TY - JOUR
T1 - Iterated learning: Intergenerational knowledge transmission reveals inductive biases
AU - Kalish, M.L.
AU - Griffiths, T.L.
AU - Lewandowsky, Stephan
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Cultural transmission of information plays a central role in shaping human knowledge. Some of the most complex knowledge that people acquire, such as languages or cultural norms, can only be learned from other people, who themselves learned from previous generations. The prevalence of this process of "iterated learning" as a mode of cultural transmission raises the question of how it affects the information being transmitted. Analyses of iterated learning utilizing the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents predict that this process should converge to an equilibrium that reflects the inductive biases of the learners. An experiment in iterated function learning with human participants confirmed this prediction, providing insight into the consequences of intergenerational knowledge transmission and a method for discovering the inductive biases that guide human inferences.
AB - Cultural transmission of information plays a central role in shaping human knowledge. Some of the most complex knowledge that people acquire, such as languages or cultural norms, can only be learned from other people, who themselves learned from previous generations. The prevalence of this process of "iterated learning" as a mode of cultural transmission raises the question of how it affects the information being transmitted. Analyses of iterated learning utilizing the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents predict that this process should converge to an equilibrium that reflects the inductive biases of the learners. An experiment in iterated function learning with human participants confirmed this prediction, providing insight into the consequences of intergenerational knowledge transmission and a method for discovering the inductive biases that guide human inferences.
U2 - 10.3758/BF03194066
DO - 10.3758/BF03194066
M3 - Article
VL - 14
SP - 288
EP - 294
JO - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
JF - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
SN - 1069-9384
IS - 2
ER -