9/14(月) 15:00-16:00　Siyi Gong (PhD candidate, UCLA) のトークセミナー「Social Learning in Intellectual Innovation: A Riddle-Crafting Paradigm」を開催します

2026.09.09

Place

Wako CBS Central 3F S305 Seminar Room / 脳科学中央研究棟3階 小セミナー室（S305）

Tittle

Social Learning in Intellectual Innovation: A Riddle-Crafting Paradigm

Abstract

Social learning is known for preserving existing cultural designs, but is it also crucial for generating novel, effective solutions? Building on theoretical and empirical work, we define intellectual innovation as a knowledge-based form of innovation and address key gaps regarding how social learning actively contributes to open-ended design spaces. We introduce a riddle-crafting paradigm combined with a closed diffusion-chain design, enabling open-ended creation, multidimensional measurement, and quantifiable performance evaluation. In Experiment 1, participants in social and asocial chains composed and refined riddles distinguishing poisonous from edible mushrooms; in Experiment 2, independent participants attempted to solve them. Although both modes yielded comparable objective solvability, social riddles were more efficient and diverse in form and content. Social participants also demonstrated greater motivation to improve, suggesting incremental gains that may emerge more fully over extended generations. Thus, socially transmitted intellectual innovations become better tailored for communication, open to mutation, and poised for cumulative refinement. Finally, we report preliminary findings on the prolonged generational effects of social learning and LLM-based text-image feature mapping.

Related papers:
Gong, S., Jiang, K., Kreiss, E., & Gao, T. (2026). Slow But Motivated: Social Learning in Open-ended Intellectual Innovation. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 48).
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7n9297q7

Speaker

Siyi Gong
PhD candidate, Department of Communication, UCLA