How does competition affect the transmission of information?
How does competition affect the transmission of information?
复制标题
DOI：
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.11.001
复制
发表时间：
2014-03-01
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Raymond, Michel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Derex, Maxime;Godelle, Bernard;Raymond, Michel
社会信息的使用是文化进化的先决条件。在人类中，社会学习使个体能够聚集适应性信息，并以动物王国无与伦比的水平增加技术的复杂性。然而，使用社会信息的潜力与这类信息的可用性有关。虽然大多数文化进化实验都假设社会学习者可以自由使用社会信息，但也有许多信息保留的例子，特别是在人种学研究中。在这个实验中，我们使用了一个基于计算机的文化游戏，在这个游戏中，玩家面临着一个复杂的任务，并有可能在他们的团队中交换他们知识的特定部分。当竞争是在组内或组间进行时，研究了信息传递的动态。我们的研究结果表明，组间竞争改善了信息的传递，提高了信息的数量和质量。此外，信息获取成本并没有阻止社会学习者比个人学习者表现得更好，即使组间竞争是缺席。有趣的是，与组内竞争相比，组间竞争并没有完全消除访问成本，也没有提高球员的表现。这些结果表明，文化进化领域将受益于更好地理解的因素，生产和信息共享的基础。(C)2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The use of social information is a prerequisite to the evolution of culture. In humans, social learning allows individuals to aggregate adaptive information and increase the complexity of technology at a level unparalleled in the animal kingdom. However, the potential to use social information is related to the availability of this type of information. Although most cultural evolution experiments assume that social learners are free to use social information, there are many examples of information withholding, particularly in ethnographic studies. In this experiment, we used a computer-based cultural game in which players were faced with a complex task and had the possibility to trade a specific part of their knowledge within their groups. The dynamics of information transmission were studied when competition was within- or exclusively between-groups. Our results show that between-group competition improved the transmission of information, increasing the amount and the quality of information. Further, informational access costs did not prevent social learners from performing better than individual learners, even when between-group competition was absent. Interestingly, between-group competition did not entirely eliminate access costs and did not improve the performance of players as compared with within-group competition. These results suggest that the field of cultural evolution would benefit from a better understanding of the factors that underlie the production and the sharing of information. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.