From: David McFadzean (david@lucifer.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 11:59:01 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bruce Edmonds" <b.edmonds@mmu.ac.uk>
To: "JOM announcements list" <jom-emit-ann@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 5:22 AM
> Cultural Transmission and the Capacity
> to Approve or Disapprove of Offspring's Behaviour
>
> by Laureano Castro and Miguel A. Toro
>
> Abstract.
>
> We suggest that human cultural learning was made possible by
> the simultaneous appearance, in one of our hominid ancestors, of
> two capacities: the capacity to imitate others' behaviour and the
> capacity to approve or disapprove of others' behaviour. With the
> help of a mathematical model, we have studied the conditions that
> allow the evolution of both capacities. We consider four different
> genotypes: "the only-learner" that learns by trial and error, "the
> imitator" that learns by trial and error and imitation, "the
> only-assessor" that learns by trial and error but that can also
> approve or disapprove of offspring's behaviour and, finally, "the
> assessor", who behaves like the imitator but, he can approve or
> disapprove of offspring's behaviour. The assessor genotype is the
> best genotype and the only-learner genotype is the worst when
> the learned behaviour that would be culturally transmitted is
> adaptive. If this behaviour is maladaptive, the genotype
> only-assessor is the best genotype and the genotype assessor can
> be the worst genotype. Notwithstanding, in this situation, the
> assessor can also be better than the imitator and even better than
> the only-learner. The success of assessor is due to his capacity to
> increase the phenotypic correlation between parents and
> offspring, and thus speeding the rate at which natural selection, if
> present, will increase or decrease the frequency of learned
> behaviours.
>
> Keywords: Conceptual categorisation; assessor; imitation;
> teaching; cultural evolution.
>
> Available at:
> http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/castro_l&toro_ma.html
>
> Also a Meeting Report: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research
> Council Network on Evolvability in Biology and Software Systems
> Symposium on Software Evolution and Evolutionary Computation, University
> of Hertfordshire, UK 7th - 8th February 2002 by Beatriz Garmendia-Doval
> and Derek Gatherer
>
> Available at:
> http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2002/vol6/gatherer_d_report.html
>
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