Data from: Interactivity, innovation and storytelling in a collaborative task

Supporting data for: Bietti, L.M., Bangerter, A., Knutsen, D. & Mayor, E. (under review). Interactivity, innovation and storytelling in a collaborative task. SAS code and raw data for experiment. Participants (n=288) working in 48 chains with three generations of pairs had to learn and complete a collaborative food preparation task (ravioli-making), and then transmit their experience to a new generation of participants in an interactive and non-interactive condition.  Food preparation is a real-world task that it is taught and learned across cultures and transmitted over generations in families and groups. Pairs were defined as teachers or learners depending on their role in the transmission chain. The number of good exemplars of ravioli each pair produced was taken as measurement of performance. The main results showed that (1) interactivity promoted the transmission of more information from teachers to learners; (2) increased quantity of information transmission from teachers led to higher performance in learners; (3) higher performance generations introduced more innovations in transmission sessions; (4) learners applied those transmitted innovations to their performance which made them persist over generations; (5) storytelling was specialized for the transmission of non-routine, unexpected information. Our findings offer new insights on how interactivity, innovation and storytelling affect the cultural transmission of complex collaborative tasks.