scholarly journals The value of teaching increases with tool complexity in cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 287 (1939) ◽  
pp. 20201885
Author(s):  
Amanda J. Lucas ◽  
Michael Kings ◽  
Devi Whittle ◽  
Emma Davey ◽  
Francesca Happé ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Evolutionary Force ◽  
Selection For ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Tool Types

Human cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is recognized as a powerful ecological and evolutionary force, but its origins are poorly understood. The long-standing view that CCE requires specialized social learning processes such as teaching has recently come under question, and cannot explain why such processes evolved in the first place. An alternative, but largely untested, hypothesis is that these processes gradually coevolved with an increasing reliance on complex tools. To address this, we used large-scale transmission chain experiments (624 participants), to examine the role of different learning processes in generating cumulative improvements in two tool types of differing complexity. Both tool types increased in efficacy across experimental generations, but teaching only provided an advantage for the more complex tools. Moreover, while the simple tools tended to converge on a common design, the more complex tools maintained a diversity of designs. These findings indicate that the emergence of cumulative culture is not strictly dependent on, but may generate selection for, teaching. As reliance on increasingly complex tools grew, so too would selection for teaching, facilitating the increasingly open-ended evolution of cultural artefacts.

scholarly journals The Psychological Reach of Culture in Animals’ Lives

2021 ◽  
pp. 096372142199311
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Knowledge And Skills ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Learning From Others ◽  
Behavioral Domains

Culture—the totality of traditions acquired in a community by social learning from other individuals—has increasingly been found to be pervasive not only in humans’ but in many other animals’ lives. Compared with learning on one’s own initiative, learning from others can be very much safer and more efficient, as the wisdom already accumulated by other individuals is assimilated. This article offers an overview of often surprising recent discoveries charting the reach of culture across an ever-expanding diversity of species, as well as an extensive variety of behavioral domains, and throughout an animal’s life. The psychological reach of culture is reflected in the knowledge and skills an animal thus acquires, via an array of different social learning processes. Social learning is often further guided by a suite of adaptive psychological biases, such as conformity and learning from optimal models. In humans, cumulative cultural change over generations has generated the complex cultural phenomena observed today. Animal cultures have been thought to lack this cumulative power, but recent findings suggest that elementary versions of cumulative culture may be important in animals’ lives.

scholarly journals Digital culture

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.

scholarly journals Cultural accumulation and improvement in online fan fiction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Pianzola ◽  
Alberto Acerbi ◽  
Simone Rebora
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Harry Potter ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Evolution Theory ◽  
Digital Literary Studies

We analyse stories in Harry Potter fan fiction published on Archive of Our Own (AO3), using concepts from cultural evolution. In particular, we focus on cumulative cultural evolution, that is, the idea that cultural systems improve with time, drawing on previous innovations. In this study we examine two features of cumulative culture: accumulation and improvement. First, we show that stories in Harry Potter’s fan fiction accumulate cultural traits—unique tags, in our analysis—through time, both globally and at the level of single stories. Second, more recent stories are also liked more by readers than earlier stories. Our research illustrates the potential of the combination of cultural evolution theory and digital literary studies, and it paves the way for the study of the effects of online digital media on cultural cumulation.

Cumulative cultural evolution: The role of teaching

2014 ◽  
Vol 347 ◽  
pp. 74-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laureano Castro ◽  
Miguel A. Toro
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

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

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.

scholarly journals Social learning in swarm robotics

2021 ◽  
Vol 377 (1843) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bredeche ◽  
Nicolas Fontbonne
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Swarm Robotics ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Robot Swarms ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Robotic Tasks ◽  
Behavioural Strategies

In this paper, we present an implementation of social learning for swarm robotics. We consider social learning as a distributed online reinforcement learning method applied to a collective of robots where sensing, acting and coordination are performed on a local basis. While some issues are specific to artificial systems, such as the general objective of learning efficient (and ideally, optimal) behavioural strategies to fulfill a task defined by a supervisor, some other issues are shared with social learning in natural systems. We discuss some of these issues, paving the way towards cumulative cultural evolution in robot swarms, which could enable complex social organization necessary to achieve challenging robotic tasks. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’.

scholarly journals Collaborative Project Delivery Models and the Role of Routines in Institutionalizing Partnering

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena E. Bygballe ◽  
Anna Swärd
Keyword(s):  
Project Performance ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Project Delivery ◽  
Structural Interventions ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Collaborative Project ◽  
Social Learning Processes ◽  
Delivery Models ◽  
Common Understanding

It is widely held that collaborative project delivery models, such as partnering, represent a key means of improving construction project performance. Institutionalizing these models in practice, however, is not straightforward. We suggest that the (in)ability to establish new routines may be one reason for the variance in partnering outcomes. Based on a study of a partnering project, we develop a model of how partnering is institutionalized through the establishment of routines, enabled through common understanding and truces between the partners’ interests. The model illustrates how such routines develop through a balance between top-down structural interventions and emergent social learning processes.

Cultural Evolution in Animals

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Field Observations ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Invertebrate Species ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

In recent decades, a burgeoning literature has documented the cultural transmission of behavior through social learning in numerous vertebrate and invertebrate species. One meaning of “cultural evolution in animals” refers to these discoveries, and I present an overview of key findings. I then address the other meaning of the term focused on cultural changes within a lineage. Such changes in humans, described as “cumulative cultural evolution,” have been spectacular, but relatively little attention has yet been paid to the topic in nonhuman animals, other than asserting that the process is unique to humans. A variety of evidence including both controlled experiments and field observations has begun to challenge this view, and in some behavioral domains, notably birdsong, cultural evolution has been studied for many years. In this review, I dissect concepts of cultural evolution and cumulative culture and appraise the accumulating evidence bearing on their nature and significance for evolutionary biology at large.

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