Innovation is not only central to changes in traditional practice but arguably responsible for humanity's remarkable success at colonizing the earth and diversifying the products, technologies, and systems within it. Surprisingly little is known of how this integral component of behavioral flexibility develops and the factors that are responsible for individual differences therein. This review highlights two primary ways in which the process and development of innovation may be better understood: By emulating the critical advances of animal behavior researchers in examining innovation in nonhuman species and establishing a clearer conceptualization of what is “innovation”. A pathway to innovation is suggested and an innovation classification system offered to aid recognition of its appearance and potential cultural contributions.
This study investigated the age at which children judge it futile to imitate unreliable information, in the form of a visibly ineffective demonstrated solution, and deviate to produce novel solutions ('innovations'). Children aged 4-9 years were presented with a novel puzzle box, the Multiple-Methods Box (MMB), which offered multiple innovation opportunities to extract a reward using different tools, access points and exits. 209 children were assigned to conditions in which eight social demonstrations of a reward retrieval method were provided; each condition differed incrementally in terms of the method's efficacy (0%, 25%, 75%, and 100% success at extracting the reward). An additional 47 children were assigned to a no-demonstration control condition. Innovative reward extractions from the MMB increased with decreasing efficacy of the demonstrated method. However, imitation remained a widely used strategy irrespective of the efficacy of the method being reproduced (90% of children produced at least one imitative attempt, and imitated on an average of 4.9 out of 8 attempt trials). Children were more likely to innovate in relation to the tool than exit, even though the latter would have been more effective. Overall, innovation was rare: only 12.4% of children innovated by discovering at least one novel reward exit. Children's prioritisation of social information is consistent with theories of cultural evolution indicating imitation is a prepotent response following observation of behaviour, and that innovation is a rarity; so much so, that even maladaptive behaviour is copied.
The primary goal of this study was to investigate cultural transmission in young children, with specific reference to the phenomenon of overimitation. Diffusion chains were used to compare the imitation of 2- and 3-year-olds on a task in which the initial child in each chain performed a series of relevant and irrelevant actions on a puzzle box in order to retrieve a reward. Children in the chains witnessed the actions performed on one of two boxes, one which was transparent and so the lack of causality of the irrelevant actions was obvious, while the other was opaque and so the lack of causal relevance was not obvious. Unlike previous dyadic research in which children overimitate a model, the irrelevant actions were parsed out early in the diffusion chains. Even though children parsed out irrelevant actions, they showed fidelity to the method used to perform a relevant action both within dyads and across groups. This was true of 3-year-olds, and also 2-year-olds, therefore extending findings from previous research.
This study used urban legends to examine the effects of a cognitive bias for content which evokes higher levels of emotion on cumulative recall. As with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design was used. One-hundred and twenty participants, aged 16–52, were asked to read and then recall urban legends that provoked both high levels and low levels of emotion and were both positively and negatively valenced. The product of this recall was presented to the next participant in a chain of three generations. A significant effect of emotion level on transmission fidelity was found with high emotion legends being recalled with significantly greater accuracy than low emotion legends. The emotional valence of a legend was found not to have any effect on cumulative recall; thus emotional biases in recall go beyond disgust and can incorporate other emotions such as amusement, interest and surprise. This study is the first to examine an emotion bias in cultural transmission as a general phenomenon without focusing on the emotion of disgust.
This study uses urban legends to examine the effects of the social information bias and survival information bias on cultural transmission across three phases of transmission: the choose-to-receive phase, the encode-and-retrieve phase, and the choose-to-transmit phase. In line with previous research into content biases, a linear transmission chain design with 60 participants aged 18-52 was used to examine the encode-and-retrieve phase, while participants were asked to rank their interest in reading the story behind a headline and passing a story on for the other two phases. Legends which contained social information (Social Type), legends which contained survival information (Survival Type), and legends which contained both forms of information (Combined Type) were all recalled with significantly greater accuracy than control material, while Social and Combined Type legends were recalled with significantly greater accuracy than Survival Type legends. In another study with 30 participants aged 18-22, no significant differences were found between legend types in either the choose-to-receive phase or the choose-to-transmit phase.
Abstract Recent research into cultural transmission suggests that humans are disposed to learn, remember, and transmit certain types of information more easily than others, and that any information that is passed between people will be subjected to cognitive selective pressures that alter the content and structure so as to make it maximally transmittable. This paper presents a review of emerging research on content biases in cultural evolution with relevance to the transmission of popular narratives. This is illustrated with content analysis of urban legends, which found that most exploited at least one known content bias, with emotional information and social information being the most frequent. We argue that the narratives do not succeed because of the transmission of adaptively relevant information but because of their exploitation of content biases in human cognition.
The purpose of this paper is to understand how undergraduate students engage with career development. The Smarter World, Smarter Work Campaign, initiated by IBEC in 2018, was used as a framework to underpin the foundation of this research - to what extent do students understand the importance of career development education and how it relates to their own personal career journey?
This report highlights the importance of career management throughout the life cycle of a person’s
career. This study takes the current literature that exists and adds to the conversation using primary
research conducted with final year undergraduate students and lecturers delivering career development.
Based on the research questions proposed and the purpose of the study the following three strands were used as the focus for the research: 1. How students engage with career development?
2. At what stage do students begin to connect the classroom learning with their own career
development?
3. Can student engagement be enhanced with the use of specific learning theories in the delivery
of career development?
A mixed methods approach was used to gather data. A student survey (quantitative) and semi-structured interviews with lecturers (qualitative) were conducted. Surveys were chosen as they can be used to gather data to understand peoples’ interests and beliefs (Rea and Parker 2014). Semi-structured interviews were chosen as they increase the comprehensiveness of the data collected and
allow gaps to be identified and closed (Patton 1980, p. 206).
The author identified a gap where students entered third level with the view to gaining employment post-graduation but did not always engage with career development or see the benefit in engaging with it. Both the literature and the primary research pointed to institutions holding an assumption that the student had already made a decision on their career path before starting their third level
journey when many had not. The study makes a number of recommendations to Higher Education to bridge the gap between the move from second to third level and how best to guide undergraduate students in their career
development and give them the tools to manage their career journey throughout its’ life cycle.
This paper argues that trust cannot be taken for granted in long-term participatory research and promotes greater consideration to conceptualizing the trusting process as fluid and fragile. This awareness by researchers can reveal to them how the passing of time shapes and reshapes the nature of trusting relationships and their constant negotiation and re-negotiation. The paper draws together literature from different disciplines on the themes of trust, temporality and participatory research and outcomes from interviews and workshops undertaken for The Trust Map project to focus on two key moments that reveal the fragility of trust. These are the subtlety of disruption and trust on trial and trust at a distance. We discuss how trust was built over time through processes of interaction that were continually tested, incremental and participatory.
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