title: Culture: copying, compression, and conventionality.
abstract: Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible (Kirby, Cornish, & Smith, ; Smith, Tamariz, & Kirby, ). Existing diffusion chain studies include in their design two processes that could be responsible for this tendency: learning (storing patterns in memory) and reproducing (producing the patterns again). This paper manipulates the presence of learning in a simple iterated drawing design experiment. We find that learning seems to be the causal factor behind the increase in compressibility observed in the transmitted information, while reproducing is a source of random heritable innovations. Only a theory invoking these two aspects of cultural learning will be able to explain human culture's fundamental balance between stability and innovation.
authors.affiliation: Language Evolution and Computation, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh.
authors.forename: Mónica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tamariz
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kirby
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Compression; Conventionality; Cultural transmission; Imitation; Iterated learning