Natural Selection and Cultural Selection in the Evolution of Communication

Abstract

It has been postulated that aspects of human language are both genetically and culturally transmitted. How might these processes interact to determine the structure of language? An agent-based model designed to study gene culture interactions in the evolution of communication is introduced. This model shows that cultural selection resulting from learner biases can be crucial in determining the structure of communication systems transmitted through both genetic and cultural processes. Furthermore, the learning bias that leads to the emergence of optimal communication in the model resembles the learning bias brought to the task of language acquisition by human infants. This suggests that the iterated application of such human learning biases may explain much of the structure of human language.