The Effects of Individual and Social Learning on the evolution in a Co-creative Fitness Landscape

Abstract

The effects of learning have been regarded as important factors of the evolutionary process of human linguistic abilities. Our purpose is, with computer simulations, to examine the effects of individual and social learning on the evolution in a co-creative fitness landscape where both cognitive (e.g., hierarchical structures of language) and communicative (e.g., intention sharing) aspects of language abilities are essential. Our simulation results show that collaboration between individual and social learning facilitates the adaptive evolution, which means that both individual and social learning can play roles of enhancing lifetime fitness on such a complex fitness landscape arising from co-creative communications. However, at the same time, it is likely that the adaptive evolution of an individual is hampared by the failure of the acquisition of the high communicative ability. This might be because the adaptive evolution of his partner prevents him from acquiring the high communicative ability.