Cultural selection drives the evolution of human communication systems

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary anthropology
• Cultural evolution
• Human communication

Background:

• Cultural evolution of human communication systems is not fully understood.
• Neutral evolutionary dynamics (drift models) provide a baseline for variant spread.
• Selectionist models (coordination- and content-biased) offer alternative explanations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the evolutionary mechanisms driving human communication systems.
• To test the explanatory power of coordination- and content-biased cultural selection models against neutral drift.
• To determine how communicative variants spread within small social groups.

Main Methods:

• Development of a parametrized mixed probabilistic model.
• Observation of four 8-person laboratory micro-societies playing a communication game.
• Empirical data analysis to compare model fit with neutral drift dynamics.

Main Results:

• Selectionist models, particularly in combination, significantly outperform neutral drift models.
• The best-fitting model incorporates both egocentric and content biases.
• Participants favored their own variants unless a superior, content-biased variant was encountered.

Conclusions:

• A comprehensive theory of cultural communication evolution must integrate selectionist principles.
• Human communication systems function as adaptive complex systems shaped by cultural selection.
• Both individual biases and external content quality influence the evolution of communication.