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Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties
Previous studies have shown that iconic graphical signs can evolve into symbols through repeated usage within dyads and interacting communities. Here we investigate the evolution of graphical signs over chains of participants. In these chains (or “replacement microsocieties”), membership of an inter...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3426541/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22928039 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043807 |
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author | Caldwell, Christine A. Smith, Kenny |
author_facet | Caldwell, Christine A. Smith, Kenny |
author_sort | Caldwell, Christine A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Previous studies have shown that iconic graphical signs can evolve into symbols through repeated usage within dyads and interacting communities. Here we investigate the evolution of graphical signs over chains of participants. In these chains (or “replacement microsocieties”), membership of an interacting group changed repeatedly such that the most experienced members were continually replaced by naïve participants. Signs rapidly became symbolic, such that they were mutually incomprehensible across experienced members of different chains, and new entrants needed to learn conventionalised meanings. An objective measure of graphical complexity (perimetric complexity) showed that the signs used within the microsocieties were becoming progressively simplified over successive usage. This is the first study to show that the signs that evolve in graphical communication experiments can be transmitted to, and spontaneously adopted by, naïve participants. This provides critical support for the view that human communicative symbols could have evolved culturally from iconic representations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3426541 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-34265412012-08-27 Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties Caldwell, Christine A. Smith, Kenny PLoS One Research Article Previous studies have shown that iconic graphical signs can evolve into symbols through repeated usage within dyads and interacting communities. Here we investigate the evolution of graphical signs over chains of participants. In these chains (or “replacement microsocieties”), membership of an interacting group changed repeatedly such that the most experienced members were continually replaced by naïve participants. Signs rapidly became symbolic, such that they were mutually incomprehensible across experienced members of different chains, and new entrants needed to learn conventionalised meanings. An objective measure of graphical complexity (perimetric complexity) showed that the signs used within the microsocieties were becoming progressively simplified over successive usage. This is the first study to show that the signs that evolve in graphical communication experiments can be transmitted to, and spontaneously adopted by, naïve participants. This provides critical support for the view that human communicative symbols could have evolved culturally from iconic representations. Public Library of Science 2012-08-23 /pmc/articles/PMC3426541/ /pubmed/22928039 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043807 Text en © 2012 Caldwell, Smith http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Caldwell, Christine A. Smith, Kenny Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title | Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title_full | Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title_fullStr | Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title_full_unstemmed | Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title_short | Cultural Evolution and Perpetuation of Arbitrary Communicative Conventions in Experimental Microsocieties |
title_sort | cultural evolution and perpetuation of arbitrary communicative conventions in experimental microsocieties |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3426541/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22928039 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043807 |
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