Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-07T18:00:09.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Signaling games and music as a credible signal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2021

Massimo Lumaca
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Medicine, Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, 8000Aarhus, Denmarkmassimo.lumaca@clin.au.dk; elvira.brattico@clin.au.dk
Elvira Brattico
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Medicine, Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music Aarhus/Aalborg, 8000Aarhus, Denmarkmassimo.lumaca@clin.au.dk; elvira.brattico@clin.au.dk
Giosuè Baggio
Affiliation:
Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7941Trondheim, Norway. giosue.baggio@ntnu.no

Abstract

The argument by Mehr et al. that music emerged and evolved culturally as a credible signal is convincing, but it lacks one essential ingredient: a model of signaling behavior that supports the main hypothesis theoretically and empirically. We argue that signaling games can help us explain how musical structures emerge as population-level phenomena, through sender–receiver signaling interactions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baum, W. M., Richerson, P. J., Efferson, C. M., & Paciotti, B. M. (2004). Cultural evolution in laboratory microsocieties including traditions of rule giving and rule following. Evolution and Human Behavior, 25(5), 305326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galantucci, B. (2009). Experimental semiotics: A new approach for studying communication as a form of joint action. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(2), 393410.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirby, S., Dowman, M., & Griffiths, T. L. (2007). Innateness and culture in the evolution of language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(12), 52415245.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, D. (1969). Convention: A philosophical study. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lumaca, M., & Baggio, G. (2016). Brain potentials predict learning, transmission and modification of an artificial symbolic system. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 11(12), 19701979.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lumaca, M., & Baggio, G. (2017). Cultural transmission and evolution of melodic structures in multi-generational signaling games. Artificial Life, 23(3), 406423.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lumaca, M., Haumann, N. T., Vuust, P., Brattico, E., & Baggio, G. (2018). From random to regular: Neural constraints on the emergence of isochronous rhythm during cultural transmission. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 13(8), 877888.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lumaca, M., Kleber, B., Brattico, E., Vuust, P., & Baggio, G. (2019). Functional connectivity in human auditory networks and the origins of variation in the transmission of musical systems. eLife, 8, e48710.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., Knox, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens-Jones, D., Atwood, S., … Glowacki, L. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468), 957970.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mesoudi, A. (2011). Cultural evolution: How Darwinian theory can explain human culture and synthesize the social sciences. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mesoudi, A., & Whiten, A. (2008). The multiple roles of cultural transmission experiments in understanding human cultural evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 363(1509), 34893501.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miton, H., & Charbonneau, M. (2018). Cumulative culture in the laboratory: Methodological and theoretical challenges. Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1879), 20180677.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moreno, M., & Baggio, G. (2015). Role asymmetry and code transmission in signaling games: An experimental and computational investigation. Cognitive Science, 39(5), 918943.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Näätänen, R., Gaillard, A. W., & Mäntysalo, S. (1978). Early selective-attention effect on evoked potential reinterpreted. Acta Psychologica, 42(4), 313329.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nowak, I., & Baggio, G. (2016). The emergence of word order and morphology in compositional languages via multigenerational signaling games. Journal of Language Evolution, 1(2), 137150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, P. E., Brown, S., Sakai, E., & Currie, T. E. (2015). Statistical universals reveal the structures and functions of human music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(29), 89878992.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Skyrms, B. (2010). Signals: Evolution, learning, and information. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trainor, L. J. (2015). The origins of music in auditory scene analysis and the roles of evolution and culture in musical creation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 370(1664), 20140089.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed