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Downey G. Skill building in freediving as an example of embodied culture. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2024; 379:20230150. [PMID: 39155712 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2023.0150] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/22/2023] [Revised: 03/26/2024] [Accepted: 04/02/2024] [Indexed: 08/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Skilled activity is a complex mix of automatized action, changed attention patterns, cognitive strategies and physiological adaptations developed within a community of practice. Drawing on physiological and ethnographic research on freediving, this article argues that skill acquisition demonstrates the variety of mechanisms that link biological and cultural processes to produce culturally shaped forms of embodiment. In particular, apneists alter phenotypic expression through patterned practices that canalize development, exaggerating the dive response, developing resistance to elevated carbon dioxide levels (hypercapnia) and accommodating hydrostatic pressure at depth. The community of divers provides technical advice and helps to orient individuals' motivations. Some biological processes are phenomenologically accessible, but others are sub-aware and must be accessed indirectly through behaviour or altered interactions with the environment. The close analysis of embodied skills like freediving illustrates how phenotypic plasticity is inflected by culturally patterned behaviours. Divers do developmental work on bodily traits like the dive response to achieve more dramatic performance, even if they cannot directly control all elements of the neurological and physiological responses. The example of expert freediving illustrates the imbrication of biology and culture in embodiment. This article is part of the theme issue 'Minds in movement: embodied cognition in the age of artificial intelligence'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Greg Downey
- School of Social Science, Macquarie University , Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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2
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van den Berg P, Vu T, Molleman L. Unpredictable benefits of social information can lead to the evolution of individual differences in social learning. Nat Commun 2024; 15:5138. [PMID: 38879619 PMCID: PMC11180142 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49530-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/23/2023] [Accepted: 06/07/2024] [Indexed: 06/19/2024] Open
Abstract
Human ecological success is often attributed to our capacity for social learning, which facilitates the spread of adaptive behaviours through populations. All humans rely on social learning to acquire culture, but there is substantial variation across societies, between individuals and over developmental time. However, it is unclear why these differences exist. Here, we present an evolutionary model showing that individual variation in social learning can emerge if the benefits of social learning are unpredictable. Unpredictability selects for flexible developmental programmes that allow individuals to update their reliance on social learning based on previous experiences. This developmental flexibility, in turn, causes some individuals in a population to end up consistently relying more heavily on social learning than others. We demonstrate this core evolutionary mechanism across three scenarios of increasing complexity, investigating the impact of different sources of uncertainty about the usefulness of social learning. Our results show how evolution can shape how individuals learn to learn from others, with potentially profound effects on cultural diversity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pieter van den Berg
- KU Leuven, Department of Biology, Leuven, Belgium.
- KU Leuven, Department of Microbial and Molecular Systems, Leuven, Belgium.
| | - TuongVan Vu
- Department of Clinical, Neuro-, & Developmental Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Lucas Molleman
- Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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3
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Santiago Araújo R, Nöbel S, Antunes DF, Danchin E, Isabel G. A social learning primacy trend in mate-copying: an experiment in Drosophila melanogaster. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2024; 11:240408. [PMID: 39100186 PMCID: PMC11295924 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.240408] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/12/2024] [Revised: 05/06/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 08/06/2024]
Abstract
Social learning is learning from the observation of how others interact with the environment. However, in nature, individuals often need to process serial social information and may favour either the most recent information (recency bias), constantly updating knowledge to match the environment, or the information that appeared first in the series (primacy bias), which may slow down adjustment to environmental change. Mate-copying is a widespread form of social learning in a mate choice context related to conformity in mate choice, and where a naive individual develops a preference for a given mate (or mate phenotype) seen being chosen by conspecifics. Mate-copying is documented in most vertebrate taxa and in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Here, we tested experimentally whether female fruit flies show a primacy or a recency bias by presenting pictures of a female copulating with one of two contrastingly coloured male phenotypes. We found that after two sequential contradictory demonstrations, females show a tendency to prefer males of the phenotype preferred in the first demonstration, suggesting that mate-copying in D. melanogaster is not based on the most recently observed mating and may be influenced by a form of primacy bias.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ricardo Santiago Araújo
- Laboratoire & Évolution Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, CNRS, IRD, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France
| | - Sabine Nöbel
- Laboratoire & Évolution Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, CNRS, IRD, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France
- Université Toulouse 1 Capitole and Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), Toulouse, France
- Department of Zoology, Animal Ecology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany
| | - Diogo F. Antunes
- Laboratoire & Évolution Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, CNRS, IRD, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France
| | - Etienne Danchin
- Laboratoire & Évolution Diversité Biologique (EDB UMR 5174), Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, CNRS, IRD, UPS, 31062 Toulouse, France
- Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA), Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), CNRS UMR 5169, Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
| | - Guillaume Isabel
- Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CRCA), Centre de Biologie Intégrative (CBI), CNRS UMR 5169, Université de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
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4
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Zurek N, Aljadeff N, Khoury D, Aplin LM, Lotem A. Social demonstration of colour preference improves the learning of associated demonstrated actions. Anim Cogn 2024; 27:31. [PMID: 38592559 PMCID: PMC11004050 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-024-01865-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/13/2023] [Revised: 03/07/2024] [Accepted: 03/07/2024] [Indexed: 04/10/2024]
Abstract
We studied how different types of social demonstration improve house sparrows' (Passer domesticus) success in solving a foraging task that requires both operant learning (opening covers) and discrimination learning (preferring covers of the rewarding colour). We provided learners with either paired demonstration (of both cover opening and colour preference), action-only demonstration (of opening white covers only), or no demonstration (a companion bird eating without covers). We found that sparrows failed to learn the two tasks with no demonstration, and learned them best with a paired demonstration. Interestingly, the action of cover opening was learned faster with paired rather than action-only demonstration despite being equally demonstrated in both. We also found that only with paired demonstration, the speed of operant (action) learning was related to the demonstrator's level of activity. Colour preference (i.e. discrimination learning) was eventually acquired by all sparrows that learned to open covers, even without social demonstration of colour preference. Thus, adding a demonstration of colour preference was actually more important for operant learning, possibly as a result of increasing the similarity between the demonstrated and the learned tasks, thereby increasing the learner's attention to the actions of the demonstrator. Giving more attention to individuals in similar settings may be an adaptive strategy directing social learners to focus on ecologically relevant behaviours and on tasks that are likely to be learned successfully.
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Affiliation(s)
- Noam Zurek
- School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Na'ama Aljadeff
- School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Donya Khoury
- School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Lucy M Aplin
- Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Division of Ecology and Evolution, Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
| | - Arnon Lotem
- School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
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5
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Charbonneau M, Curioni A, McEllin L, Strachan JWA. Flexible Cultural Learning Through Action Coordination. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2024; 19:201-222. [PMID: 37458767 DOI: 10.1177/17456916231182923] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/16/2024]
Abstract
The cultural transmission of technical know-how has proven vital to the success of our species. The broad diversity of learning contexts and social configurations, as well as the various kinds of coordinated interactions they involve, speaks to our capacity to flexibly adapt to and succeed in transmitting vital knowledge in various learning contexts. Although often recognized by ethnographers, the flexibility of cultural learning has so far received little attention in terms of cognitive mechanisms. We argue that a key feature of the flexibility of cultural learning is that both the models and learners recruit cognitive mechanisms of action coordination to modulate their behavior contingently on the behavior of their partner, generating a process of mutual adaptation supporting the successful transmission of technical skills in diverse and fluctuating learning environments. We propose that the study of cultural learning would benefit from the experimental methods, results, and insights of joint-action research and, complementarily, that the field of joint-action research could expand its scope by integrating a learning and cultural dimension. Bringing these two fields of research together promises to enrich our understanding of cultural learning, its contextual flexibility, and joint action coordination.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mathieu Charbonneau
- Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences, Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique
| | | | - Luke McEllin
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University
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6
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Abstract
Norms permeate human life. Most of people's activities can be characterized by rules about what is appropriate, allowed, required, or forbidden-rules that are crucial in making people hyper-cooperative animals. In this article, I examine the current cognitive-evolutionary account of "norm psychology" and propose an alternative that is better supported by evidence and better placed to promote interdisciplinary dialogue. The incumbent theory focuses on rules and claims that humans genetically inherit cognitive and motivational mechanisms specialized for processing these rules. The cultural-evolutionary alternative defines normativity in relation to behavior-compliance, enforcement, and commentary-and suggests that it depends on implicit and explicit processes. The implicit processes are genetically inherited and domain-general; rather than being specialized for normativity, they do many jobs in many species. The explicit processes are culturally inherited and domain-specific; they are constructed from mentalizing and reasoning by social interaction in childhood. The cultural-evolutionary, or "cognitive gadget," perspective suggests that people alive today-parents, educators, elders, politicians, lawyers-have more responsibility for sustaining normativity than the nativist view implies. People's actions not only shape and transmit the rules, but they also create in each new generation mental processes that can grasp the rules and put them into action.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecilia Heyes
- Department of Experimental Psychology & All Souls College, University of Oxford
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7
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Brandl E, Emmott EH, Mace R. Development of teaching in ni-Vanuatu children. Child Dev 2023; 94:1713-1729. [PMID: 37315123 DOI: 10.1111/cdev.13946] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2021] [Revised: 04/25/2023] [Accepted: 04/28/2023] [Indexed: 06/16/2023]
Abstract
Teaching is an important mechanism of social learning. In industrialized societies, 3-year-olds tend to teach through demonstrations and short commands, while 5-year-olds use more verbal communication and abstract explanations. However, it remains unclear whether this generalizes to other cultures. This study presents results from a peer teaching game with 55 Melanesian children (4.7-11.4 years, 24 female) conducted in Vanuatu in 2019. Up to age 8, most participants taught through a participatory approach, emphasizing learning-by-doing, demonstrations, and short commands (57.1% of children aged 4-6 and 57.9% of children aged 7-8). Contrary to Western findings, abstract verbal communication only became common in children aged 9-11 (63.6%), suggesting that the ontogeny of teaching is shaped by the socio-cultural environment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eva Brandl
- Lise Meitner Research Group BirthRites, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Emily H Emmott
- Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK
| | - Ruth Mace
- Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK
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8
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Scott-Phillips T, Heintz C. Great ape interaction: Ladyginian but not Gricean. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2300243120. [PMID: 37824522 PMCID: PMC10589610 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2300243120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/14/2023] Open
Abstract
Nonhuman great apes inform one another in ways that can seem very humanlike. Especially in the gestural domain, their behavior exhibits many similarities with human communication, meeting widely used empirical criteria for intentionality. At the same time, there remain some manifest differences, most obviously the enormous range and scope of human expression. How to account for these similarities and differences in a unified way remains a major challenge. Here, we make a key distinction between the expression of intentions (Ladyginian) and the expression of specifically informative intentions (Gricean), and we situate this distinction within a "special case of" framework for classifying different modes of attention manipulation. We hence describe how the attested tendencies of great ape interaction-for instance, to be dyadic rather than triadic, to be about the here-and-now rather than "displaced," and to have a high degree of perceptual resemblance between form and meaning-are products of its Ladyginian but not Gricean character. We also reinterpret video footage of great ape gesture as Ladyginian but not Gricean, and we distinguish several varieties of meaning that are continuous with one another. We conclude that the evolutionary origins of linguistic meaning lie not in gradual changes in communication systems, but rather in gradual changes in social cognition, and specifically in what modes of attention manipulation are enabled by a species' cognitive phenotype: first Ladyginian and in turn Gricean. The second of these shifts rendered humans, and only humans, "language ready."
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Affiliation(s)
- Thom Scott-Phillips
- Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information, 20018Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain
| | - Christophe Heintz
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, A-1100Vienna, Austria
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9
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Toyokawa W. Collective cognition and behaviour. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1612-1613. [PMID: 37591982 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01683-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/19/2023]
Affiliation(s)
- Wataru Toyokawa
- Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
- Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.
- Center for Brain Science, RIKEN, Wako, Japan.
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10
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Hawkins RD, Berdahl AM, Pentland A'S, Tenenbaum JB, Goodman ND, Krafft PM. Flexible social inference facilitates targeted social learning when rewards are not observable. Nat Hum Behav 2023; 7:1767-1776. [PMID: 37591983 DOI: 10.1038/s41562-023-01682-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/25/2020] [Accepted: 07/20/2023] [Indexed: 08/19/2023]
Abstract
Groups coordinate more effectively when individuals are able to learn from others' successes. But acquiring such knowledge is not always easy, especially in real-world environments where success is hidden from public view. We suggest that social inference capacities may help bridge this gap, allowing individuals to update their beliefs about others' underlying knowledge and success from observable trajectories of behaviour. We compared our social inference model against simpler heuristics in three studies of human behaviour in a collective-sensing task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that average performance improved as a function of group size at a rate greater than predicted by heuristic models. Experiment 2 introduced artificial agents to evaluate how individuals selectively rely on social information. Experiment 3 generalized these findings to a more complex reward landscape. Taken together, our findings provide insight into the relationship between individual social cognition and the flexibility of collective behaviour.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robert D Hawkins
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
- Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
| | - Andrew M Berdahl
- School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | | | | | - Noah D Goodman
- Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
- Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - P M Krafft
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Creative Computing Institute, University of Arts London, London, UK
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11
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Ammar M, Fogarty L, Kandler A. Social learning and memory. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2023; 120:e2310033120. [PMID: 37549253 PMCID: PMC10433305 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2310033120] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2023] [Accepted: 07/10/2023] [Indexed: 08/09/2023] Open
Abstract
The adaptability of human populations to changing environments is often attributed to the human capacity for social learning, innovation, and culture. In rapidly changing environments, it has been shown that maintaining high levels of cultural variation is beneficial because it allows for efficient adaptation. However, in many theoretical models, a high level of cultural variation also implies that a large amount of useless and perhaps detrimental information must be maintained and used, leading to lower population fitness in general. Here, we begin to investigate this often conflicting relationship between adaptation and cultural variation. We explicitly allow for the interplay between social learning and environmental variability, alongside the capacity for "memory," i.e., the storage, retrieval, and forgetting of information. Here, memory allows individuals to retain unexpressed cultural variation, which does not directly impact adaptation. We show that this capacity for memory facilitates the evolution of social learning across a broader range of circumstances than previously thought. Results from this analysis may help to establish whether and when memory should be incorporated into cultural evolutionary models focused on questions of adaptation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Madeleine Ammar
- Theory in Cultural Evolution Lab, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103Leipzig, Germany
| | - Laurel Fogarty
- Theory in Cultural Evolution Lab, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103Leipzig, Germany
| | - Anne Kandler
- Theory in Cultural Evolution Lab, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology, and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 04103Leipzig, Germany
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12
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Turner MA, Moya C, Smaldino PE, Jones JH. The form of uncertainty affects selection for social learning. EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2023; 5:e20. [PMID: 37587949 PMCID: PMC10426062 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2023.11] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/24/2022] [Revised: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/14/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Social learning is a critical adaptation for dealing with different forms of variability. Uncertainty is a severe form of variability where the space of possible decisions or probabilities of associated outcomes are unknown. We identified four theoretically important sources of uncertainty: temporal environmental variability; payoff ambiguity; selection-set size; and effective lifespan. When these combine, it is nearly impossible to fully learn about the environment. We develop an evolutionary agent-based model to test how each form of uncertainty affects the evolution of social learning. Agents perform one of several behaviours, modelled as a multi-armed bandit, to acquire payoffs. All agents learn about behavioural payoffs individually through an adaptive behaviour-choice model that uses a softmax decision rule. Use of vertical and oblique payoff-biased social learning evolved to serve as a scaffold for adaptive individual learning - they are not opposite strategies. Different types of uncertainty had varying effects. Temporal environmental variability suppressed social learning, whereas larger selection-set size promoted social learning, even when the environment changed frequently. Payoff ambiguity and lifespan interacted with other uncertainty parameters. This study begins to explain how social learning can predominate despite highly variable real-world environments when effective individual learning helps individuals recover from learning outdated social information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew A. Turner
- Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
- Division of Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
| | - Cristina Moya
- Department of Anthropology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA
| | - Paul E. Smaldino
- Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California at Merced, Merced, CA 95340 USA
- Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501 USA
- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
| | - James Holland Jones
- Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
- Division of Social Sciences, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA
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13
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Brandl E, Mace R, Heyes C. The cultural evolution of teaching. EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES 2023; 5:e14. [PMID: 37587942 PMCID: PMC10426124 DOI: 10.1017/ehs.2023.14] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2022] [Revised: 02/22/2023] [Accepted: 04/18/2023] [Indexed: 08/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Teaching is an important process of cultural transmission. Some have argued that human teaching is a cognitive instinct - a form of 'natural cognition' centred on mindreading, shaped by genetic evolution for the education of juveniles, and with a normative developmental trajectory driven by the unfolding of a genetically inherited predisposition to teach. Here, we argue instead that human teaching is a culturally evolved trait that exhibits characteristics of a cognitive gadget. Children learn to teach by participating in teaching interactions with socialising agents, which shape their own teaching practices. This process hijacks psychological mechanisms involved in prosociality and a range of domain-general cognitive abilities, such as reinforcement learning and executive function, but not a suite of cognitive adaptations specifically for teaching. Four lines of evidence converge on this hypothesis. The first, based on psychological experiments in industrialised societies, indicates that domain-general cognitive processes are important for teaching. The second and third lines, based on naturalistic and experimental research in small-scale societies, indicate marked cross-cultural variation in mature teaching practice and in the ontogeny of teaching among children. The fourth line indicates that teaching has been subject to cumulative cultural evolution, i.e. the gradual accumulation of functional changes across generations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eva Brandl
- Lise Meitner Research Group BirthRites, Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig 04103, Germany
| | - Ruth Mace
- Department of Anthropology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK
| | - Cecilia Heyes
- All Souls College and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK
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14
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Miton H, DeDeo S. The cultural transmission of tacit knowledge. J R Soc Interface 2022; 19:20220238. [PMID: 36259172 PMCID: PMC9579769 DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2022.0238] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022] Open
Abstract
A wide variety of cultural practices have a 'tacit' dimension, whose principles are neither obvious to an observer, nor known explicitly by experts. This poses a problem for cultural evolution: if beginners cannot spot the principles to imitate, and experts cannot say what they are doing, how can tacit knowledge pass from generation to generation? We present a domain-general model of 'tacit teaching', drawn from statistical physics, that shows how high-accuracy transmission of tacit knowledge is possible. It applies when the practice's underlying features are subject to interacting and competing constraints. Our model makes predictions for key features of the teaching process. It predicts a tell-tale distribution of teaching outcomes, with some students near-perfect performers while others receiving the same instruction are disastrously bad. This differs from standard cultural evolution models that rely on direct, high-fidelity copying, which lead to a much narrower distribution of mostly mediocre outcomes. The model also predicts generic features of the cultural evolution of tacit knowledge. The evolution of tacit knowledge is expected to be bursty, with long periods of stability interspersed with brief periods of dramatic change, and where tacit knowledge, once lost, becomes essentially impossible to recover.
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Affiliation(s)
- Helena Miton
- Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
| | - Simon DeDeo
- Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Road, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA,Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
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15
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Hobaiter C, Graham KE, Byrne RW. Are ape gestures like words? Outstanding issues in detecting similarities and differences between human language and ape gesture. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20210301. [PMID: 35934962 PMCID: PMC9358316 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0301] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/17/2022] [Accepted: 05/24/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Opinion piece: ape gestures are made intentionally, inviting parallels with human language; but how similar are their gestures to words? Here we ask this in three ways, considering: flexibility and ambiguity, first- and second-order intentionality, and usage in interactive exchanges. Many gestures are used to achieve several, often very distinct, goals. Such apparent ambiguity in meaning is potentially disruptive for communication, but-as with human language-situational and interpersonal context may largely resolve the intended meaning. Our evidence for first-order intentional use of gesture is abundant, but how might we establish a case for the second-order intentional use critical to language? Finally, words are rarely used in tidy signal-response sequences but are exchanged in back-and-forth interaction. Do gestures share this property? In this paper, we examine these questions and set out ways in which they can be resolved, incorporating data from wild chimpanzees. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cognition, communication and social bonds in primates'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Catherine Hobaiter
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Kirsty E. Graham
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Richard W. Byrne
- Origins of Mind Group, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews KY16 9JP, UK
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16
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Children transition from simple associations to explicitly reasoned social learning strategies between age four and eight. Sci Rep 2022; 12:5045. [PMID: 35322165 PMCID: PMC8943005 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-09092-1] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/25/2021] [Accepted: 03/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Abstract
To differentiate the use of simple associations from use of explicitly reasoned selective social learning, we can look for age-related changes in children’s behaviour that might signify a switch from one social learning strategy to the other. We presented 4- to 8-year-old children visiting a zoo in Scotland (N = 109) with a task in which the perceptual access of two informants was determined by the differing opacity of two screens of similar visual appearance during a hiding event. Initially success could be achieved by forming an association or inferring a rule based on salient visual (but causally irrelevant) cues. However, following a switch in the scenario, success required explicit reasoning about informants’ potential to provide valuable information based on their perceptual access. Following the switch, older children were more likely to select a knowledgeable informant. This suggests that some younger children who succeeded in the pre-switch trials had inferred rules or formed associations based on superficial, yet salient, visual cues, whereas older children made the link between perceptual access and the potential to inform. This late development and apparent cognitive challenge are consistent with proposals that such capacities are linked to the distinctiveness of human cumulative culture.
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17
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Nakawake Y, Kobayashi Y. Negative observational learning might play a limited role in the cultural evolution of technology. Sci Rep 2022; 12:970. [PMID: 35046491 PMCID: PMC8770688 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-05031-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2021] [Accepted: 01/03/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022] Open
Abstract
Theoretical and empirical studies of the cultural evolution in technology have often focused on positive observational learning, i.e., copying a successful individual. However, negative observational learning, i.e., avoiding negative or bad exemplar behavior, is ubiquitous in humans and other animals. In this paper, we experimentally investigate whether observing negative examples can assist in tool making in the virtual arrowhead task, which has been widely applied to test the theory of cultural evolution in the technological domain. We set three conditions that differ in the kinds of social learning available to participants: (1) positive observational learning, (2) negative observational learning, and (3) pure asocial learning. The results of the positive observational and pure asocial learning conditions replicated previous studies; i.e., participants in the positive observational learning condition outperformed those in the asocial learning condition. In contrast, opportunities to observe negative examples did not increase the performance compared to pure asocial learning. Computer simulations in the same setting showed that the presence of negative exemplars is in theory beneficial to participants, providing additional pieces of information on the relationship between arrowhead designs and their performance scores. These findings together suggest that negative observational learning might play only a limited role in the cultural evolution of technologies possibly due to a cognitive bias in humans toward copying.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yo Nakawake
- School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, 780-8515, Japan.
- School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX2 6PE, UK.
| | - Yutaka Kobayashi
- School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi, 780-8515, Japan
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18
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Strachan JWA, Curioni A, Constable MD, Knoblich G, Charbonneau M. Evaluating the relative contributions of copying and reconstruction processes in cultural transmission episodes. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0256901. [PMID: 34529662 PMCID: PMC8445411 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256901] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/27/2021] [Accepted: 08/17/2021] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to transmit information between individuals through social learning is a foundational component of cultural evolution. However, how this transmission occurs is still debated. On the one hand, the copying account draws parallels with biological mechanisms for genetic inheritance, arguing that learners copy what they observe and novel variations occur through random copying errors. On the other hand, the reconstruction account claims that, rather than directly copying behaviour, learners reconstruct the information that they believe to be most relevant on the basis of pragmatic inference, environmental and contextual cues. Distinguishing these two accounts empirically is difficult based on data from typical transmission chain studies because the predictions they generate frequently overlap. In this study we present a methodological approach that generates different predictions of these accounts by manipulating the task context between model and learner in a transmission episode. We then report an empirical proof-of-concept that applies this approach. The results show that, when a model introduces context-dependent embedded signals to their actions that are not intended to be transmitted, it is possible to empirically distinguish between competing predictions made by these two accounts. Our approach can therefore serve to understand the underlying cognitive mechanisms at play in cultural transmission and can make important contributions to the debate between preservative and reconstructive schools of thought.
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Affiliation(s)
- James W. A. Strachan
- Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Unit, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
| | - Arianna Curioni
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
| | - Merryn D. Constable
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
- Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
| | - Günther Knoblich
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
| | - Mathieu Charbonneau
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Vienna, Austria
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19
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Development of strategic social information seeking: Implications for cumulative culture. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0256605. [PMID: 34428243 PMCID: PMC8384161 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256605] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/21/2021] [Accepted: 08/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Human learners are rarely the passive recipients of valuable social information. Rather, learners usually have to actively seek out information from a variety of potential others to determine who is in a position to provide useful information. Yet, the majority of developmental social learning paradigms do not address participants’ ability to seek out information for themselves. To investigate age-related changes in children’s ability to seek out appropriate social information, 3- to 8-year-olds (N = 218) were presented with a task requiring them to identify which of four possible demonstrators could provide critical information for unlocking a box. Appropriate information seeking improved significantly with age. The particularly high performance of 7- and 8-year-olds was consistent with the expectation that older children’s increased metacognitive understanding would allow them to identify appropriate information sources. Appropriate social information seeking may have been overlooked as a significant cognitive challenge involved in fully benefiting from others’ knowledge, potentially influencing understanding of the phylogenetic distribution of cumulative culture.
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20
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Singh M, Acerbi A, Caldwell CA, Danchin É, Isabel G, Molleman L, Scott-Phillips T, Tamariz M, van den Berg P, van Leeuwen EJC, Derex M. Beyond social learning. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200050. [PMID: 33993759 PMCID: PMC8126463 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0050] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/12/2020] [Accepted: 01/18/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning has distracted scholars from appreciating both the full range of mechanisms contributing to cultural evolution and how interactions among those mechanisms and other factors affect the output of cultural evolution. We examine understudied mechanisms and other factors and call for a more inclusive programme of investigation that probes multiple levels of the organization, spanning the neural, cognitive-behavioural and populational levels. To guide our discussion, we focus on factors involved in three core topics of cultural evolution: the emergence of culture, the emergence of cumulative cultural evolution and the design of cultural traits. Studying mechanisms across levels can add explanatory power while revealing gaps and misconceptions in our knowledge. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Manvir Singh
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse 31015, France
| | - Alberto Acerbi
- Center for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK
| | | | - Étienne Danchin
- Laboratoire Évolution and Diversité Biologique (EDB, UMR5174), Université Fédérale de Toulouse, CNRS, IRD, 31062 Toulouse cedex 9, France
| | - Guillaume Isabel
- Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Centre de Biologie Intégrative, Université Fédérale de Toulouse, CNRS, UPS, 31062 Toulouse cedex 9, France
| | - Lucas Molleman
- Amsterdam Brain and Cognition, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Thom Scott-Phillips
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest 1051, Hungary
| | - Monica Tamariz
- Department of Psychology, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK
| | | | - Edwin J. C. van Leeuwen
- Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium
- Centre for Research and Conservation, Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp, 2018 Antwerp, Belgium
| | - Maxime Derex
- Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, Toulouse 31015, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR 5314, Toulouse 31015, France
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21
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Birch J, Heyes C. The cultural evolution of cultural evolution. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200051. [PMID: 33993760 PMCID: PMC8126465 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/15/2020] [Accepted: 09/03/2020] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
What makes fast, cumulative cultural evolution work? Where did it come from? Why is it the sole preserve of humans? We set out a self-assembly hypothesis: cultural evolution evolved culturally. We present an evolutionary account that shows this hypothesis to be coherent, plausible, and worthy of further investigation. It has the following steps: (0) in common with other animals, early hominins had significant capacity for social learning; (1) knowledge and skills learned by offspring from their parents began to spread because bearers had more offspring, a process we call CS1 (or Cultural Selection 1); (2) CS1 shaped attentional learning biases; (3) these attentional biases were augmented by explicit learning biases (judgements about what should be copied from whom). Explicit learning biases enabled (4) the high-fidelity, exclusive copying required for fast cultural accumulation of knowledge and skills by a process we call CS2 (or Cultural Selection 2) and (5) the emergence of cognitive processes such as imitation, mindreading and metacognition-'cognitive gadgets' specialized for cultural learning. This self-assembly hypothesis is consistent with archaeological evidence that the stone tools used by early hominins were not dependent on fast, cumulative cultural evolution, and suggests new priorities for research on 'animal culture'. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan Birch
- Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
| | - Cecilia Heyes
- All Souls College and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK
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22
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Terenzi D, Liu L, Bellucci G, Park SQ. Determinants and modulators of human social decisions. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2021; 128:383-393. [PMID: 34216653 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.06.041] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2021] [Revised: 06/21/2021] [Accepted: 06/28/2021] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
Abstract
Social decision making is a highly complex process that involves diverse cognitive mechanisms, and it is driven by the precise processing of information from both the environment and from the internal state. On the one hand, successful social decisions require close monitoring of others' behavior, in order to track their intentions; this can guide not only decisions involving other people, but also one's own choices and preferences. On the other hand, internal states such as own reward or changes in hormonal and neurotransmitter states shape social decisions and their underlying neural function. Here, we review the current literature on modulators and determinants of human social decisions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Damiano Terenzi
- Department of Decision Neuroscience and Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), Potsdam-Rehbrücke, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Berlin Institute of Health, Neuroscience Research Center, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Deutsches Zentrum für Diabetes, Neuherberg, Germany.
| | - Lu Liu
- Department of Decision Neuroscience and Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), Potsdam-Rehbrücke, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Berlin Institute of Health, Neuroscience Research Center, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Deutsches Zentrum für Diabetes, Neuherberg, Germany; Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
| | - Gabriele Bellucci
- Department of Computational Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics Tübingen, Germany
| | - Soyoung Q Park
- Department of Decision Neuroscience and Nutrition, German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE), Potsdam-Rehbrücke, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Berlin Institute of Health, Neuroscience Research Center, 10117, Berlin, Germany; Deutsches Zentrum für Diabetes, Neuherberg, Germany
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23
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Jansson F, Aguilar E, Acerbi A, Enquist M. Modelling cultural systems and selective filters. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2021; 376:20200045. [PMID: 33993768 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0045] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
A specific goal of the field of cultural evolution is to understand how processes of transmission and selection at the individual level lead to population-wide patterns of cultural diversity and change. Models of cultural evolution have typically assumed that traits are independent of one another and essentially exchangeable. But culture has a structure: traits bear relationships to one another that affect the transmission and selection process itself. Here, we introduce a modelling framework to explore the effect of interdependencies on the process of learning. Through simulations, we find that introducing a simple structure changes the cultural dynamics. Based on a basic filtering mechanism for parsing trait relationships, more elaborate cultural filters emerge. In a mostly incompatible cultural domain of traits, these filters organize culture into mostly (but not fully) consistent and stable systems. Incompatible domains produce small homogeneous cultures, while more compatibility increases size, diversity and group divergence. When individuals copy based on a trait's features (here, its compatibility relationships), they produce more homogeneous cultures than when they copy based on the agent carrying the cultural trait. We discuss the implications of considering cultural systems and filters in the dynamics of cultural change. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fredrik Jansson
- Centre for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.,Division of Applied Mathematics, Mälardalen University, Box 883, 721 23 Västerås, Sweden
| | - Elliot Aguilar
- Centre for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Alberto Acerbi
- Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK
| | - Magnus Enquist
- Centre for Cultural Evolution, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.,Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
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24
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Brand CO, Mesoudi A, Smaldino PE. Analogy as a Catalyst for Cumulative Cultural Evolution. Trends Cogn Sci 2021; 25:450-461. [PMID: 33771450 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2020] [Revised: 02/19/2021] [Accepted: 03/01/2021] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
Analogies, broadly defined, map novel concepts onto familiar concepts, making them essential for perception, reasoning, and communication. We argue that analogy-building served a critical role in the evolution of cumulative culture by allowing humans to learn and transmit complex behavioural sequences that would otherwise be too cognitively demanding or opaque to acquire. The emergence of a protolanguage consisting of simple labels would have provided early humans with the cognitive tools to build explicit analogies and to communicate them to others. This focus on analogy-building can shed new light on the coevolution of cognition and culture and addresses recent calls for better integration of the field of cultural evolution with cognitive science.
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Affiliation(s)
- C O Brand
- Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK.
| | - A Mesoudi
- Human Behaviour and Cultural Evolution Group, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK
| | - P E Smaldino
- Department of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA, USA
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25
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Taylor BA, Cini A, Wyatt CDR, Reuter M, Sumner S. The molecular basis of socially mediated phenotypic plasticity in a eusocial paper wasp. Nat Commun 2021; 12:775. [PMID: 33536437 PMCID: PMC7859208 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21095-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/15/2020] [Accepted: 01/12/2021] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity, the ability to produce multiple phenotypes from a single genotype, represents an excellent model with which to examine the relationship between gene expression and phenotypes. Analyses of the molecular foundations of phenotypic plasticity are challenging, however, especially in the case of complex social phenotypes. Here we apply a machine learning approach to tackle this challenge by analyzing individual-level gene expression profiles of Polistes dominula paper wasps following the loss of a queen. We find that caste-associated gene expression profiles respond strongly to queen loss, and that this change is partly explained by attributes such as age but occurs even in individuals that appear phenotypically unaffected. These results demonstrate that large changes in gene expression may occur in the absence of outwardly detectable phenotypic changes, resulting here in a socially mediated de-differentiation of individuals at the transcriptomic level but not at the levels of ovarian development or behavior.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin A Taylor
- Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London, London, UK.
- Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, London, UK.
| | - Alessandro Cini
- Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London, London, UK
- Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, London, UK
- Dipartimento di Biologia, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
| | - Christopher D R Wyatt
- Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London, London, UK
- Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, London, UK
| | - Max Reuter
- Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, London, UK
- Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution, University College London, London, UK
| | - Seirian Sumner
- Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, University College London, London, UK
- Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment, University College London, London, UK
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26
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Molleman L, Tump AN, Gradassi A, Herzog S, Jayles B, Kurvers RHJM, van den Bos W. Strategies for integrating disparate social information. Proc Biol Sci 2020; 287:20202413. [PMID: 33234085 PMCID: PMC7739494 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2413] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/28/2020] [Accepted: 10/30/2020] [Indexed: 01/17/2023] Open
Abstract
Social information use is widespread in the animal kingdom, helping individuals rapidly acquire useful knowledge and adjust to novel circumstances. In humans, the highly interconnected world provides ample opportunities to benefit from social information but also requires navigating complex social environments with people holding disparate or conflicting views. It is, however, still largely unclear how people integrate information from multiple social sources that (dis)agree with them, and among each other. We address this issue in three steps. First, we present a judgement task in which participants could adjust their judgements after observing the judgements of three peers. We experimentally varied the distribution of this social information, systematically manipulating its variance (extent of agreement among peers) and its skewness (peer judgements clustering either near or far from the participant's judgement). As expected, higher variance among peers reduced their impact on behaviour. Importantly, observing a single peer confirming a participant's own judgement markedly decreased the influence of other-more distant-peers. Second, we develop a framework for modelling the cognitive processes underlying the integration of disparate social information, combining Bayesian updating with simple heuristics. Our model accurately accounts for observed adjustment strategies and reveals that people particularly heed social information that confirms personal judgements. Moreover, the model exposes strong inter-individual differences in strategy use. Third, using simulations, we explore the possible implications of the observed strategies for belief updating. These simulations show how confirmation-based weighting can hamper the influence of disparate social information, exacerbate filter bubble effects and deepen group polarization. Overall, our results clarify what aspects of the social environment are, and are not, conducive to changing people's minds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas Molleman
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Alan N. Tump
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
| | - Andrea Gradassi
- Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Stefan Herzog
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
| | - Bertrand Jayles
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
| | - Wouter van den Bos
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Amsterdam Brain and Cognition Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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27
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Heyes C, Chater N, Dwyer DM. Sinking In: The Peripheral Baldwinisation of Human Cognition. Trends Cogn Sci 2020; 24:884-899. [PMID: 32981845 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2020.08.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/15/2020] [Revised: 08/13/2020] [Accepted: 08/27/2020] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Abstract
The Baldwin effect is a hypothetical process in which a learned response to environmental change evolves a genetic basis. Modelling has shown that the Baldwin effect offers a plausible and elegant explanation for the emergence of complex behavioural traits, but there is little direct empirical evidence for its occurrence. We highlight experimental evidence of the Baldwin effect and argue that it acts preferentially on peripheral rather than on central cognitive processes. Careful scrutiny of research on taste-aversion and fear learning, language, and imitation indicates that their efficiency depends on adaptively specialised input and output processes: analogues of scanner and printer interfaces that feed information to core inference processes and structure their behavioural expression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecilia Heyes
- All Souls College and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK.
| | - Nick Chater
- Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
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28
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Graham KE, Wilke C, Lahiff NJ, Slocombe KE. Scratching beneath the surface: intentionality in great ape signal production. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2020; 375:20180403. [PMID: 31735155 PMCID: PMC6895546 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0403] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 06/09/2019] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Despite important similarities having been found between human and animal communication systems, surprisingly little research effort has focussed on whether the cognitive mechanisms underpinning these behaviours are also similar. In particular, it is highly debated whether signal production is the result of reflexive processes, or can be characterized as intentional. Here, we critically evaluate the criteria that are used to identify signals produced with different degrees of intentionality, and discuss recent attempts to apply these criteria to the vocal, gestural and multimodal communicative signals of great apes and more distantly related species. Finally, we outline the necessary research tools, such as physiologically validated measures of arousal, and empirical evidence that we believe would propel this debate forward and help unravel the evolutionary origins of human intentional communication. This article is part of the theme issue 'What can animal communication teach us about human language?'
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29
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Kuzyk O, Grossman S, Poulin-Dubois D. Knowing who knows: Metacognitive and causal learning abilities guide infants' selective social learning. Dev Sci 2019; 23:e12904. [PMID: 31519037 DOI: 10.1111/desc.12904] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2018] [Revised: 06/28/2019] [Accepted: 08/26/2019] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
Given the widespread interest in the development of children's selective social learning, there is mounting evidence suggesting that infants prefer to learn from competent informants (Poulin-Dubois & Brosseau-Liard, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2016, 25). However, little research has been dedicated to understanding how this selectivity develops. The present study investigated whether causal learning and precursor metacognitive abilities govern discriminant learning in a classic word-learning paradigm. Infants were exposed to a speaker who accurately (reliable condition) or inaccurately (unreliable condition) labeled familiar objects and were subsequently tested on their ability to learn a novel word from the informant. The predictive power of causal learning skills and precursor metacognition (as measured through decision confidence) on infants' word learning was examined across both reliable and unreliable conditions. Results suggest that infants are more inclined to accept an unreliable speaker's testimony on a word learning task when they also lack confidence in their own knowledge on a task measuring their metacognitive ability. Additionally, when uncertain, infants draw on causal learning abilities to better learn the association between a label and a novel toy. This study is the first to shed light on the role of causal learning and precursor metacognitive judgments in infants' abilities to engage in selective trust.
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30
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31
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Lind J, Ghirlanda S, Enquist M. Social learning through associative processes: a computational theory. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2019; 6:181777. [PMID: 31032033 PMCID: PMC6458397 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.181777] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/19/2018] [Accepted: 02/18/2019] [Indexed: 06/09/2023]
Abstract
Social transmission of information is a key phenomenon in the evolution of behaviour and in the establishment of traditions and culture. The diversity of social learning phenomena has engendered a diverse terminology and numerous ideas about underlying learning mechanisms, at the same time that some researchers have called for a unitary analysis of social learning in terms of associative processes. Leveraging previous attempts and a recent computational formulation of associative learning, we analyse the following learning scenarios in some generality: learning responses to social stimuli, including learning to imitate; learning responses to non-social stimuli; learning sequences of actions; learning to avoid danger. We conceptualize social learning as situations in which stimuli that arise from other individuals have an important role in learning. This role is supported by genetic predispositions that either cause responses to social stimuli or enable social stimuli to reinforce specific responses. Simulations were performed using a new learning simulator program. The simulator is publicly available and can be used for further theoretical investigations and to guide empirical research of learning and behaviour. Our explorations show that, when guided by genetic predispositions, associative processes can give rise to a wide variety of social learning phenomena, such as stimulus and local enhancement, contextual imitation and simple production imitation, observational conditioning, and social and response facilitation. In addition, we clarify how associative mechanisms can result in transfer of information and behaviour from experienced to naive individuals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Johan Lind
- Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution and Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Stefano Ghirlanda
- Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College of CUNY, Brooklyn, NY, USA
| | - Magnus Enquist
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
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Scott-Phillips T, Blancke S, Heintz C. Four misunderstandings about cultural attraction. Evol Anthropol 2018; 27:162-173. [PMID: 30099809 DOI: 10.1002/evan.21716] [Citation(s) in RCA: 58] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/19/2017] [Revised: 05/12/2018] [Accepted: 06/22/2018] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
Cultural attraction theory (CAT) is a research agenda the purpose of which is to develop causal explanations of cultural phenomena. CAT is also an evolutionary approach to culture, in the sense that it treats culture as a population of items of different types, with the frequency of tokens of those types changing over time. Now more than 20 years old, CAT has made many positive contributions, theoretical and empirical, to the naturalization of the social sciences. In consequence of this growing impact, CAT has, in recent years, been the subject of critical discussion. Here, we review and respond to these critiques. In so doing, we also provide a clear and concise introduction to CAT. We give clear characterizations of CAT's key theoretical notions, and we outline how these notions are derived from consideration of the natural character of cultural phenomena (Box ). This naturalistic quality distinguishes CAT from other evolutionary approaches to culture.
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Affiliation(s)
- Thom Scott-Phillips
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, United Kingdom
| | - Stefaan Blancke
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
| | - Christophe Heintz
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
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Kendal RL, Boogert NJ, Rendell L, Laland KN, Webster M, Jones PL. Social Learning Strategies: Bridge-Building between Fields. Trends Cogn Sci 2018; 22:651-665. [PMID: 29759889 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.04.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 219] [Impact Index Per Article: 36.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2017] [Revised: 04/06/2018] [Accepted: 04/12/2018] [Indexed: 01/13/2023]
Abstract
While social learning is widespread, indiscriminate copying of others is rarely beneficial. Theory suggests that individuals should be selective in what, when, and whom they copy, by following 'social learning strategies' (SLSs). The SLS concept has stimulated extensive experimental work, integrated theory, and empirical findings, and created impetus to the social learning and cultural evolution fields. However, the SLS concept needs updating to accommodate recent findings that individuals switch between strategies flexibly, that multiple strategies are deployed simultaneously, and that there is no one-to-one correspondence between psychological heuristics deployed and resulting population-level patterns. The field would also benefit from the simultaneous study of mechanism and function. SLSs provide a useful vehicle for bridge-building between cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rachel L Kendal
- Centre for Coevolution of Biology & Culture, Durham University, Anthropology Department, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK.
| | - Neeltje J Boogert
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Penryn Campus, Cornwall, TR10 9EZ, UK
| | - Luke Rendell
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TS, UK
| | - Kevin N Laland
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TS, UK
| | - Mike Webster
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TS, UK
| | - Patricia L Jones
- Department of Biology, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME 04011, USA
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Blancke S, Denis G. Bringing Darwin into the social sciences and the humanities: cultural evolution and its philosophical implications. HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE LIFE SCIENCES 2018; 40:29. [PMID: 29637318 DOI: 10.1007/s40656-018-0195-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2018] [Accepted: 04/05/2018] [Indexed: 06/08/2023]
Abstract
In the field of cultural evolution it is generally assumed that the study of culture and cultural change would benefit enormously from being informed by evolutionary thinking. Recently, however, there has been much debate about what this "being informed" means. According to the standard view, an interesting analogy obtains between cultural and biological evolution. In the literature, however, the analogy is interpreted and used in at least three distinct, but interrelated ways. We provide a taxonomy in order to clarify these different meanings. Subsequently, we discuss the alternatives model of cultural attraction theory and memetics, which both challenge basic assumptions of the standard view. Finally, we briefly summarize the contributions to the special issue on Darwin in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which is the result of a collaborative project between scholars and scientists from the universities of Lille and Ghent. Furthermore, we explain how they add to the discussions about the integration of evolutionary thinking and the study of culture.
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Affiliation(s)
- Stefaan Blancke
- Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
- Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
| | - Gilles Denis
- CNRS, UMR 8163 - STL - Savoirs Textes Langage, Université de Lille, 59000, Lille, France
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Heyes C. Enquire within: cultural evolution and cognitive science. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2018; 373:20170051. [PMID: 29440517 PMCID: PMC5812964 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2017.0051] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 09/20/2017] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Cultural evolution and cognitive science need each other. Cultural evolution needs cognitive science to find out whether the conditions necessary for Darwinian evolution are met in the cultural domain. Cognitive science needs cultural evolution to explain the origins of distinctively human cognitive processes. Focusing on the first question, I argue that cultural evolutionists can get empirical traction on third-way cultural selection by rooting the distinction between replication and reconstruction, two modes of cultural inheritance, in the distinction between System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes. This move suggests that cultural epidemiologists are right in thinking that replication has higher fidelity than reconstruction, and replication processes are not genetic adaptations for culture, but wrong to assume that replication is rare. If replication is not rare, an important requirement for third-way cultural selection, one-shot fidelity, is likely to be met. However, there are other requirements, overlooked by dual-inheritance theorists when they conflate strong (Darwinian) and weak (choice) senses of 'cultural selection', including dumb choices and recurrent fidelity In a second excursion into cognitive science, I argue that these requirements can be met by metacognitive social learning strategies, and trace the origins of these distinctively human cognitive processes to cultural evolution. Like other forms of cultural learning, they are not cognitive instincts but cognitive gadgets.This article is part of the theme issue 'Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cecilia Heyes
- All Souls College and Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 4AL, UK
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LeDoux J, Daw ND. Surviving threats: neural circuit and computational implications of a new taxonomy of defensive behaviour. Nat Rev Neurosci 2018; 19:269-282. [PMID: 29593300 DOI: 10.1038/nrn.2018.22] [Citation(s) in RCA: 195] [Impact Index Per Article: 32.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
Research on defensive behaviour in mammals has in recent years focused on elicited reactions; however, organisms also make active choices when responding to danger. We propose a hierarchical taxonomy of defensive behaviour on the basis of known psychological processes. Included are three categories of reactions (reflexes, fixed reactions and habits) and three categories of goal-directed actions (direct action-outcome behaviours and actions based on implicit or explicit forecasting of outcomes). We then use this taxonomy to guide a summary of findings regarding the underlying neural circuits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph LeDoux
- Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.,Department of Psychiatry and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Langone Medical School, New York, NY, USA.,Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatry Research, Orangeburg, NY, USA
| | - Nathaniel D Daw
- Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
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Hari R, Sams M, Nummenmaa L. Attending to and neglecting people: bridging neuroscience, psychology and sociology. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2016; 371:rstb.2015.0365. [PMID: 27069043 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2015.0365] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 02/25/2016] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Human behaviour is context-dependent-based on predictions and influenced by the environment and other people. We live in a dynamic world where both the social stimuli and their context are constantly changing. Similar dynamic, natural stimuli should, in the future, be increasingly used to study social brain functions, with parallel development of appropriate signal-analysis methods. Understanding dynamic neural processes also requires accurate time-sensitive characterization of the behaviour. To go beyond the traditional stimulus-response approaches, brain activity should be recorded simultaneously from two interacting subjects to reveal why human social interaction is critically different from just reacting to each other. This theme issue on Attending to and neglecting people contains original work and review papers on person perception and social interaction. The articles cover research from neuroscience, psychology, robotics, animal interaction research and microsociology. Some of the papers are co-authored by scientists who presented their own, independent views in the recent Attention and Performance XXVI conference but were brave enough to join forces with a colleague having a different background and views. In the future, information needs to converge across disciplines to provide us a more holistic view of human behaviour, its interactive nature, as well as the temporal dynamics of our social world.
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Affiliation(s)
- Riitta Hari
- Department of Art, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, PO Box 31000, 00076 AALTO, Helsinki, Finland Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, PO Box 31000, 00076 AALTO, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Mikko Sams
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, PO Box 31000, 00076 AALTO, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Lauri Nummenmaa
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, PO Box 31000, 00076 AALTO, Helsinki, Finland
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Acerbi A. A Cultural Evolution Approach to Digital Media. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:636. [PMID: 28018200 PMCID: PMC5156828 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00636] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/23/2016] [Accepted: 11/29/2016] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Digital media have today an enormous diffusion, and their influence on the behavior of a vast part of the human population can hardly be underestimated. In this review I propose that cultural evolution theory, including both a sophisticated view of human behavior and a methodological attitude to modeling and quantitative analysis, provides a useful framework to study the effects and the developments of media in the digital age. I will first give a general presentation of the cultural evolution framework, and I will then introduce this more specific research program with two illustrative topics. The first topic concerns how cultural transmission biases, that is, simple heuristics such as “copy prestigious individuals” or “copy the majority,” operate in the novel context of digital media. The existence of transmission biases is generally justified with their adaptivity in small-scale societies. How do they operate in an environment where, for example, prestigious individuals possess not-relevant skills, or popularity is explicitly quantified and advertised? The second aspect relates to fidelity of cultural transmission. Digitally-mediated interactions support cheap and immediate high-fidelity transmission, in opposition, for example, to oral traditions. How does this change the content that is more likely to spread? Overall, I suggest the usefulness of a “long view” to our contemporary digital environment, contextualized in cognitive science and cultural evolution theory, and I discuss how this perspective could help us to understand what is genuinely new and what is not.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alberto Acerbi
- School of Innovation Science, Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven, Netherlands
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Greggor AL, Thornton A, Clayton NS. Harnessing learning biases is essential for applying social learning in conservation. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2016; 71:16. [PMID: 28018026 PMCID: PMC5143356 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-016-2238-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2016] [Revised: 11/10/2016] [Accepted: 11/14/2016] [Indexed: 11/05/2022]
Abstract
Social learning can influence how animals respond to anthropogenic changes in the environment, determining whether animals survive novel threats and exploit novel resources or produce maladaptive behaviour and contribute to human-wildlife conflict. Predicting where social learning will occur and manipulating its use are, therefore, important in conservation, but doing so is not straightforward. Learning is an inherently biased process that has been shaped by natural selection to prioritize important information and facilitate its efficient uptake. In this regard, social learning is no different from other learning processes because it too is shaped by perceptual filters, attentional biases and learning constraints that can differ between habitats, species, individuals and contexts. The biases that constrain social learning are not understood well enough to accurately predict whether or not social learning will occur in many situations, which limits the effective use of social learning in conservation practice. Nevertheless, we argue that by tapping into the biases that guide the social transmission of information, the conservation applications of social learning could be improved. We explore the conservation areas where social learning is highly relevant and link them to biases in the cues and contexts that shape social information use. The resulting synthesis highlights many promising areas for collaboration between the fields and stresses the importance of systematic reviews of the evidence surrounding social learning practices.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alison L. Greggor
- Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH USA
| | - Alex Thornton
- Centre for Ecology and Conservation, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK
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