2026-06-01 カロリンスカ研究所（KI）
＜関連情報＞
- https://news.ki.se/our-knowledge-of-the-world-drives-innovation
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2530750123
意味論的知識はイノベーションを導き、文化の進化を促進する Semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution
Anil Yaman, Shen Tian, and Björn Lindström
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Published:May 26, 2026
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2530750123
Significance
Human cumulative culture depends on our ability to innovate. While most research emphasizes how social learning spreads and preserves innovations, the cognitive processes that generate them remain poorly understood. Our study shows how semantic knowledge—our internal map of how concepts are related—guides innovation by directing exploration toward meaningful solutions. This cognitive process also works together with social learning to enhance collective innovation. Together, these findings identify a key cognitive foundation for human innovation, helping to explain its uniquely open-ended nature.
Abstract
Cultural evolution allows ideas and technologies to accumulate across generations, reaching their most complex and open-ended form in humans. While social learning enables the transmission of such innovations, the cognitive processes that generate them remain poorly understood. Classical theories typically treat innovation as random variation, a simplification insufficient for explaining the complexity of human cultural evolution. We propose that semantic knowledge—the associations linking concepts to their properties and functions—guides human innovation and drives cumulative culture. To test this, we combined an agent-based model, which examines how semantic knowledge shapes cultural evolutionary dynamics, with a large-scale behavioral experiment (N = 1,243) testing its role in human innovation. Across both approaches, we found that semantic knowledge directed exploration toward meaningful solutions, enhanced innovation success, and enabled generalization from prior discoveries. Moreover, semantic knowledge interacted synergistically with social learning to amplify innovation and accelerate cumulative cultural change. In contrast, experimental participants lacking access to semantic knowledge performed no better than chance, even when social learning was possible, and relied on shallow exploration strategies for innovation. Together, these findings suggest that semantic knowledge is a key cognitive process underpinning human cumulative culture.
