This study investigated the age at which children judge it futile to imitate unreliable information, in the
form of a visibly ineffective demonstrated solution, and deviate to produce novel solutions (‘innovations’).
Children aged 4–9 years were presented with a novel puzzle box, the Multiple-Methods
Box (MMB), which offered multiple innovation opportunities to extract a reward using different tools,
access points and exits. 209 children were assigned to conditions in which eight social demonstrations
of a reward retrieval method were provided; each condition differed incrementally in terms of the method’s
efficacy (0%, 25%, 75%, and 100% success at extracting the reward). An additional 47 children were
assigned to a no-demonstration control condition. Innovative reward extractions from the MMB
increased with decreasing efficacy of the demonstrated method. However, imitation remained a widely
used strategy irrespective of the efficacy of the method being reproduced (90% of children produced at
least one imitative attempt, and imitated on an average of 4.9 out of 8 attempt trials). Children were more
likely to innovate in relation to the tool than exit, even though the latter would have been more effective.
Overall, innovation was rare: only 12.4% of children innovated by discovering at least one novel reward
exit. Children’s prioritisation of social information is consistent with theories of cultural evolution indicating
imitation is a prepotent response following observation of behaviour, and that innovation is a rarity;
so much so, that even maladaptive behaviour is copied.