Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems
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Hannah Cornish
Abstract
Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single chains of learners. By removing elements of interactive communication and focusing only on the way in which language is repeatedly acquired by learners, we hope to gain a better understanding of how useful structural properties of language could have emerged without being intentionally designed or innovated.
Abstract
Recent work on the emergence and evolution of human communication has focused on getting novel systems to evolve from scratch in the laboratory. Many of these studies have adopted an interactive construction approach, whereby pairs of participants repeatedly interact with one another to gradually develop their own communication system whilst engaged in some shared task. This paper describes four recent studies that take a different approach, showing how adaptive structure can emerge purely as a result of cultural transmission through single chains of learners. By removing elements of interactive communication and focusing only on the way in which language is repeatedly acquired by learners, we hope to gain a better understanding of how useful structural properties of language could have emerged without being intentionally designed or innovated.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Experimental semiotics 1
- Systematicity and arbitrariness in novel communication systems 15
- Can iterated learning explain the emergence of graphical symbols? 33
- Exploring the cognitive infrastructure of communication 51
- The evolution of communication 79
- The effects of rapidity of fading on communication systems 101
- Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems 113
- An experimental study of social selection and frequency of interaction in linguistic diversity 139
- Index 161
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Experimental semiotics 1
- Systematicity and arbitrariness in novel communication systems 15
- Can iterated learning explain the emergence of graphical symbols? 33
- Exploring the cognitive infrastructure of communication 51
- The evolution of communication 79
- The effects of rapidity of fading on communication systems 101
- Investigating how cultural transmission leads to the appearance of design without a designer in human communication systems 113
- An experimental study of social selection and frequency of interaction in linguistic diversity 139
- Index 161
