Cultural evolution

Summary

Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change. It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". Cultural evolution is the change of this information over time. Cultural evolution, historically also known as sociocultural evolution, was originally developed in the 19th century by anthropologists stemming from Charles Darwin's research on evolution. Today, cultural evolution has become the basis for a growing field of scientific research in the social sciences, including anthropology, economics, psychology, and organizational studies. Previously, it was believed that social change resulted from biological adaptations; anthropologists now commonly accept that social changes arise in consequence of a combination of social, evolutionary, and biological influences. There have been a number of different

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_evolution

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Computational models in the debate over language learnability

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Computational models have played a central role in the debate over language learnability. This article discusses how they have been used in different stances, from generative views to more recently introduced explanatory frameworks based on embodiment, cognitive development and cultural evolution. By digging into the details of certain specific models, we show how they organize, transform and rephrase defining questions about what makes language learning possible for children. Finally, we present a tentative synthesis to recast the debate using the notion of learning bias.

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This paper presents computational experiments that illustrate how one can precisely conceptualize language evolution as a Darwinian process. We show that there is potentially a wide diversity of replicating units and replication mechanisms involved in language evolution. Computational experiments allow us to study systemic properties coming out of populations of linguistic replicators: linguistic replicators can adapt to specific external environments; they evolve under the pressure of the cognitive constraints of their hosts, as well as under the functional pressure of communication for which they are used; one can observe neutral drift; coalitions of replicators may appear, forming higher level groups which can themselves become subject to competion and selection.

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