scholarly journals The role of language in cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliki Papa ◽  
Mioara Cristea ◽  
Nicola McGuigan ◽  
Monica Tamariz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Verbal Instruction ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Complex Behaviour ◽  
Transmission Mechanisms ◽  
Supportive Role ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

Human culture is the result of a unique cumulative evolutionary process. The social transmission mechanisms underlying this process are still not fully understood. In particular, the role of language – another unique human behaviour – in social transmission is under-explored. In this first direct, systematic comparison of demonstration vs language-based social learning, we measured the transmission fidelity and cumulative improvement of an action sequence whose objective was to extract a reward from a box. Participants were organised in transmission chains, and each of them either watched a model demonstrate an action sequence or listened to verbal instructions to produce the action sequence. In order to explore imitation and overimitation, the sequences included actions that were causally relevant or irrelevant, respectively, to extracting the reward. We explored these effects in transmission adults and in 6 to 8-year-old children. Overall, we found more copying under demonstration than verbal instruction, and of causally-relevant than irrelevant actions. However, children (but not adults) copied more causally-irrelevant actions under verbal instruction, but more causally-relevant actions under demonstration. Cumulative cultural evolution produces sophisticated, complex behaviour whose function may not be obvious. By promoting the retention of behaviour even when its function is not understood, specifically in children, language may play a supportive role in cumulative cultural evolution.

scholarly journals Effects of verbal instruction vs. modelling on imitation and overimitation

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliki Papa ◽  
Mioara Cristea ◽  
Nicola McGuigan ◽  
Monica Tamariz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Verbal Instruction ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Action Sequence ◽  
Complex Behaviour ◽  
Causal Function ◽  
Transmission Mechanisms ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

AbstractHuman culture is the result of a unique cumulative evolutionary process. Despite the importance of culture for our species the social transmission mechanisms underlying this process are still not fully understood. In particular, the role of language—another unique human behaviour—in social transmission is under-explored. In this first direct, systematic comparison of demonstration vs. language-based social learning, we ran transmission chains of participants (6- to 8-year-old children and adults from Cyprus) who attempted to extract a reward from a puzzle box after either watching a model demonstrate an action sequence or after listening to verbal instructions describing the action sequence. The initial seeded sequences included causally relevant and irrelevant actions allowing us to measure transmission fidelity and the accumulation of beneficial modifications through the lens of a subtractive ratchet effect. Overall, we found that, compared to demonstration, verbal instruction specifically enhanced the faithful transmission of causally irrelevant actions (overimitation) in children, but not in adults. Cumulative cultural evolution requires the faithful transmission of sophisticated, complex behaviour whose function may not be obvious. This indicates that, by supporting the retention of actions that appear to lack a causal function specifically by children, language may play a supportive role in cumulative cultural evolution.

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 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 Social network architecture and the tempo of cumulative cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Cantor ◽  
Michael C. Chimento ◽  
Simeon Q. Smeele ◽  
Peng He ◽  
Danai Papageorgiou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Network Architecture ◽  
Size Structure ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Transmission Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

AbstractThe ability to build upon previous knowledge—cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)—is a hallmark of human societies. While CCE depends on the interaction between social systems, cognition and the environment, there is increasing evidence that CCE is facilitated by larger and more structured societies. However, the relative importance of social network architecture as an additional factor shaping CCE remains unclear. By simulating innovation and diffusion of cultural traits in populations with stereotyped social structures, we disentangle the relative contributions of network architecture from those of population size and connectivity. We demonstrate that while multilevel societies can promote the recombination of cultural traits into high-value products, they also hinder spread and make products more likely to go extinct. We find that transmission mechanisms are therefore critical in determining the outcomes of CCE. Our results highlight the complex interaction between population size, structure and transmission mechanisms, with important implications for future research.

scholarly journals Pursuing Darwin’s curious parallel: Prospects for a science of cultural evolution

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (30) ◽  
pp. 7853-7860 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Relative Role ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Evolutionary Science ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution ◽  
Review Current

In the past few decades, scholars from several disciplines have pursued the curious parallel noted by Darwin between the genetic evolution of species and the cultural evolution of beliefs, skills, knowledge, languages, institutions, and other forms of socially transmitted information. Here, I review current progress in the pursuit of an evolutionary science of culture that is grounded in both biological and evolutionary theory, but also treats culture as more than a proximate mechanism that is directly controlled by genes. Both genetic and cultural evolution can be described as systems of inherited variation that change over time in response to processes such as selection, migration, and drift. Appropriate differences between genetic and cultural change are taken seriously, such as the possibility in the latter of nonrandomly guided variation or transformation, blending inheritance, and one-to-many transmission. The foundation of cultural evolution was laid in the late 20th century with population-genetic style models of cultural microevolution, and the use of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct cultural macroevolution. Since then, there have been major efforts to understand the sociocognitive mechanisms underlying cumulative cultural evolution, the consequences of demography on cultural evolution, the empirical validity of assumed social learning biases, the relative role of transformative and selective processes, and the use of quantitative phylogenetic and multilevel selection models to understand past and present dynamics of society-level change. I conclude by highlighting the interdisciplinary challenges of studying cultural evolution, including its relation to the traditional social sciences and humanities.

scholarly journals Social network architecture and the tempo of cumulative cultural evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1946) ◽  
pp. 20203107
Author(s):  
Mauricio Cantor ◽  
Michael Chimento ◽  
Simeon Q. Smeele ◽  
Peng He ◽  
Danai Papageorgiou ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Network Architecture ◽  
Size Structure ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Transmission Mechanisms ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Cumulative Cultural Evolution

The ability to build upon previous knowledge—cumulative cultural evolution—is a hallmark of human societies. While cumulative cultural evolution depends on the interaction between social systems, cognition and the environment, there is increasing evidence that cumulative cultural evolution is facilitated by larger and more structured societies. However, such effects may be interlinked with patterns of social wiring, thus the relative importance of social network architecture as an additional factor shaping cumulative cultural evolution remains unclear. By simulating innovation and diffusion of cultural traits in populations with stereotyped social structures, we disentangle the relative contributions of network architecture from those of population size and connectivity. We demonstrate that while more structured networks, such as those found in multilevel societies, can promote the recombination of cultural traits into high-value products, they also hinder spread and make products more likely to go extinct. We find that transmission mechanisms are therefore critical in determining the outcomes of cumulative cultural evolution. Our results highlight the complex interaction between population size, structure and transmission mechanisms, with important implications for future research.

Social transmission bias and the cultural evolution of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hirshleifer ◽  
Siew Hong Teoh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Social Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Economic Attitudes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Beliefs ◽  
Over Time

AbstractEvolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for asocialexplanation for the evolution of economic attitudes is evidenced, for example, by immense variations in folk-economic beliefs over time and across individuals.

Refining our understanding of the “elephant in the room”

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Technological Culture

Abstract The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.

On the role of conflict in the evolutionary process

2016 ◽  
pp. 87-91
Author(s):  
V.I. Bol’shakov ◽  
◽  
Yu.I. Dubrov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Process
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