19 research outputs found
Applying the cultural ratchet to a social artefact: The cumulative cultural evolution of a language game
Material artefacts evolve by cumulative cultural evolution (CCE), the accumulation of adaptive modifications over time. We present a large-scale experiment investigating the CCE of a social artefact in transmission chains, each containing 8 adult human participants (N = 408). The social artefact is what Wittgenstein calls a 'language game', the subset of language used to perform a particular activity; in the present study the language game is to communicate a route on a map. Two social learning conditions were compared: Observational Learning and Social Coordinative Learning. Participants tried to accurately communicate a route on a map to the next person in their transmission chain. Over the experimental generations the routes were reproduced with progressively higher accuracy in both conditions, demonstrating the CCE of the language game. The rate of CCE was comparable across conditions, but route reproduction accuracy was consistently higher in the Social Coordination condition compared to the Observation condition. In both conditions performance improved due to the accumulation of adaptive patterns of verbal route descriptions, and the progressive elimination of non-adaptive patterns. Whereas change in the content of the language game was similar across conditions, change to the communication process differed between the Observation and Social Coordination conditions. In conclusion, like material artefacts, social artefacts, in our case the language game, evolve by cumulative cultural evolution
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Cognitive diversity promotes collective creativity: an agent-based simulation
In an agent-based simulation, we investigate the implications of social interaction and cognitive diversity on creative processes of divergent thinking. Agents performed a verbal association task individually and jointly in pairs. We created pairs of varying cognitive diversity by manipulating properties of the vector spaces defining their semantic memory. We find that cognitive diversity positively stimulates the flexibility of agentsâ collective cognitive search, giving rise to higher fluency (more solutions) and originality (more ârareâ solutions). While cognitively similar agents tend to exploit local semantic neighborhoods, diversity promotes more explorative search, with longer distances traveled in semantic space. This helps diverse pairs reach more distant areas of semantic space and escape cognitive fixation. However, our model also suggests that too high levels of diversity can have detrimental effects, as overly exploratory behaviors make pairs leave solution saturated areas prematurely and increase the risk of reaching semantic âdead endsâ
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Semantic Retrieval Strategies in Divergent Thinking
In this study we investigate semantic retrieval strategies in order to inform discussions about cognitive mechanisms underlying divergent thinking and creativity. Relying on a verbal fluency task, we map the particular associative strategies participants engage and how they predict their performance. The study starts from the assumption that during divergent thinking processes, participants move along a path through a semantic space, and that each step is prompted by an associative strategy taking them from one word to the next. There are, however, a number of such strategies, and we predict that the outcome of the process is contingent on participantsâ engagement of and shift between strategies. The study consists of a two-part elicitation paradigm where participants first conduct a verbal fluency task and then are guided through a meta-cognitive retrieval process to individuate the strategies employed in the task. We report significant correlations between the engagement of associative strategies and outcome measures of divergent thinking in terms of originality, flexibility and fluency
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Social Interaction Dynamics Modulates Collective Creativity
In an experimental study, we investigated how social interaction dynamics affect collective creativity. Pairs of participants collaborated in a computer game, creating âbeautiful and interestingâ shapes by moving tiles on a large touchscreen. We identified naturally emerging interaction styles by applying k-means clustering on participantsâ tile moves. The game allowed us to quantify the unfolding creative process in a well-defined search space. Pairs characterized by a single dominating member tended to visit fewer areas of the solution space, stay there longer and created on average more (but less original) shapes. In contrast, pairs that took turns with every tile move tended to explore more, stayed in each area of the solution space for less time and created fewer (but more original) shapes. While previous literature found conflicting effects of âcreating with anotherâ, the current paper suggests naturally emerging interaction styles as a differentiating factor underlying how collective creativity unfolds
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This and that back in context: Grounding demonstrative reference in manual and social affordances
Spatial demonstratives, i.e. words like this and that, serve asimportant tools to establish joint attention, allowinginterlocutors to flexibly share spatial reference schemes.However, little experimental work has investigated whichperceptual and social factors drive speakersâ choices ofdemonstrative forms. We used a novel experimental paradigmto explore 1) the role of relative placement of competingreferents on the sagittal and lateral planes, 2) whether and howthe presence of an addressee modulates the speakerâs choice ofdemonstrative forms. We found that the choice ofdemonstratives is affected by the relative position ofcompeting referents both on the sagittal and lateral plane.Furthermore, we found that the presence of an interlocutorshifts attraction for proximal demonstratives towards theshared space of reference, but only in collaborative contexts.Together, these results suggest that spatial deixis is groundedin a contrastive organization of space tightly coupled to manualand social affordances
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Constructing meaning: Material products of a creative activity engage the social brain
Symbolic artifacts present a challenge to theories of
neurocognitive processing due to their dual nature: they are
both physical objects and vehicles of social meanings. While
their physical properties can be read of the surface structure,
the meaning of symbolic artifacts depends on their
embeddedness in cultural practices. In this study, participants
built models of LEGO bricks to illustrate their understanding
of abstract concepts. Subsequently, they were scanned with
fMRI while presented to photographs of their own and othersâĂĂ´
models. When participants attended to the meaning of the
models, we observed activations associated with social
cognition and semantics. In contrast, when attending to the
physical properties, we observed activations related to object
recognition and manipulation. Furthermore, when contrasting
own and othersâĂĂ´ models, we found activations in areas
associated with autobiographical memory and agency. Our
findings support a view of symbolic artifacts as neurocognitive
trails of human social interactions
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Eyes On the Past: visual exploration of Upper Palaeolithic cave art
The European Upper Palaeolithic is rich in figurative cave art. In particular, prey animals are often depicted in simple sche- matic outlines. The role and function of these depictions is sub- ject of controversy with competing accounts represented in the literature. Here we apply eye-tracking to investigate partici- pantsâ distribution of visual attention as a function of three hy- pothesized pragmatic functions of the cave art: aesthetic appre- ciation, narratives about animal behavior, and social learning of animal species. Results indicate vast variability in visual ex- ploration patterns across the viewing conditions, with more uniformly distributed attention in the aesthetics condition, more focus on legs and torso in the behavior condition, and more attention to the head regions in the species recognition condition. Findings are discussed in regards to the under- and over-specification of information in the animal paintings as a cue to their possible past function
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Physiological entrainment and behavioral coordination in a collective, creative construction task
Interpersonal physiological entrainment is increasingly argued
to underlie rapport, empathy and even team performance. We
investigate the presence, temporal development, possible
mechanisms and impact of interpersonal heart rate
entrainment during collective creative LEGO construction
tasks. We observe a statistically significant presence and
increase over time of structured entrainment, which relates to
the actual unfolding and development of behavioral
coordination. Heart rate entrainment does not predict rapport
and perceived group competence, but behavioral coordination
does. Physiological entrainment, thus, should not be
considered a universal unmediated proxy for shared emotions,
empathy and collective performance. Behavioral coordination
âĂĂŹ at least in tasks requiring forms of joint action âĂĂŹ seems to be
a more informative proxy for both physiological entrainment
and collective experience