Cultural Transmission and Evolution of Mushroom Knowledge: Insights from Mycophobic Norway

The dataset used in this study contains trial-level data from an experiment investigating the cultural transmission of mushroom knowledge in a mycophobic population. Each row in the dataset corresponds to a single mushroom trial, representing the transmission of information about one of 24 unfamiliar mushroom species from one participant to another within a linear transmission chain. Participants were assigned to one of seven chains, each consisting of eight generations, and transmitted information in dyadic interactions. The dataset includes the following variables: Participant.ID (a unique identifier for each participant), Mushroom.ID (an identifier for each mushroom stimulus), Chain (indicating which transmission chain the participant belonged to), and Generation (ranging from 1 to 8, denoting the participant’s position in the chain). The variable Edibility.Input records the edibility category that was transmitted to the participant by the previous generation and includes three levels: “poisonous,” “edible,” and “inedible.” The variable Fact.Type indicates whether the participant received a negative, positive, or neutral contextual fact related to the mushroom. Personal.Impact denotes whether the original source of the information was described as familiar (e.g., someone from the participant’s own village) or unfamiliar (e.g., someone from a neighbouring village), capturing the model-based manipulation. The outcome variables include ER (edibility retention), which is binary and coded as 1 if the participant correctly transmitted the edibility classification they received, and 0 otherwise. Classified.Poisonous is also binary and records whether the participant classified the mushroom as poisonous, regardless of its actual or received edibility category. This variable is used to measure the emergence of conservative classification strategies over time. Post-hoc questionnaires confirmed that participants were unfamiliar with the specific mushroom species and had limited or no prior experience with wild mushroom foraging, minimizing the influence of prior knowledge. This dataset supports the analysis of content-based and model-based transmission biases, as well as the cumulative cultural evolution of both learnability and conservativity.本研究使用的数据集包含一项实验的试次级数据，该实验旨在探究恐菇人群中蘑菇知识的文化传播。数据集中的每一行对应一次蘑菇试次，代表24种陌生蘑菇物种中某一种的信息在一条线性传播链中从一名参与者传递至另一名参与者。参与者被分配至7条传播链之一，每条传播链包含8个世代，参与者以二元互动形式完成信息传递。 该数据集包含以下变量：参与者编号（Participant.ID，每位参与者的唯一标识符）、蘑菇刺激物编号（Mushroom.ID，对应每种蘑菇刺激物的标识符）、传播链编号（Chain，用于指示参与者所属的传播链），以及世代编号（Generation，取值范围为1至8，代表参与者在传播链中的位置）。变量可食性输入信息（Edibility.Input）记录了上一世代传递给参与者的可食性类别，包含三个取值："poisonous"（有毒）、"edible"（可食用）与"inedible"（不可食用）。变量事实类型（Fact.Type）用于指示参与者接收到的与蘑菇相关的负面、正面或中性背景事实。个人影响程度（Personal.Impact）用于表征基于模型的操纵操作：该变量记录信息的原始来源被描述为熟悉（例如参与者所在村庄的人员）还是陌生（例如邻村人员）。 结果变量包括可食性留存率（ER，edibility retention），为二分类变量，若参与者准确传递了其接收到的可食性分类则编码为1，否则为0。有毒分类判定（Classified.Poisonous）同样为二分类变量，记录参与者是否将该蘑菇归类为有毒，不考虑其实际或接收到的可食性类别，该变量用于衡量随时间推移保守分类策略的出现情况。 事后问卷确认，参与者均不熟悉本次实验所用的具体蘑菇物种，且对野生蘑菇采食仅有极少甚至完全没有既往采食经验，最大限度降低了先验知识的影响。本数据集可用于分析基于内容与基于模型的传播偏差，以及可习得性与保守性的累积文化演化。