Nakata Seiya, Takezawa Masanori
Department of Behavioral Science, Graduate School of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Artif Intell. 2023 Dec 22;6:1221329. doi: 10.3389/frai.2023.1221329. eCollection 2023.
Human language is characterized by complex structural features, such as the hierarchical combination of words to form sentences. Although other animals use communication systems, empirical evidence of hierarchical structures is rare. Computational studies of language evolution have suggested that cultural transmission plays a key role in the emergence of structural features in human languages, including hierarchy. While the previous study demonstrated the emergence of hierarchical structures in non-linguistic systems, we argue that their laboratory study may have overestimated the role of cultural transmission because of a lack of appropriate controls and analyses. To directly test the effect of cultural transmission, we conducted an experiment with no cultural transmission as a control (individual condition) in addition to replicating the previous transmission experiment (transmission condition). Our study has added a quantitative analysis of the hierarchical depth. We found that sequences became more structured as the number of generations increased; however, those produced under the transmission condition were more structured than those under the individual condition. These findings suggest that cultural transmission plays an important role in the emergence of hierarchical structures, which cannot be explained by increased learnability alone. The emergence of complex structural properties in human culture, such as language, technology, and music, may have resulted from information transmission processes between different individuals. In conclusion, this study provides evidence of the crucial role of cultural transmission in the emergence of hierarchical structures in non-linguistic communication systems. Our results contribute to the ongoing debate on the origins of human language and the emergence of complex cultural artifacts. The results of this study have implications for the study of cultural evolution and the role of transmission in shaping the emergence of structural features across diverse domains.
人类语言具有复杂的结构特征，例如单词通过层次组合形成句子。尽管其他动物也使用交流系统，但具有层次结构的经验证据却很少。语言进化的计算研究表明，文化传播在人类语言结构特征（包括层次结构）的出现中起着关键作用。虽然先前的研究证明了非语言系统中层次结构的出现，但我们认为他们的实验室研究可能由于缺乏适当的控制和分析而高估了文化传播的作用。为了直接测试文化传播的效果，除了重复先前的传播实验（传播条件）之外，我们还进行了一个没有文化传播作为对照的实验（个体条件）。我们的研究增加了对层次深度的定量分析。我们发现，随着代数的增加，序列变得更具结构性；然而，在传播条件下产生的序列比在个体条件下产生的序列更具结构性。这些发现表明，文化传播在层次结构的出现中起着重要作用，这不能仅通过增加可学习性来解释。人类文化中复杂结构属性（如语言、技术和音乐）的出现，可能是由于不同个体之间的信息传递过程所致。总之，本研究为文化传播在非语言交流系统中层次结构出现的关键作用提供了证据。我们的结果有助于正在进行的关于人类语言起源和复杂文化产物出现的辩论。本研究结果对文化进化研究以及传播在塑造不同领域结构特征出现中的作用具有启示意义。
