Any transmission of behavior from one generation to the next via non-genetic means is a process of culture. Culture provides major advantages for survival in the biological world. This dissertation develops four methods that harness the mechanisms of culture to enhance the power of neuroevolution: culling overlarge litters, mate selection by complementary competence, phenotypic diversity maintenance, and teaching offspring to respond like an elder. The methods are efficient because they operate without requiring additional fitness evaluations, and because each method addresses a different aspect of neuroevolution, they also combine smoothly. The combined system balances diversity and selection pressure, and improves performance both in terms of learning speed and solution quality in sequential decision tasks.

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PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 2002. Technical Report AI-02-295.

@PhdThesis{mcquesten:phd02, title={Cultural Enhancement Of Neuroevolution}, author={Paul H. McQuesten}, school={Department of Computer Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin}, address={Austin, TX}, note={Technical Report AI-02-295}, url="http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/?mcquesten:phd02", year={2002} }