Fig. 1.

a The classic telephone game, in which the original sentence’s form is copied along players, often resulting in the last individual receiving a completely different sentence form than what was originally whispered by the first participant. b The ‘socially mediated reinnovation game’ in which the sentence form is repeated anew to each participant by an independent whisperer, without any form copying between individuals. This game results in each individual producing almost exactly the same sentence form—creating an illusion of copying to outside observers