Mesoudi Alex, Whiten Andrew
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2008 Nov 12;363(1509):3489-501. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0129.
In this paper, we explore how experimental studies of cultural transmission in adult humans can address general questions regarding the 'who, what, when and how' of human cultural transmission, and consequently inform a theory of human cultural evolution. Three methods are discussed. The transmission chain method, in which information is passed along linear chains of participants, has been used to identify content biases in cultural transmission. These concern the kind of information that is transmitted. Several such candidate content biases have now emerged from the experimental literature. The replacement method, in which participants in groups are gradually replaced or moved across groups, has been used to study phenomena such as cumulative cultural evolution, cultural group selection and cultural innovation. The closed-group method, in which participants learn in groups with no replacement, has been used to explore issues such as who people choose to learn from and when they learn culturally as opposed to individually. A number of the studies reviewed here have received relatively little attention within their own disciplines, but we suggest that these, and future experimental studies of cultural transmission that build on them, can play an important role in a broader science of cultural evolution.
在本文中，我们探讨了针对成年人类文化传播的实验研究如何解决关于人类文化传播的“何人、何事、何时以及如何”的一般性问题，并进而为人类文化进化理论提供依据。本文讨论了三种方法。传播链法，即信息沿着参与者的线性链条传递，已被用于识别文化传播中的内容偏差。这些偏差涉及所传播信息的种类。目前，实验文献中已经出现了几种这样的候选内容偏差。替代法，即群体中的参与者逐渐被替换或在不同群体间转移，已被用于研究诸如累积文化进化、文化群体选择和文化创新等现象。封闭群体法，即参与者在不进行替换的群体中学习，已被用于探讨诸如人们选择向谁学习以及他们何时进行文化学习而非个体学习等问题。这里所回顾的一些研究在其各自学科内受到的关注相对较少，但我们认为，这些研究以及在此基础上开展的未来文化传播实验研究，能够在更广泛的文化进化科学中发挥重要作用。
