Cultural transmission in a food preparation task: The role of interactivity, innovation and storytelling


Autoři: Lucas M. Bietti aff001;  Adrian Bangerter aff001;  Dominique Knutsen aff003;  Eric Mayor aff001
Působiště autorů: Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland aff001;  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Télécom Paris, Institut Interdisciplinaire de l’innovation, UMR 9217, Paris, France aff002;  Univ. Lille, CNRS, CHU Lille, UMR 9193—SCALab—Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives, Lille, France aff003
Vyšlo v časopise: PLoS ONE 14(9)
Kategorie: Research Article
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221278

Souhrn

Interactive conversation drives the transmission of cultural information in small groups and large networks. In formal (e.g. schools) and informal (e.g. home) learning settings, interactivity does not only allow individuals and groups to faithfully transmit and learn new knowledge and skills, but also to boost cumulative cultural evolution. Here we investigate how interactivity affects performance, teaching, learning, innovation and chosen diffusion mode (e.g. instructional discourse vs. storytelling) of previously acquired information in a transmission chain experiment. In our experiment, participants (n = 288) working in 48 chains with three generations of pairs had to learn and complete a collaborative food preparation task (ravioli-making), and then transmit their experience to a new generation of participants in an interactive and non-interactive condition. Food preparation is a real-world task that it is taught and learned across cultures and transmitted over generations in families and groups. Pairs were defined as teachers or learners depending on their role in the transmission chain. The number of good exemplars of ravioli each pair produced was taken as measurement of performance. Contrary to our expectations, the results did not reveal that (1) performance increased over generations or that (2) interactivity in transmission sessions promoted increased performance. However, the results showed that (3) interactivity promoted the transmission of more information from teachers to learners; (4) increased quantity of information transmission from teachers led to higher performance in learners; (5) higher performance generations introduced more innovations in transmission sessions; (6) learners applied those transmitted innovations to their performance which made them persist over generations; (7) storytelling was specialized for the transmission of non-routine, unexpected information. Our findings offer new insights on how interactivity, innovation and storytelling affect the cultural transmission of complex collaborative tasks.

Klíčová slova:

People and places – Population groupings – Professions – Teachers – Biology and life sciences – Neuroscience – Cognitive science – Cognitive psychology – Learning – Human learning – Learning and memory – Psychology – Behavior – Evolutionary biology – Evolutionary processes – Evolutionary emergence – Social sciences – Sociology – Culture – Cultural evolution – Education – Teaching methods


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Článek vyšel v časopise

PLOS One


2019 Číslo 9
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