation. As knowledge accumulates, social learning exemplars tend to possess more of it, favoring greater time investment in social learning. Because social learning provides access to substantially more knowledge when learning is stochastic, selection also favors the evolution of greater investment into learning, at the expense of a fecundity cost. Moreover, when knowledge enhances fecundity but not survival, learning stochasticity favors learning from parents rather than other adults, because learning stochasticity increases uncertainty about exemplar knowledge, making parenthood a cue for possessing fecundity-enhancing knowledge. Finally, when learning occurs predominantly from parents, learning stochasticity itself is favored by selection.