The cognitive scaffolding of tinkering: Directed innovation and strategic social transmission.

The social-tinkering account describes how cultural complexity emerges from directed innovation and social transmission but leaves the cognitive mechanisms underspecified. We highlight how individual innovation can be decomposed into a coordinated set of cognitive processes that leverage structured representations of the environment. These shared representations also turn observation into inference, supporting both richer transmission and richer learning from others. The synergy between directed innovation and social transmission paves the way for broader social tinkering.