This sketch visualizes a simplified version of the model I created for Cultural diffusion dynamics depend on behavioural production rules. A novel behaviour competes against an established tradition in a structured population. Agents can socially learn the novel behaviour from observing its production by others, following the network-based diffusion (NBDA) framework. Once an agent knows the behavior, how often it chooses to use it is governed by experience-weighted attraction (EWA) reinforcement learning.

This model disambiguates how social cues act on acquisition (social transmission) versus production (social information use). Changes in the production mechanism alter transmission dynamics in counter-intuitive ways. For example, strong social information use hinders the spread of new variants. We can also compare the order that agents acquire the behavior to the order that agents first use a behavior (plotted in the heatmap). The paper gives more details about when we can expect these orders to diverge.