The unpreceded amount of tools and skills that humans have developed has been attributed to their ability to socially transmit and accumulate more and more complex knowledge across generations, known as “cumulative culture” (Boyd & Richerson, 1996). However, the cognitive mechanisms allowing this accumulation remain poorly understood. To bridge this gap, Brand et al. (2022) have suggested that analogy, which occupies a central place in human cognition (Hofstadter & Sander, 2013), is also a crucial mechanism underlying cultural evolution. The idea is that relying on analogies with familiar concepts to learn and teach novel ones facilitates the transmission of complex new behaviors that would otherwise be too cognitively demanding to communicate. The current project aims to build an experimental paradigm allowing us to empirically test this claim. By associating theories and methods developed by cultural evolutionists and cognitive psychologists, it will shed light on the mechanisms that have enabled humans to accumulate such a vast amount of cultural knowledge.

Our specific goal is to investigate whether analogies facilitate the transmission of complex tool-use. The design of our study will be based upon the experimental paradigm established by Bosch et al. (2018), where participants who had limited experience using chopsticks were trained with grasping marbles with chopsticks and dropping them in a cylindrical container. Tool use learning was assessed via behavioral performance regarding the number of successful marble drops and eye tracking measurements reflecting whether visual attention was restrictively focused on the chopsticks (i.e. confirmatory strategy) or could move away toward the goal (i.e. anticipatory strategy)

We will adopt a linear transmission chain experimental design (Mesoudi & Whitten, 2015), and constitute ten chains of five participants for each of the two experimental conditions. The first participant of each chain will be taught how to use chopsticks with either analogical explanations (i.e. “hold the second chopstick as you would hold a pen”) or only literal explanations (i.e. “hold one extremity of the chopstick between your thumb and pointer finger, and the other extremity with your middle finger”). She will subsequently accomplish the chopstick task and explain to the next participant how to perform it, and so on until the last participant of the chain. We predict that the last participant of the chains in the analogy condition will perform better and use more efficient visual strategies than participants in the literal condition.

By highlighting the role of analogies in cultural transmission, our interdisciplinary project would potentially add both to the cultural evolution field, by contributing to clarify the cognitive mechanisms involved in cultural transmission, and to cognitive science, by revealing the evolutionary origins of analogical thinking. It would also motivate future works exploring other ways in which analogies are guiding cultural evolution, such as when designing new technologies based on already familiar ones.

‘Types of Titus’ will extend the earlier work of the Geneva-Exeter Renaissance Exchange (GEREx, University of Geneva/University of Exeter Strategic Partnership 2018) by strengthening the collaborative forum which this earlier programme initiated. It will focus on William Shakespeare’s play Titus Andronicus, examining how a play written in the late sixteenth century has had, and continues to carry, significant socio-political resonance. In particular, it will draw upon the specialities of both English departments in order to develop discussion surrounding gendered, racial, and eco-critical concerns in this play, with an emphasis upon its contemporary adaptations and afterlives.
Titus Andronicus is a text which has been translated and received in diverse linguistic and historical settings. In addition to an extensive history of the play in production in English, Botho Strauss’ play Viol (2005) is a French-language adaptation of Shakespeare’s work. In German, Titus has a reception history as early as the seventeenth century (an edition of an early modern German Tito Andronicus has recently been published by Prof Lukas Erne of UNIGE), yet also was adapted in the light of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic at the turn of the last century (an adaptation which Prof Pascale Aebischer has written about). The play is back in the repertoire of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (Shakespeare’s Globe) in London from January to April 2023 and it is against the backdrop of this important revival that the ‘Types of Titus’ exchange enabled by the collaboration between Geneva and Exeter will be an opportunity to reflect on the historical imbrication of this play in the nexus between racial discrimination, sexual violence and political division, and its critical role in opening up debates that centre on social justice. As such, it is topical for the continuation of GEREx in two senses: thematically important in this present moment, whilst also reflective of the linguistic and intellectual exchange which the Geneva-Exeter Strategic Partnership represents for Renaissance Studies.
The centre of the collaboration will be two knowledge exchange events open to students and faculty of all levels at both universities, alongside an online symposium hosted by the British Shakespeare Association that shares GEREx 1 and GEREx 2 research with a broader academic and theatregoing audience, to coincide with a revival of Titus Andronicus of international significance in 2023 (BSA support has been secured, following on from GEREx 1’s successful roundtable at the BSA 2021 conference). For the first phase of the collaboration, in January 2023 a delegation from Geneva will travel to Exeter via London, where they will be joined by Exeter colleagues to watch a performance of Titus Andronicus at the candlelit Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (Shakespeare’s Globe). In Exeter, the visitors will present their research in a seminar focused upon digital humanities approaches to early modern texts. In May 2023, a delegation from Exeter will, in return, visit Geneva to hold a workshop at which they will share their specialised knowledge in performance and adaptation studies.