کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
943368 925463 2012 9 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
The advantage of multiple cultural parents in the cultural transmission of stories
موضوعات مرتبط
علوم زیستی و بیوفناوری علوم کشاورزی و بیولوژیک بوم شناسی، تکامل، رفتار و سامانه شناسی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
The advantage of multiple cultural parents in the cultural transmission of stories
چکیده انگلیسی

Recent mathematical modeling of repeated cultural transmission has shown that the rate at which culture is lost (due to imperfect transmission) will crucially depend on whether individuals receive transmissions from many cultural parents or only from one. However, the modeling assumptions leading up to this conclusion have so far not been empirically assessed. Here we do this for the special case of transmission chains where each individual either receives the same story twice from one cultural parent (and retransmits twice to a cultural child) or receives possibly different versions of the story from two cultural parents (and then retransmits to two cultural children). For this case, we first developed a more general mathematical model of cultural retention that takes into account the possibility of dependence of error rates between transmissions. In this model, under quite plausible assumptions, chains with two cultural parents will have superior retention of culture. This prediction was then tested in two experiments using both written and oral modes of transmission. In both cases, superior retention of culture was found in chains with two cultural parents. Estimation of model parameters indicated that error rates were not identical and independent between transmissions; instead, a primacy effect was suggested, such that the first transmission tends to have higher fidelity than the second transmission.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Evolution and Human Behavior - Volume 33, Issue 4, July 2012, Pages 251–259
نویسندگان
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