Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves Are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission.

ABSTRACT: The potential for behaviours to spread via cultural transmission has profound implications for our understanding of social dynamics and evolution. Several studies have provided empirical evidence that local traditions can be maintained in animal populations via conformist learning (i.e. copying the majority). A conformist bias can be characterized by a sigmoidal relationship between a behavior's prevalence in the population and an individual's propensity to adopt that behavior. For this reason, the presence of conformist learning in a population is often inferred from a sigmoidal acquisition curve in which the overall rate of adoption for the behavior is taken as the dependent variable. However, the validity of sigmoidal acquisition curves as evidence for conformist learning has recently b

SUBMITTER: Smaldino PE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6143626 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature