Paper Example on Group Size & CCE: Investigating Working Memory & Population Impact

Keywords: Working Memory, Group size, Arrowhead, Population size, CCE.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Introductions

Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE) is a phase through which cultural developments evolve over an evolutionary period, leading to a gradual transition of substance and cultural artefacts. Demographic trends can be vital to CCE: in specific, larger groups have exposure to better-adapted objects, more significant variability of items, and the potential for recombination. Activities of ideal culture diffusion and creativity in a broad community should be more regular. A broad population-scale could be a condition for the development of cultural diversity, but there are conflicting findings in anthropological research and a shortage of empiric data (Fay et al., 2019).

In our interactive arrowhead experiment to prove that, cultural development relies highly on the size of the population, as participants in big groups retained HighWM. As the size of the group grows, cultural understanding deteriorates, changes to current cultural characteristics are frequent, and cumulative cultural evolution is preserved more frequently. Our research demonstrates how shifts in group size can lead to both rapid cultural transition and the lack of culturally acquired skills (Derex & Beugin, 2013). Decreased community sizes could have raised major risks to human societies, including a structural breakup. Our analysis demonstrates how changes in-group size will contribute to rapid cultural change, and a lack of culturally learned skills (Derex & Beugin, 2013) diminished population size may have posed significant threats to human populations, including a systemic breakup.

Henrich proposed a basic concept of cultural development that relates environmental effects to the cognitive facets of socialisation. Given that transmitting events for complicated activities is usually imperfect, with a wide variety of precision, a learner with more exceptional skills may gain more ability than a demonstrator if the quantity of transmitting incidents (i.e., population size) is relatively high. Decreased population growth leaves these incidents unlikely, causing the cultural decline. Henrich finds conservation of aesthetic function in a group depends on the size of the group, and the Work memory capacity. A more significant loss of Memory is expected for a more complicated role within a group of a similar scale. (Henrich, 2004).

Methodology

Participants

A total of 397 individuals, 295 female, 97 male, two non-binary, three non-binary, were selected randomly. Groups ranged from 18-57 years of age. (Mean size 22.67 years, s.d. 6.79 years). The participant was separated into group sizes 3 and 6 and randomly allocated to one aspect of the test.Procedure

This task was replicated in 10 rounds. In each round, the subjects created a stone arrowhead, which was then rated based on its quality. The score was generated by the programmed system by scanning the stone pixes and evaluating different measures to come up with quality stone triangles.

After creating the arrowhead and getting the score, each member was able to see the scores obtained by five other individuals who were in the same group making their arrowheads elsewhere in the room. Each person in the group was given a chance to see the arrowheads created by all the group members. In generating arrowheads, the group members were issued a grid of squares that had to be followed by two measures to create grid arrowheads. First, by selecting the grid size by changing the squares width, using the input box given and press the Draw Mode tab, then create the arrowhead by clicking on the various square on the grid to draw the shapes.

Construction period

The participants traced the outlines of the arrowhead and the lines defining the points where the fragments of stone should be flaked. Every task was worked within the 90s, a bar at the bottom of the screen showing the time remaining.

Construction details for the arrowhead task

The quality of the arrowhead relied on its shape. The arrowhead scores ranged from zero to 1280 points; basic symmetrical, triangular arrowhead was a satisfactory result equivalent to the Working Memory of each participant. Therefore, the likelihood of Low memory participants drawing the right arrowhead was small.

Members identified arrowheads created by other participants of their group. Members had to glance at each arrowhead in a defined random order in the sequence. In the Low WM situation, when individuals view the arrowhead replay, the arrowhead is attached to the box at the bottom of the screen. This remains there until the next construction phase. Changing the size of the group or Memory Working Conditions (High or Low) ends up with different arrowhead results. By clicking on view, Participants were able to see an arrowhead playback. The lines are recorded for 20 seconds, and then the final arrowhead is made.

The model used looked at how arrowhead task sustained per the size of the population, and the Working Memory of each participant. Cultural activities were considered to be kept within the community if at least one individual in the community had carried out the activity in the last three trials. The answer variable was the presence or exclusion of increasing operation in each category. The response variable was the inclusion or absence of each activity within each group. Each participant had to create an arrowhead that went for ten rounds. Group members did the same task; Cultural diversity was lost since all members created the same artefact (Vaesen, 2012).

Data Analysis

A descriptive analysis of the results was conducted after the task; this was important to answer the critical hypothesis. The dependent variable was compared with the independent variables. The result was analysed and discussed. The descriptive used were N=92, Missing, Mean, Standard deviation, Minimum, and maximum with independent and dependent variables.

• Independent variables
• Group size (Three and six)
• WMcondition (Low and High)
• Dependent variables

Arrowheadscore

Condition of the Arrowhead tasks Group size Participants were grouped in 3 or 6 group members' participantsWorking Memory was either Low or High.In low Working Memory, permanent was assumed such that cumulative cultural evolution was Low. High Memory meant the CCE was not permanent, and therefore changes were expected.

Hypothesis Testing

Hypothesis 1: Cumulative cultural evolution effect will be large in big groups and low in small groups 6 > 3

Hypothesis 2: The effect will be significant in low Working Memory and small in High Working memory.

Hypothesis 3: The Advantages of big groups will be strong in low working Memory.Group size hypothesis.

A group of six members and three members was used to hypothesis Working Memory and its effect on Cumulative cultural evolution. A group size of 6 people was presumed higher than a group of 3 people.

Working Memory hypothesis

Working Memory: a portion of Memory that deals with the current, awareness, behavioral, and verbal processing. For this study, participants must utilise their working memory skills because they will be charged with knowing all the details of the stone arrowhead and applying the knowledge in a brief amount of time. Working Memory was classified into two, Low Working Memory and High Working Memory. Results were read and recorded for each member in both cases.

Group size and Working Memory hypothesis

This is a combination of group size hypothesis and the working memory hypothesis. The big population is expected to cause cultural evolution as the population grows artefacts may be forgotten over time due to coming up an

Comparing the dependent variable with the grouping variable (Group size and WMcondition). We find that the bigger groups give high Arrowheadscores when WMconditions are low. Hence, in CCE, the effect will be bigger in Low Working Memory.

A t-test was conducted on the arrowhead performance of the participant after ten rounds. Dependent variable (Arrowhead) data were compared with WMconditions and Group size data

Comparing the HighWM and LowWM groups, we find that the arrowhead result change is bigger in the big group of 6 participants compared to the group of 3 participants. The LowWM scale confirms the theory that LowWM boost Cumulative cultural evolution

The group with six participants reported higher arrowhead change scores compared to the smaller 3 group participants, t(90)=-2.21, p<0.985, d=-0.461

Discussion

The goal of the study was to determine the extent of larger populations' capacity to enhance cumulative cultural evolution (CCE). Using an arrowhead experiment (n = 92) in which the students tried to construct a stone arrowhead, the specific influence of population size on the CCE was analysed. The study examined three hypotheses 1) group size, 2) working memory 3) group size working memory hypothesis with CCE. As expected, larger groups created greater CCE diversity, creating more prospects for recombination of artefacts and creating exposure to better-adapted tools. Group size in the LowWM condition was comparable to those in the highWM state. We then tested the speculative hypothesis that the Cumulative cultural evolution effect will be large in big groups and low in small groups. This hypothesis was supported; success-biased arrowhead high score in large groups compared to the small groups. Stone arrowhead formation and the resulting increase in task difficulty could also have led to the low arrowhead efficiency from the smaller group. Further work is required to shed light on these theories. The observation that Working Memory limits influence population size through CCE is compliant with group results and arrowhead reports (Derex et al., 2018). As group size increases, the Working Memory among members also decreases, thereby increasing the benefit of its productivity (Smolla & Akcay, 2019). For example, in each group, the average number (mean) of arrowheads produced per individual decreases as the size of the group increased.

Conclusions

In the experiment recorded, larger groups produced higher Arrowhead results and allowed participants exposure to better-adapted objects, which contributed to an increase in the performance of artefacts through CCE. There has been a different association between population growth and CCE. According to Derex et al., Population Size Influence repeated (6 > 3) and WM Influence reported (LowWM > HighWM). Group Size * Working Memory Communication Effect detected it suggests that big groups improve CCE when working memory requirements are low (Martens, 2019)....