“The role of redundant information in cultural transmission and cultural stabilization”: Correction to Acerbi and Tennie (2016).

The Baldwin effect has been explicitly used by Pinker and Bloom as an explanation of the origins of language and the evolution of a language acquisition device. This article presents new simulations of an artificial life model for the evolution of compositional languages. It specifically addresses the role of cultural variation and of learning costs in the Baldwin effect for the evolution of language. Results show that when a high cost is associated with language learning, agents gradually assimilate in their genome some explicit features (e.g., lexical properties) of the specific language they are exposed to. When the structure of the language is allowed to vary through cultural transmission, Baldwinian processes cause, instead, the assimilation of a predisposition to learn, rather than any structural properties associated with a specific language. The analysis of the mechanisms underlying such a predisposition in terms of categorical perception supports Deacon's hypothesis regarding the Baldwinian inheritance of general underlying cognitive capabilities that serve language acquisition. This is in opposition to the thesis that argues for assimilation of structural properties needed for the specification of a full-blown language acquisition device.

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The Role of Musical Development in Early Language Acquisition

The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Brain ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198804123.013.23 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 565-591

Author(s):

Anthony Brandt ◽

L. Robert Slevc ◽

Molly Gebrian

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Cultural Transmission ◽

Developmental Disorders ◽

Native Language ◽

Current Understanding ◽

Early Language ◽

Music And Language ◽

Language And Music ◽

Infant Brain

Language and music are readily distinguished by adults, but there is growing evidence that infants first experience speech as a special type of music. By listening to the phonemic inventory and prosodic patterns of their caregivers’ speech, infants learn how their native language is composed, later bootstrapping referential meaning onto this musical framework. Our current understanding of infants’ sensitivities to the musical features of speech, the co-development of musical and linguistic abilities, and shared developmental disorders, supports the view that music and language are deeply entangled in the infant brain and modularity emerges over the course of development. This early entanglement of music and language is crucial to the cultural transmission of language and children’s ability to learn any of the world’s tongues.

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A simulation study exploring the role of cultural transmission in language evolution

Connection Science ◽

10.1080/09540090903198819 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 69-85 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tao Gong ◽

James W. Minett ◽

William S.-Y. Wang

Keyword(s):

Simulation Study ◽

Cultural Transmission ◽

Language Evolution

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Digital culture

10.31219/osf.io/cjk4r ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Alberto Acerbi

Keyword(s):

Digital Media ◽

Cultural Evolution ◽

Cultural Transmission ◽

Past Research ◽

Digital Culture ◽

Cultural Dynamics ◽

Cumulative Culture ◽

Future Directions

Cultural evolution can provide a useful framework to understand how information is produced, transmitted, and selected in contemporary online, digital, media. The diffusion of digital technologies triggered a radical departure from previous modalities of cultural transmission but, at the same time, general characteristics of human cultural evolution and cognition influence these developments. In this chapter, I will explore some areas where the links between cultural evolution research and digital media seem more promising. As cultural evolution-inspired research on internet phenomena is still in its infancy, these areas represent suggestions and links with works in other disciplines more than reviews of past research in cultural evolution. These include topics such as how to characterise the online effects of social influence and the spread of information; the possibility that digital, online, media could enhance cumulative culture; and the differences between online and offline cultural transmission. In the last section I will consider other possible future directions: the influences of different affordances in different media supporting cultural transmission; the role of producers of cultural traits; and, finally, some considerations on the effects on cultural dynamics of algorithms selecting information.

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Modes of Image Transfer

The Origins of Monsters ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691159041.003.0007 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

David Wengrow

Keyword(s):

Cultural Transmission ◽

Special Kind ◽

Image Transfer ◽

Modes Of Transmission ◽

Cultural Boundaries ◽

Institutional Contexts ◽

Mode Of Transmission ◽

Visual Record ◽

Epidemiological Approach

This chapter proposes some distinct patterns of transmission that are attested across multiple chronological periods and regional settings, shedding further light on the institutional contexts of image transfer in the Bronze and Iron Ages. The distribution of composite figures in the visual record raises a number of intriguing problems for the study of cultural transmission. Their impressive transmission across cultural boundaries is consistent with the expectations of an “epidemiological” approach to the spread of culture, which would accord them a special kind of cognitive catchiness. This chapter considers the institutional role of externally derived images within centralized (or centralizing) societies and suggests that the macro-distribution of composites follows two distinct but regular modes of transmission and reception: the “transformative” mode and the “integrative” mode. It also introduces a third mode of transmission, termed “protective” mode.

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Language As a Memory Carrier Of Perceptually-Based Knowledge. Selected Aspects Of Imagery In Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale And Troilus And Criseyde

Studies in Logic Grammar and Rhetoric ◽

10.1515/slgr-2015-0024 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 127-141

Author(s):

Katarzyna Stadnik

Keyword(s):

Cultural Evolution ◽

Cultural Transmission ◽

Human Interaction ◽

Present Moment ◽

Human Knowledge ◽

Troilus And Criseyde ◽

Language And Culture ◽

The Past ◽

Cumulative Cultural Evolution

AbstractIn the paper, we address the question of the relation between language and culture from a Cognitive Linguistic perspective. While accounting for the role of language as an aid to cultural transmission in maintaining the community’s conceptual order, we address the question of whether the concept of a linguistic worldview aptly captures the interplay between language and culture. We suggest that, due to cumulative cultural evolution spurred by the incessant development of human knowledge, layers of conceptualisations accumulate over time. It is proposed that this palimpsest of conceptualisations results from human interaction that transcends the constraints of the present moment, encompassing the past and present, as well as delineating possible developments of the community’s future conceptual order.

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Investigating children as cultural magnets: do young children transmit redundant information along diffusion chains?

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2008.0136 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 363 (1509) ◽

pp. 3541-3551 ◽

Cited By ~ 60

Author(s):

Emma Flynn

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Cultural Transmission ◽

The Other ◽

Specific Reference ◽

Redundant Information ◽

Causal Relevance ◽

Puzzle Box

The primary goal of this study was to investigate cultural transmission in young children, with specific reference to the phenomenon of overimitation. Diffusion chains were used to compare the imitation of 2- and 3-year-olds on a task in which the initial child in each chain performed a series of relevant and irrelevant actions on a puzzle box in order to retrieve a reward. Children in the chains witnessed the actions performed on one of two boxes, one which was transparent and so the lack of causality of the irrelevant actions was obvious, while the other was opaque and so the lack of causal relevance was not obvious. Unlike previous dyadic research in which children overimitate a model, the irrelevant actions were parsed out early in the diffusion chains. Even though children parsed out irrelevant actions, they showed fidelity to the method used to perform a relevant action both within dyads and across groups. This was true of 3-year-olds, and also 2-year-olds, therefore extending findings from previous research.

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