{"pk":25655,"title":"What the Baldwin Effect affects","subtitle":null,"abstract":"The Baldwin Effect is a proposed mechanism by which plasticity\nfacilitates adaptive phenotypic and genetic evolution. In\nparticular it has been proposed to be involved in the evolution\nof language. Here we investigate three factors affecting\nthe extent to which plastic traits are fixed by selection: (i) the\ndifficulty with which traits can be acquired through plasticity,\n(ii) the importance of traits to fitness, and (iii) the nature of\ndependencies between different traits. We find that selection\npreferentially fixes traits that are difficult to acquire through\nplasticity, traits that have larger fitness benefits, and traits that\naffect the acquisition of, or benefits from, other traits. We conclude\nby discussing the implications of these findings for the\nevolution of language as well as non-human behaviors and reconsider\nthe evolutionary significance of the Baldwin Effect","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Baldwin effect; gene-culture co-evolution; language\nevolution."}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hg7m32w","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Thomas","middle_name":"J.H.","last_name":"Morgan","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Berkeley","department":""},{"first_name":"Thomas","middle_name":"L","last_name":"Griffiths","name_suffix":"","institution":"University of California, Berkeley","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2015-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/25655/galley/15279/download/"}]}