Learning culture Flashcards
Cultural transmission
Def: transfer and acquisition of cultural information through social learning
•importance with size and degree of industrialization in the society
1. Vertical transmission: parents teaching cultural information to their children
•ex: parents teaching you how to cook
2. Horizontal transmission: passing on cultural information between people in the same generation
•ex: friends at school teaching you how to play a game, tagging friends in memes
3. Oblique transmission: passing cultural information from older generation
Hunter gatherer vs modern societies
HG: very heavy vertical transmission (kids)
•when there’s collaborative child rearing, oblique transmission occurs
•when child is self-sufficient, shift to horizontal transmission
MS: heavy emphasis on oblique transmission (lifetime)
•starts happening when child is very young
Tools used in cultural transmission*
- Language:
•unique to humans
•animals might mutate language, but it isn’t complex - ToM:
•develops as we grow up (revolution in cognitive skills)
•social interactions and playing with others help develop ToM
Tomasello, Kruger, and Ratner
Theory of cultural learning that ToM enables humans to engage in unique forms of learning
•humans can understand another perspective while animals cannot
•revolution of cognitive tools: different forms of learning emerge at distinct developmental stages
Birth - 9 months
9 months - 4 years*
Infants begin to show interest in objects
•focus is primarily on objects (no attention payed to the teacher)
•emulative learning: figuring out how an object affects environment/how to manipulate an object
•seen in infants and nonhuman primates
•ex: watching mom open a jar of peanut butter
9m-4y
Beginning of cultural transmission emerges
•recognize others as intentional agent (people with independent intentions/goals)
•develops perspective taking, gaze following, and joint attentional interactions
•starts imitative learning: over imitate models with the focus on fulfilling goal of the model
Imitative learning is most likely when:
•demonstrator is warm and nurturing, an authority figure, and is similar to the child
•demonstrator has been rewarded for their behaviour
•situation is unfamiliar
•learner has been rewarded for previous imitative learning
4 - 6 years
6 - 7 years*
Learners recognize others as mental agents: having independent thoughts, but may or may not be right (false belief tasks)
•learner starts referring to mental stages of others (“he thinks that tastes good”)
•learner can engage in deception
•learner engages in instructed learning (instructions on how to behave in certain contexts) by internalizing instructions, and regulating behaviour in future similar situations with intersubjective dialogue
Learners recognize others as reflective agents: people who can reflect other’s beliefs
•hypothetical other (“someone might think that…”)
•engage in collaborative learning: transitive discussions with each other and joint planning
•ex: drama in school
•Allows for the co-creation of new cultural information: key for developing complex moral reasoning skills and ideas
Culture and animals
Using psychological definition, humans are not unique in having culture/engaging in cultural learning
•ex: eating culture,grieving rituals in animals
Rats:
•learn foraging techniques from parents
Indigo bunting males:
•learn songs from older males/species in the environment
Chimps:
•foraging for termites techniques
Humans are unique because
•humans can learn cultural info much faster
•humans do have cumulative cultural complexity
Human learning *
1) individual learning: show up and figure it out on your own with no help from others
•difficult when the problem is complex
•need to keep track of all information is not possible (would be too expensive)
2) social learning: mimic/copying
The brain *
2% of our body weight using 16% of our basil metabolism (animals use 1-3%)
Cephalization factor: expected relationship between average body weight of a species and their average brain weight
•EQ measured: actual brain weight over expected brain weight based on body weight
•Greater EQ associated with more social species and complex social systems
•Ex: dogs 1.2 (expected), dolphins 4.1 (4x larger than expected), humans 7.4 (7x larger than expected and higher than any other animal)
Theories for why the human brain is big*
1) fruit consumption: some primates eat a lot of (seasonal) fruit requiring mental maps
2) food extraction: some primates eat difficult foods requiring ingenuity to extract
3) social brain hypothesis: some primates have complex social worlds
Dunbar 1992:
•no relationship between neocortex ratio and fruit/neocortex ratio and food extraction
•social brain hypothesis: a predictive relationship between neocortex ratio and social brain
Neocortex
Associated with higher order functions
•sensory perception, language, and conscious complex thoughts (culture)
•newest part of cerebral cortex
•brain size increase is neocortex getting bigger
•ratio: volume of neocortex over volume of the rest of the brain
Cultural brain hypothesis *
Recursive cycle that leads to increased cultural complicity: social learning – group size – brain size
Social learning: we learn from models to gain information (not individual learning)
•requires ToM
•evolution of accepting large groups
Group size: cultural learning more effective in large groups
•prestige bias: attending to people who are better respected/get more attention
•ratchet effect: cumulative cultural complexity (increases overtime)
*ex: people started hitting with rocks and now people use hammers
Brain size: large brains are needed to deal with larger groups/their problems
•allows for better learning/complexity
•maintaining large brains means loss of muscle and intestinal health (weaker)
How we got to where we are (guns germs and steel)*
Guns germs and steel: how did some cultures historically end up with so much more than others
•Intelligence: cannot be measured and other cultures with less success seem intelligent
•Must be cultural variation (evoked causes vs transmitted causes)
Proximal causes: something that has direct and immediate effects
•ex: having guns and metal armour
Distal causes: initial differences that lead to long term effects
•ex: domestication of nutritious plants and productive animals for labour and a food source that can reproduce quickly, resulting in a range of specializations (technology)
Theories to explain cultural evolution
Go over with gill
Memetic view (Rickard Dokins): cultural evolution parallel to genetic evolution, stating 3 reasons why some memes persist/survive more than others:
1) Replication
•when a meme is copied through imitation
Imitation allows for vertical, horizontal, and oblique transmission, making meme replication very rapid
•memes are high in fecundity (able to create lots of copies of themselves)
2) Variation
•when a meme undergoes mutation (eg., modifications through misinterpretation, embellishment) or recombination (e.g., two or more memes are combined)
•new memes are produced leading to “innovations”
•memes are high in fidelity (accuracy) at first, then low overtime
3) Selection
•some memes are retained in memory better (last longer and spread faster)
•memes more likely to be retained if they are associated with
•survival/reproductive advantage, economic advantage, positive affect, fear, easy communicability
Go over with gill
- Equilibrium
•traditionally used in evolutionary biology, different environments with different selection pressures select different adaptations
•really difficult for a culture to shift from its equilibrium state
•need to push that perceived frequency beyond the tipping point and want to create enduring persistent cultural change
Socialization experience (fetus)
28 weeks: reliable response to acoustics
•can pick up rhythm and syllables
•vowels because they’re louder and have longer duration
Background noise (noise floor)
•sounds fetuses mostly hear in the uterus: maternal respiration, cardiovascular and intestinal activity and physical movements
•intelligible speech must surpass background noise and other factors obscuring speech such as:
•tissues and fluids surrounding fetal head, route of sounds transmission into fetal inner ear, sensitivity of fetal hearing mechanism
Socialization experience (babies)
They cry and sleep a lot
•sleep: biological necessity and universal (parameters are not universal)
•infants (and adults) sleep 1.5 hours less in asian countries (report higher sleep probs)
*Japs always sleep the least
Europeans: mostly sleep alone
Asians: mostly sleep in parents room
Us and Canada: bed sharing more common among ethnic minorities
*Emphasizes importance of dependence and interdependence
