Understanding how things connect helps people invent, 1,200-player experiment suggests

Our capacity for innovation, rather than being the work of random variation, is based on an intrinsic understanding of how the world works, claim Karolinska Institutet and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam researchers in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

What is it that makes humans so good at creating new ideas and technologies? According to this latest study, a vital role in the process is played by an often overlooked cognitive ability: our semantic knowledge or, more prosaically, our understanding of connections between things, and how to apply it.

The researchers invited more than 1,200 people to play a computer game in which the aim was to create new "innovations" by combining various items. Some participants worked with familiar objects such as rocks and branches, while others had to perform an identical task using abstract symbols lacking any semantic significance.

The results were clear. When the participants were able to use their semantic knowledge, they were much better at finding serviceable combinations. Without such knowledge, on the other hand, they performed no better than random bots, a finding that still held when they had access to social learning—i.e., the chance to see what others in the group had managed to do.

A cognitive toolbox

"Semantic knowledge is our cognitive toolbox," says Björn Lindström, researcher at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet. "It helps us to understand what things can work together."

The researchers also show that this knowledge engages with social learning, a combination that proved especially powerful: groups with access to both semantic knowledge and social learning produced roughly twice as many unique innovations as groups that only had access to social learning. Together, these preconditions mean that innovations are not only disseminated but also amplified and refined down the generations.

The study was based on a computer model of cultural development and on human studies. In the model, virtual individuals were able to either combine objects randomly or use an internal "knowledge map" of how concepts are related. Just like in the experiment, the researchers found that access to such knowledge turbocharged innovation.

How the world works

According to the researchers, the results indicate that prior generations pass down something more than, and at least as important as, new innovations: an understanding of how the world works.

"Without this toolbox, human innovation would be based solely on random guesswork, regardless of how motivated we are or how much we can learn from each other," says Dr. Lindström. "Our results delve into such fundamental questions as the nature of creativity, how knowledge is transmitted down the generations and what it is that makes us unique as innovators."

The group's next step is to interrogate how semantic knowledge works in more complex and real-life situations—and how it can actually sometimes hamper novel, unexpected solutions, since strong semantic priors can also cause us to overlook counterintuitive or "unreasonable" discoveries.