Fay Nicolas, Walker Bradley, Swoboda Nik, Garrod Simon
School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia.
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Technical University of Madrid.
Cogn Sci. 2018 May;42 Suppl 1:241-269. doi: 10.1111/cogs.12600. Epub 2018 Feb 19.
Human cognition and behavior are dominated by symbol use. This paper examines the social learning strategies that give rise to symbolic communication. Experiment 1 contrasts an individual-level account, based on observational learning and cognitive bias, with an inter-individual account, based on social coordinative learning. Participants played a referential communication game in which they tried to communicate a range of recurring meanings to a partner by drawing, but without using their conventional language. Individual-level learning, via observation and cognitive bias, was sufficient to produce signs that became increasingly effective, efficient, and shared over games. However, breaking a referential precedent eliminated these benefits. The most effective, most efficient, and most shared signs arose when participants could directly interact with their partner, indicating that social coordinative learning is important to the creation of shared symbols. Experiment 2 investigated the contribution of two distinct aspects of social interaction: behavior alignment and concurrent partner feedback. Each played a complementary role in the creation of shared symbols: Behavior alignment primarily drove communication effectiveness, and partner feedback primarily drove the efficiency of the evolved signs. In conclusion, inter-individual social coordinative learning is important to the evolution of effective, efficient, and shared symbols.
人类的认知和行为受符号使用的主导。本文探讨了产生符号交流的社会学习策略。实验1将基于观察学习和认知偏差的个体层面解释与基于社会协调学习的个体间层面解释进行了对比。参与者玩了一个指称性交流游戏，在游戏中他们试图通过画图向伙伴传达一系列反复出现的含义，但不使用他们的传统语言。通过观察和认知偏差进行的个体层面学习足以产生在游戏过程中变得越来越有效、高效且具有共享性的符号。然而，打破一个指称先例就消除了这些益处。当参与者能够直接与他们的伙伴互动时，就会出现最有效、最高效且最具共享性的符号，这表明社会协调学习对于共享符号的创造很重要。实验2研究了社会互动两个不同方面的作用：行为对齐和伙伴同步反馈。它们在共享符号的创造中都发挥了互补作用：行为对齐主要推动交流的有效性，而伙伴反馈主要推动演化出的符号的效率。总之，个体间的社会协调学习对于有效、高效且共享的符号的演化很重要。
