We introduce an experimental paradigm for studying the cumulative cultural evolution of language. In doing so we provide the first experimental validation for the idea that cultural transmission can lead to the appearance of design without a designer. Our experiments involve the iterated learning of artificial languages by human participants. We show that languages transmitted culturally evolve in such a way as to maximize their own transmissibility: over time, the languages in our experiments become easier to learn and increasingly structured. Furthermore, this structure emerges purely as a consequence of the transmission of language over generations, without any intentional design on the part of individual language learners. Previous computational and mathematical models suggest that iterated learning provides an explanation for the structure of human language and link particular aspects of linguistic structure with particular constraints acting on language during its transmission. The experimental work presented here shows that the predictions of these models, and models of cultural evolution more generally, can be tested in the laboratory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new paper studying cultural evolution (in that case language-like evolution) experimentally by the Edinburgh crew. I\u2019m afraid there is no non-gated version yet, but the PNAS version is here. And here\u2019s the abstract: We introduce an experimental paradigm for studying the cumulative cultural evolution of language. In doing so we provide the first experimental […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":693,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Cumulative cultural evolution in the lab - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/hugo-mercier\/cumulative-cultural-evolution-in-the-lab\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cumulative cultural evolution in the lab - International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new paper studying cultural evolution (in that case language-like evolution) experimentally by the Edinburgh crew. I\u2019m afraid there is no non-gated version yet, but the PNAS version is here. And here\u2019s the abstract: We introduce an experimental paradigm for studying the cumulative cultural evolution of language. In doing so we provide the first experimental […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/hugo-mercier\/cumulative-cultural-evolution-in-the-lab\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-07T00:00:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-07-24T12:29:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Hugo Mercier\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/hugo-mercier\/cumulative-cultural-evolution-in-the-lab\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/hugo-mercier\/cumulative-cultural-evolution-in-the-lab\/\",\"name\":\"Cumulative cultural evolution in the lab - International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-08-07T00:00:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-07-24T12:29:17+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/ea8a5e02223b60aa6c07c54060da52cb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/hugo-mercier\/cumulative-cultural-evolution-in-the-lab\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#\/schema\/person\/ea8a5e02223b60aa6c07c54060da52cb\",\"name\":\"Hugo Mercier\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/avatar1548158625-96x96.png\",\"caption\":\"Hugo Mercier\"},\"description\":\"Psychology of reasoning, Decision making, Social psychology, Evolutionary psychology\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/sites.google.com\/site\/hugomercier\/\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/693"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17361,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/17361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}