Related papers: Two Cognitive Transitions Underlying the Capacity …
We tested the computational feasibility of the proposal that open-ended cultural evolution was made possible by two cognitive transitions: (1) onset of the capacity to chain thoughts together, followed by (2) onset of contextual focus (CF):…
At the core of our uniquely human cognitive abilities is the capacity to see things from different perspectives, or to place them in a new context. We propose that this was made possible by two cognitive transitions. First, the large brain…
It is proposed that the ability of humans to flourish in diverse environments and evolve complex cultures reflects the following two underlying cognitive transitions. The transition from the coarse-grained associative memory of Homo habilis…
This paper summarizes efforts to computationally model two transitions in the evolution of human creativity: its origins about two million years ago, and the 'big bang' of creativity about 50,000 years ago. Using a computational model of…
It has been proposed that cultural evolution was made possible by a cognitive transition brought about by onset of the capacity for self-triggered recall and rehearsal. Here we develop a novel idea that models of collectively autocatalytic…
Human culture is uniquely cumulative and open-ended. Using a computational model of cultural evolution in which neural network based agents evolve ideas for actions through invention and imitation, we tested the hypothesis that this is due…
Cumulative cultural evolution occurs when adaptive innovations are passed down to consecutive generations through social learning. This process has shaped human technological innovation, but also occurs in non-human species. While it is…
In lieu of an abstract here is the first paragraph: No other species remotely approaches the human capacity for the cultural evolution of novelty that is accumulative, adaptive, and open-ended (i.e., with no a priori limit on the size or…
It has been suggested that the origins of cognitive modernity in the Middle/Upper Paleolithic following the appearance of anatomically modern humans was due to the onset of dual processing or contextual focus (CF), the ability to shift…
We present a theory of cultural evolution based upon a renormalization group scheme. We consider rational but cognitively limited agents who optimize their decision making process by iteratively updating and refining the mental…
Because human cognition is creative and socially situated, knowledge accumulates, diffuses, and gets applied in new contexts, generating cultural analogs of phenomena observed in population genetics such as adaptation and drift. It is…
This paper presents a speculative model of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the transition from episodic to mimetic (or memetic) culture with the arrival of Homo erectus, which Donald [1991] claims paved the way for the unique features…
The theory of natural selection cannot describe how early life evolved, in part because acquired characteristics are passed on through horizontal exchange. It has been proposed that culture, like life, began with the emergence of…
Collective memory is a common representation of the past shared by a group of people that modulates its identity. Recent literature on computational social science quantifies collective memories using expressions of those memories…
This paper outlines the implications of neural-level accounts of insight, and models of the conceptual interactions that underlie creativity, for a theory of cultural evolution. Since elements of human culture exhibit cumulative, adaptive,…
Cultural accumulation drives the open-ended and diverse progress in capabilities spanning human history. It builds an expanding body of knowledge and skills by combining individual exploration with inter-generational information…
This paper proposes an explanation of the cognitive change that occurs as the creative process proceeds. During the initial, intuitive phase, each thought activates, and potentially retrieves information from, a large region containing many…
Human cognitive performance is constrained by limited mental resources, yet continuous computational estimation of cognitive capacity dynamics remains an open challenge. We propose a theory-driven multimodal learning framework that models…
Drawing upon a body of research on the evolution of creativity, this paper proposes a theory of how, when, and why the forward-thinking story-telling abilities of humans evolved, culminating in the visionary abilities of science fiction…
Creativity is perhaps what most differentiates humans from other species. It involves the capacity to shift between divergent and convergent modes of thought in response to task demands. Divergent thought has been characterized as the kind…