TY - GEN
T1 - What the Baldwin Effect affects
AU - Morgan, Thomas J.H.
AU - Griffiths, Thomas L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments. This work was supported by grant number BCS-1456709 from the National Science Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2015.All rights reserved.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - The Baldwin Effect is a proposed mechanism by which plasticity facilitates adaptive phenotypic and genetic evolution. In particular it has been proposed to be involved in the evolution of language. Here we investigate three factors affecting the extent to which plastic traits are fixed by selection: (i) the difficulty with which traits can be acquired through plasticity, (ii) the importance of traits to fitness, and (iii) the nature of dependencies between different traits. We find that selection preferentially fixes traits that are difficult to acquire through plasticity, traits that have larger fitness benefits, and traits that affect the acquisition of, or benefits from, other traits. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the evolution of language as well as non-human behaviors and reconsider the evolutionary significance of the Baldwin Effect.
AB - The Baldwin Effect is a proposed mechanism by which plasticity facilitates adaptive phenotypic and genetic evolution. In particular it has been proposed to be involved in the evolution of language. Here we investigate three factors affecting the extent to which plastic traits are fixed by selection: (i) the difficulty with which traits can be acquired through plasticity, (ii) the importance of traits to fitness, and (iii) the nature of dependencies between different traits. We find that selection preferentially fixes traits that are difficult to acquire through plasticity, traits that have larger fitness benefits, and traits that affect the acquisition of, or benefits from, other traits. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the evolution of language as well as non-human behaviors and reconsider the evolutionary significance of the Baldwin Effect.
KW - Baldwin effect
KW - gene-culture co-evolution
KW - language evolution
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85077919170
T3 - Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2015
SP - 1643
EP - 1648
BT - Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2015
A2 - Noelle, David C.
A2 - Dale, Rick
A2 - Warlaumont, Anne
A2 - Yoshimi, Jeff
A2 - Matlock, Teenie
A2 - Jennings, Carolyn D.
A2 - Maglio, Paul P.
PB - The Cognitive Science Society
T2 - 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Mind, Technology, and Society, CogSci 2015
Y2 - 23 July 2015 through 25 July 2015
ER -