scholarly journals A cross-cultural investigation of young children's spontaneous invention of tool use behaviours

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 192240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karri Neldner ◽  
Eva Reindl ◽  
Claudio Tennie ◽  
Julie Grant ◽  
Keyan Tomaselli ◽  
...  

Through the mechanisms of observation, imitation and teaching, young children readily pick up the tool using behaviours of their culture. However, little is known about the baseline abilities of children's tool use: what they might be capable of inventing on their own in the absence of socially provided information. It has been shown that children can spontaneously invent 11 of 12 candidate tool using behaviours observed within the foraging behaviours of wild non-human apes (Reindl et al . 2016 Proc. R. Soc. B 283 , 20152402. ( doi:10.1098/rspb.2015.2402 )). However, no investigations to date have examined how tool use invention in children might vary across cultural contexts. The current study investigated the levels of spontaneous tool use invention in 2- to 5-year-old children from San Bushmen communities in South Africa and children in a large city in Australia on the same 12 candidate problem-solving tasks. Children in both cultural contexts correctly invented all 12 candidate tool using behaviours, suggesting that these behaviours are within the general cognitive and physical capacities of human children and can be produced in the absence of direct social learning mechanisms such as teaching or observation. Children in both cultures were more likely to invent those tool behaviours more frequently observed in great ape populations than those less frequently observed, suggesting there is similarity in the level of difficulty of invention across these behaviours for all great ape species. However, children in the Australian sample invented tool behaviours and succeeded on the tasks more often than did the Bushmen children, highlighting that aspects of a child's social or cultural environment may influence the rates of their tool use invention on such task sets, even when direct social information is absent.

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 593-607 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kam-shing Yip

Authentization, indigenization, cultural sensitivity, cultural competence and globalization are controversial issues in cross-cultural social work. In this article, the writer tries to clarify all these related concepts. In terms of various Asian cultural contexts, a model of dynamic Asian response and exchange in the field of cross-cultural social work practice in Asian countries is suggested. French L'authentization, l'indigénisation, la sensibilité culturelle, la compétence interculturelle et la mondialisation sont des questions controversées en travail social interculturel. Dans cet article, l'auteur tend à clarifier ces concepts interliés et suggère une réponse et des échanges asiatiques dynamiques dans le contexte culturel diversifié des contrées de l'Asie. Spanish La autencización, la indigenización, la sensibilidad cultural, la competencia cultural y la globalización son asuntos controvertidos en el trabajo social transcultural. El autor trata de clarificar todos estos relacionados conceptos. Respecto a varios contextos culturales de Asia, el autor sugiere un modelo dinámico de intercambio y respuesta asiática a la práctica de trabajo social transcultural en países de Asia.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 286-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Callaghan ◽  
Greg Wood

Purpose – The aim of this research was to determine the evolution of engagement with business ethics in the top 500 Australian corporations operating in the private sector from 1995 to 2010. Design/methodology/approach – Primary data were obtained via a non-sponsored and unsolicited self-administered mail questionnaire distributed to a census of the top 500 Australian companies operating in the private sector administered in both 1995 and 2010. This paper examines and compares the responses of the companies that possessed a code of ethics at those times. Findings – This paper finds that business ethics has continued to evolve over the period of the study and that, in most cases, such an evolution has been positive, with the majority of companies exhibiting high levels of engagement. Research limitations/implications – While the responses provided a rich picture of the evolution of Australian corporate engagement with business ethics, further longitudinal research exploring international and cross-cultural contexts would add to this understanding of organisational engagement. Practical and social implications – It would seem that codes of ethics have evolved beyond a regulatory requirement and are now considered an integral component of the corporate culture and commercial practice in the majority of Australia’s top 500 companies. Originality/value – Despite a history of business ethics research, longitudinal studies seeking to understand the evolution of corporate engagement to business ethics are exceedingly rare. This paper, unique and original in its focus on an Australian context, provides a basis for future studies focused on exploring international and cross-cultural contexts. This paper makes a substantive and valuable contribution to the literature as it quantifies the evolution of corporate engagement over a 15-year period.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 130-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jantina Clifford ◽  
Jane Kaplan Squires ◽  
Kimberly Murphy

1990 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 291-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven McNabb

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
LaTasha R Holden ◽  
Michelle LaMar ◽  
Malcolm Bauer

The goal of the present work is to build a foundation for understanding cognition and decision-making processes in innovative assessment contexts. Specifically, we will assess students’ Cross-Cultural Competence (3C: see Thomas et al., 2008) through a social simulation game. The present work will use Mindset (i.e., individuals beliefs about whether ability is fixed or changeable, see Dweck, 2006) to ground the project in theory because it has been shown to be a powerful motivator for decision-making and behavior in learning and achievement (Dweck & Leggett; 1988; Dweck, 1999), and in cross-cultural contexts (Dweck, 2012). The novel contribution of this paper is to apply Mindset theory to social situations requiring 3C, thus proposing the notion of cultural mindsets—defined here as the set of beliefs including affect, cognition, and behavior people bring to cross-cultural contexts. In cultural mindset, affect and cognition govern the ease with which people adapt, learn, and update cultural information. Additionally, we argue that cultural mindsets are important mechanisms involved in navigating cross-cultural situations effectively and should be considered more in future research. In order to understand how cultural mindset affects student performance, we will apply a computational cognitive modeling approach using Markov decision process (MDP) models. The MDP approach is appropriate for sequential decision-making in non-deterministic environments—as actions are chosen as part of a plan to achieve goals with the knowledge that some action effects will be probabilistic.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robert Dunaetz ◽  
Stephen S. Lambert

Missionary fathers are sometimes better equipped to undertake the missionary task than to be successful husbands and fathers in stressful, cross-cultural contexts. This paper examines several missiological principles which are congruent with family systems theory that can help missionary fathers ensure the success of their family life.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Siqi-Liu ◽  
Tobias Egner

Adaptive behavior requires finding, and adjusting, an optimal tradeoff between focusing on a current task-set (cognitive stability) and updating that task-set when the environment changes (cognitive flexibility). Such dynamic adjustments of cognitive flexibility are observed in cued task-switching paradigms, where switch costs tend to decrease as the proportion of switch trials over blocks increases. However, the learning mechanisms underlying this phenomenon, here referred to as the list-wide proportion switch effect (LWPSE), are currently unknown.We addressed this question across four behavioral experiments. Experiment 1 replicated the basic LWPSE reported in previous studies. Having participants switch between three instead of two tasks, Experiment 2 demonstrated that the LWPSE is preserved even when the specific alternate task to switch to cannot be anticipated. Experiments 3a and 3b tested for the generalization of list-wide switch-readiness to an unbiased “transfer task,” presented equally often as switch and repeat trials, by intermixing the transfertask with biased tasks. Despite the list-wide bias, the LWPSE was only found for biased tasks, suggesting that the modulations of switch costs are task set and/or task stimulus (item)-specific. To evaluate these two possibilities, Experiment 4 employed biased versus unbiased stimuli within biased task sets and found switch-cost modulations for both stimuli sets. These results establish how people adapt their stability-flexibility tradeoff to different contexts. Specifically, our findings show that people learn to associate context appropriate levels of switch readiness with switch-predictive cues, provided by task sets as well as specific task stimuli.


2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Y C So ◽  
Jack S F Hung ◽  
José J Bauermeister ◽  
Peter S Jensen ◽  
Doa Habib ◽  
...  

Dissemination of evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches for child and adolescent with behavioral and/or emotional problems is now a priority in the field worldwide. However, developing staff competence in evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches in different countries is complicated by some environmental and economic constraints. In this paper a distance training/supervision model is discussed. We describe seven specific challenges encountered and solutions used for overcoming the obstacles in order to implement evidence-based assessment and intervention approaches in different sites in Brazil, Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon.


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