Ch 2 vocab Flashcards
prestige bias
tendency among humans to value prestige. to know who has it, and to emulate those that do.
similarity bias
choosing whom to imitate, and learn from, based on the target’s similarity to themselves.
conformist transmission
a tendency to learn from people who are engaging in behaviors that are more common compared with others.
mentalizing
interest in the mental states of others, including their intentions, goals, preferences, and strategies.
imitative learning
learning strategy in which the learner internalizes something of the model’s goals and behavioral strategies.
emulative learning
learner focuses on the environmental events involved, such as how to use of one object could potentially cause changes in the state of the environment.
scaffolding
simplifying a task for a learner to use a step by step approach for mastery.
ratchet effect
in cultural learning, the process by which cultural information becomes more complex and often more useful over time because an initial idea can be learned from others and then modified and improved on by the learners.
cultural worlds
worlds that contain cultural ideas that have accumulated over time
encephalization quotient
the ratio of the brain weight of an animal to the brain weight predicted for a comparable animal of the same body size. (4.6 in humans.)
gene-culture coevolution
interaction of culture and genes by which genetic evolution produces skills that enhance cultural learning, and by which cultural habits come to shape the evolution of genes.
social brain hypothesis
(Dunbar, 1998) theory that cognitive demands inherent in social living led to the evolution of large primate brains.
neocortex ratio
the volume of the neocortex relative to the volume of the rest of the brain.
