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Culture: copying, compression, and conventionality.

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Learning, not just reproduction, drives the simplification of cultural information over time. This process explains how human culture maintains stability while allowing for innovation.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Evolutionary Anthropology
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Cultural information tends to become more compressible through repeated learning.
  • Previous studies combined learning and reproduction, making it difficult to isolate their individual effects.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To experimentally determine the causal role of learning in the compressibility of cultural information.
  • To investigate the role of reproduction in generating heritable innovations.

Main Methods:

  • A simple iterated drawing design experiment was used.
  • The presence or absence of learning was manipulated during the transmission of cultural information.

Main Results:

  • Learning was identified as the primary causal factor for increased information compressibility.
  • Reproduction was found to be a source of random heritable innovations, rather than compressibility.

Conclusions:

  • Learning is essential for the observed simplification of cultural information.
  • A comprehensive theory of cultural learning must account for both stability (via learning) and innovation (via reproduction).