Modeling a Cognitive Transition at the Origin of Cultural Evolution Using Autocatalytic Networks

Cultural traits operating in senders are driving forces of cultural evolution

We introduce a mathematical model of cultural evolution to study cultural traits that shape how individuals exchange information. Current theory focuses on traits that influence the reception of information (receiver traits), such as evaluating whether information represents the majority or stems from a trusted source. Our model shifts the focus from the receiver to the sender of cultural information and emphasizes the role of sender traits, such as communicability or persuasiveness. Here, we show that sender traits are probably a stronger driving force in cultural evolution than receiver traits. While receiver traits evolve to curb cultural transmission, sender traits can amplify it and fuel the self-organization of systems of mutually supporting cultural traits, including traits that cannot be maintained on their own. Such systems can reach arbitrary complexity, potentially explaining uniquely human practical and mental skills, goals, knowledge and creativity, independent of innate factors. Our model incorporates social and individual learning throughout the lifespan, thus connecting cultural evolutionary theory with developmental psychology. This approach provides fresh insights into the trait-individual duality, that is, how cultural transmission of single traits is influenced by individuals, who are each represented as an acquired system of cultural traits.

What Are Group Level Traits and How Do They Evolve?

Cultural traits are seldom atomic, are distributed over multiple social domains, and undergo differential selection. This makes it important to study the nature and evolution of these traits from a global viewpoint. This paper considers group level cultural traits-what sort of traits are there, how do they evolve, and what is the relationship between cultural traits and their representation in individual worldviews. While not providing a concise theory, important aspects of cultural traits are elaborated and directions of further research indicated. Group level traits arising from individual biological traits are distinguished from those that are intrinsic to a group. The latter are formative of individual worldviews and are emotionally salient for group members. Children are saturated with culture from birth, it provides the scaffolding for their developing worldviews. Affective links between cultural ideas, social behavior, and material elements of culture develop so that the affordances in perceived situations carry biases influencing behavior toward culturally acceptable responses. Intrinsic traits are not, however, acted on directly by group level selection; rather, this selection acts on the behavior of group members and only indirectly on intrinsic cultural ideas through social exchange processes between group members.

Beyond two modes of thought: A quantum model of how three cognitive variables yield conceptual change

We re-examine the long-held postulate that there are two modes of thought, and develop a more fine-grained analysis of how different modes of thought affect conceptual change. We suggest that cognitive development entails the fine-tuning of three dimensions of thought: abstractness, divergence, and context-specificity. Using a quantum cognition modeling approach, we show how these three variables differ, and explain why they would have a distinctively different impacts on thought processes and mental contents. We suggest that, through simultaneous manipulation of all three variables, one spontaneously, and on an ongoing basis, tailors one's mode of thought to the demands of the current situation. The paper concludes with an analysis based on results from an earlier study of children's mental models of the shape of the Earth. The example illustrates how, through reiterated transition between mental states using these three variables, thought processes unfold, and conceptual change ensues. While this example concerns children, the approach applies more broadly to adults as well as children.

A Dynamic Autocatalytic Network Model of Therapeutic Change

Psychotherapy involves the modification of a client’s worldview to reduce distress and enhance well-being. We take a human dynamical systems approach to modeling this process, using Reflexively Autocatalytic foodset-derived (RAF) networks. RAFs have been used to model the self-organization of adaptive networks associated with the origin and early evolution of both biological life, as well as the evolution and development of the kind of cognitive structure necessary for cultural evolution. The RAF approach is applicable in these seemingly disparate cases because it provides a theoretical framework for formally describing under what conditions systems composed of elements that interact and ‘catalyze’ the formation of new elements collectively become integrated wholes. In our application, the elements are mental representations, and the whole is a conceptual network. The initial components—referred to as foodset items—are mental representations that are innate, or were acquired through social learning or individual learning (of pre-existing information). The new elements—referred to as foodset-derived items—are mental representations that result from creative thought (resulting in new information). In clinical psychology, a client’s distress may be due to, or exacerbated by, one or more beliefs that diminish self-esteem. Such beliefs may be formed and sustained through distorted thinking, and the tendency to interpret ambiguous events as confirmation of these beliefs. We view psychotherapy as a creative collaborative process between therapist and client, in which the output is not an artwork or invention but a more well-adapted worldview and approach to life on the part of the client. In this paper, we model a hypothetical albeit representative example of the formation and dissolution of such beliefs over the course of a therapist–client interaction using RAF networks. We show how the therapist is able to elicit this worldview from the client and create a conceptualization of the client’s concerns. We then formally demonstrate four distinct ways in which the therapist is able to facilitate change in the client’s worldview: (1) challenging the client’s negative interpretations of events, (2) providing direct evidence that runs contrary to and counteracts the client’s distressing beliefs, (3) using self-disclosure to provide examples of strategies one can use to diffuse a negative conclusion, and (4) reinforcing the client’s attempts to assimilate such strategies into their own ways of thinking. We then discuss the implications of such an approach to expanding our knowledge of the development of mental health concerns and the trajectory of the therapeutic change.

Modeling Discontinuous Cultural Evolution: The Impact of Cross-Domain Transfer

This paper uses autocatalytic networks to model discontinuous cultural transitions involving cross-domain transfer, using as an illustrative example, artworks inspired by the oldest-known uncontested example of figurative art: the carving of the Hohlenstein-Stadel Löwenmensch, or lion-human. Autocatalytic networks provide a general modeling setting in which nodes are not just passive transmitters of activation; they actively galvanize, or "catalyze" the synthesis of novel ("foodset-derived") nodes from existing ones (the "foodset.") This makes them uniquely suited to model how new structure grows out of earlier structure, i.e., cumulative, generative network growth. They have been used to model the origin and early evolution of biological life, and the emergence of cognitive structures capable of undergoing cultural evolution. We conducted a study in which six individual creators and one group generated music, prose, poetry, and visual art inspired by the Hohlenstein-Stadel Löwenmensch, and answered questions about the process. The data revealed four through-lines by which they expressed the Löwenmensch in an alternative art form: (1) lion-human hybrid, (2) subtracting from the whole to reveal the form within, (3) deterioration, and (4) waiting to be found with a story to tell. Autocatalytic networks were used to model how these four spontaneously derived through-lines form a cultural lineage from Löwenmensch to artist to audience. We used the resulting data from three creators to model the cross-domain transfer from inspirational source (sculpted figurine) to creative product (music, poetry, prose, visual art). These four spontaneously-generated threads of cultural continuity formed the backbone of this Löwenmensch-inspired cultural lineage, enabling culture to evolve even in the face of discontinuity at the level conventional categories or domains. We know of no other theory of cultural evolution that accommodates cross-domain transfer or other forms of discontinuity. The approach paves the way for a broad scientific framework for the origins of evolutionary processes.

The allure of the unknown in a tamed, mapped, and homogenized world

As the physical world becomes tamed and mapped out, opportunities to experience the unknown become rarer; imaginary worlds provide a much-needed sense of potentiality. Potentiality is central to the Self-Other Re-organization theory of cultural evolution, which postulates that creativity fuels cumulative cultural change. We point to evidence that fear affects, not the magnitude of exploration, but how cautiously it proceeds.

An Autocatalytic Network Model of Conceptual Change

In reflexively autocatalytic foodset (RAF)-generated networks, nodes are not only passive transmitters of activation, but they also actively galvanize, or "catalyze" the synthesis of novel ("foodset-derived") nodes from existing ones (the "foodset"). Thus, RAFs are uniquely suited to modeling how new structure grows out of currently available structure, and analyzing phase transitions in potentially very large networks. RAFs have been used to model the origins of evolutionary processes, both biological (the origin of life) and cultural (the origin of cumulative innovation), and may potentially provide an overarching framework that integrates evolutionary and developmental approaches to cognition. Applied to cognition, the foodset consists of information obtained through social learning or individual learning of pre-existing information, and foodset-derived items arise through mental operations resulting in new information. Thus, mental representations are not only propagators of spreading activation, but they also trigger the derivation of new mental representations. To illustrate the application of RAF networks in cognitive science, we develop a step-by-step process model of conceptual change (i.e., the process by which a child becomes an active participant in cultural evolution), focusing on childrens' mental models of the shape of the Earth. Using results from (Vosniadou & Brewer, 1992), we model different trajectories from the flat Earth model to the spherical Earth model, as well as the impact of other factors, such as pretend play, on cognitive development. As RAFs increase in size and number, they begin to merge, bridging previously compartmentalized knowledge, and get subsumed by a giant RAF (the maxRAF) that constrains and enables the scaffolding of new conceptual structure. At this point, the cognitive network becomes self-sustaining and self-organizing. The child can reliably frame new knowledge and experiences in terms of previous ones, and engage in recursive representational redescription and abstract thought. We suggest that individual differences in the reactivity of mental representations, that is, their proclivity to trigger conceptual change, culminate in different cognitive networks and concomitant learning trajectories.

An evolutionary process without variation and selection

Natural selection successfully explains how organisms accumulate adaptive change despite that traits acquired over a lifetime are eliminated at the end of each generation. However, in some domains that exhibit cumulative, adaptive change-e.g. cultural evolution, and earliest life-acquired traits are retained; these domains do not face the problem that Darwin's theory was designed to solve. Lack of transmission of acquired traits occurs when germ cells are protected from environmental change, due to a self-assembly code used in two distinct ways: (i) actively interpreted during development to generate a soma, and (ii) passively copied without interpretation during reproduction to generate germ cells. Early life and cultural evolution appear not to involve a self-assembly code used in these two ways. We suggest that cumulative, adaptive change in these domains is due to a lower-fidelity evolutionary process, and model it using reflexively autocatalytic and foodset-generated networks. We refer to this more primitive evolutionary process as self-other reorganization (SOR) because it involves internal self-organizing and self-maintaining processes within entities, as well as interaction between entities. SOR encompasses learning but in general operates across groups. We discuss the relationship between SOR and Lamarckism, and illustrate a special case of SOR without variation.

A minimal model of the interaction of social and individual learning

Learning is thought to be achieved by the selective, activity dependent, adjustment of synaptic connections. Individual learning can also be very hard and/or slow. Social, supervised, learning from others might amplify individual, possibly mainly unsupervised, learning by individuals, and might underlie the development and evolution of culture. We studied a minimal neural network model of the interaction of individual, unsupervised, and social supervised learning by communicating "agents". Individual agents attempted to learn to track a hidden fluctuating "source", which, linearly mixed with other masking fluctuations, generated observable input vectors. In this model data are generated linearly, facilitating mathematical analysis. Learning was driven either solely by direct observation of input data (unsupervised, Hebbian) or, in addition, by observation of another agent's output (supervised, Delta rule). To make learning more difficult, and to enhance biological realism, the learning rules were made slightly connection-inspecific, so that incorrect individual learning sometimes occurs. We found that social interaction can foster both correct and incorrect learning. Useful social learning therefore presumably involves additional factors some of which we outline.

A model of the transition to behavioural and cognitive modernity using reflexively autocatalytic networks

This paper proposes a model of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the transition to behavioural and cognitive modernity in the Upper Palaeolithic using autocatalytic networks. These networks have been used to model life's origins. More recently, they have been applied to the emergence of cognitive structure capable of undergoing cultural evolution. Mental representations of knowledge and experiences play the role of catalytic molecules, the interactions among them (e.g. the forging of new associations or affordances) play the role of reactions, and thought processes are modelled as chains of these interactions. We posit that one or more genetic mutations may have allowed thought to be spontaneously tailored to the situation by modulating the degree of (i) divergence (versus convergence), (ii) abstractness (versus concreteness), and (iii) context specificity. This culminated in persistent, unified autocatalytic semantic networks that bridged previously compartmentalized knowledge and experience. We explain the model using one of the oldest-known uncontested examples of figurative art: the carving of the Hohlenstein-Stadel Löwenmensch, or lion man. The approach keeps track of where in a cultural lineage each innovation appears, and models cumulative change step by step. It paves the way for a broad scientific framework for the origins of both biological and cultural evolutionary processes.