Abstract
Interactive conversation drives the transmission of cultural information in small groups and large networks. In formal (e.g. schools) and informal (e.g. home) learning settings, interactivity does not only allow individuals and groups to faithfully transmit and learn new knowledge and skills, but also to boost cumulative cultural evolution. Here we investigate how interactivity affects performance, teaching, learning, innovation and chosen diffusion mode (e.g. instructional discourse vs. storytelling) of previously acquired information in a transmission chain experiment. In our experiment, participants (n = 288) working in 48 chains with three generations of pairs had to learn and complete a collaborative food preparation task (ravioli-making), and then transmit their experience to a new generation of participants in an interactive and non-interactive condition. Food preparation is a real-world task that it is taught and learned across cultures and transmitted over generations in families and groups. Pairs were defined as teachers or learners depending on their role in the transmission chain. The number of good exemplars of ravioli each pair produced was taken as measurement of performance. Contrary to our expectations, the results did not reveal that (1) performance increased over generations or that (2) interactivity in transmission sessions promoted increased performance. However, the results showed that (3) interactivity promoted the transmission of more information from teachers to learners; (4) increased quantity of information transmission from teachers led to higher performance in learners; (5) higher performance generations introduced more innovations in transmission sessions; (6) learners applied those transmitted innovations to their performance which made them persist over generations; (7) storytelling was specialized for the transmission of non-routine, unexpected information. Our findings offer new insights on how interactivity, innovation and storytelling affect the cultural transmission of complex collaborative tasks.
Highlights
Human societies are shaped by cumulative cultural evolution, the cumulative improvement of cultural artefacts from one generation to the which is based on high-fidelity imitation and successive modifications of previously transmitted information and products [1]
Cumulative cultural evolution relies on the transmission of ‘recipes’ [2], which are composed of ingredients and instructions
For H1 (Performance improves over generations) and H2 (Performance improves more due to interactivity) performance was measured as the quantity of ‘good’ ravioli (DV) each pair produced
Summary
Human societies are shaped by cumulative cultural evolution, the cumulative improvement of cultural artefacts from one generation to the which is based on high-fidelity imitation and successive modifications of previously transmitted information and products [1]. In this study we experimentally tested whether having the possibility for learners to interact with teachers in transmission sessions (1) promotes increased subsequent task performance of learners in transmission chains, (2) fosters the emergence and transmission of innovations, and whether (3) the transmission of innovations in teaching sessions was related to teachers’ previous performance Another aspect related to the quality of the transmission sessions, which we investigated further, was the role of storytelling in the transmission of information. The third set of hypotheses (H5-H8) investigated was related to the effects of cultural transmission on the emergence and diffusion of innovation These hypotheses were tested in order to provide possible explanations for any improvements in task performance over generations. We expected that the innovation would be transmitted in teaching sessions, and lead to increased performance in learners This may occur because generations would have more available time to spend on other important phases of the task (e.g. cutting ravioli). The relationship between the presence of storytelling and increased performance was included in the analysis of innovation (Methods: measures)
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