A group of psychologists from the United States and Canada conducted a curious experiment, during which it became clear that communication in social networks promotes the transfer of skills from generation to generation.
In recent years, the term “social network” refers to Internet services that allow users to transfer their social connections to the network, but the very concept of a social network was suggested long before the creation of personal computers. The definition adopted by scientists states that a social network is a structure (mathematically - a social graph) consisting of a group of nodes, which are people or organizations, as well as connections between nodes. Relationships can express one or another relationship: for example, kinship, acquaintance or teamwork.
The authors, specialists from universities in British Columbia (Canada) and California (USA) set themselves the task of testing the hypothesis of the importance of social networks for the accumulation and preservation of knowledge, reports Lenta.ru. Having gathered two groups of volunteers, the scientists set before them the task of transferring to the “next generation” (other participants in the experiments) knowledge of how to tie knots or how to draw a complex figure in a graphic editor. In one group there was a rule - each participant receives knowledge from one teacher and transfers them to one student, and in the second group it was possible to learn from all five teachers representing the past “generation”.
In the course of the experiment, it turned out that the loners eventually lost some of their knowledge and skills or remained at the level of the first generation. In groups that could learn from each other, the picture was different: the skills, on the contrary, became noticeably better. For example, a complex figure from several circles among participants of a jointly trained group from the eighth generation turned out to be almost indistinguishable from the original (one error for five attempts), while the loners at best drew correctly in two cases out of five. In the case of knitting, the situation was worse, but even then the last joint generation correctly performed two thirds of the tasks, while the last single made two thirds of the nodes with errors.
According to researchers, these experiments confirm the importance of social interaction for the preservation of knowledge. And although this method of transmitting information shows good results in experiments, no social network can replace live communication between people.
The article is based on materials .
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