scholarly journals Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 1149-1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergely Csibra ◽  
György Gergely
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Natural Pedagogy ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Human Specific

We propose that the cognitive mechanisms that enable the transmission of cultural knowledge by communication between individuals constitute a system of ‘natural pedagogy’ in humans, and represent an evolutionary adaptation along the hominin lineage. We discuss three kinds of arguments that support this hypothesis. First, natural pedagogy is likely to be human-specific: while social learning and communication are both widespread in non-human animals, we know of no example of social learning by communication in any other species apart from humans. Second, natural pedagogy is universal: despite the huge variability in child-rearing practices, all human cultures rely on communication to transmit to novices a variety of different types of cultural knowledge, including information about artefact kinds, conventional behaviours, arbitrary referential symbols, cognitively opaque skills and know-how embedded in means-end actions. Third, the data available on early hominin technological culture are more compatible with the assumption that natural pedagogy was an independently selected adaptive cognitive system than considering it as a by-product of some other human-specific adaptation, such as language. By providing a qualitatively new type of social learning mechanism, natural pedagogy is not only the product but also one of the sources of the rich cultural heritage of our species.

Putting social cognitive mechanisms back into cumulative technological culture: Social interactions serve as a mechanism for children's early knowledge acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda S. Haber ◽  
Kathleen H. Corriveau
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture

Abstract Osiurak and Reynaud offer a unified cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture, arguing that it begins with non-social cognitive skills that allow humans to learn and develop new technical information. Drawing on research focusing on how children acquire knowledge through interactions others, we argue that social learning is essential for humans to acquire technical information.

The social construction of the cultural mind

2005 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
György Gergely ◽  
Gergely Csibra
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Imitative Learning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Human Specific ◽  
Efficient Transfer

How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-olds and argue that the predictive scope of existing imitative learning models is either too broad or too narrow to account for these findings. We outline our alternative theory of a human-specific adaptation for ‘pedagogy’, a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics. We show the central role that innately specified ostensive-communicative triggering cues and learner-directed manner of knowledge manifestations play in constraining and guiding selective imitation of relevant cultural knowledge that is both new and cognitively opaque to the naive learner.

A cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture is useful and necessary but only if it also applies to other species

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Social Learning Processes

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

Buckets of steam and left-handed hammers. The fool’s errand as a signal of epistemic and coalitional dominance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radu Umbres
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Coalition Building ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Professional Groups ◽  
Left Handed ◽  
Epistemic Vigilance ◽  
Epistemic Asymmetry ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Strategic Signaling

In various professional groups, experts send rookies on absurd tasks as a prank. The fool’s errand appears in factories and hospitals, in elite schools and scout camps, among soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Why are newcomers deceived and humiliated and why are fool’s errands similar in structure despite various contexts and remarkably persistent over time? Here I propose that the cultural success of this social institution and its recurrent features across history and cultures are based on evolved cognitive mechanisms activated by apprenticeship as social learning and group induction. I will show that evolved mechanisms of epistemic vigilance explain how novices are reliably deceived by experts using opaque statements erroneously perceived as pedagogical. Furthermore, evolved capacities for coalition building explain why insiders use the prank as strategic signaling of hierarchies based on epistemic asymmetry. The intersection of cognitive mechanisms and patterns of professional recruitment create a tradition where insiders coordinate to humiliate newcomers to assert epistemic and coalitional dominance.

Empowering Aboriginal Families as Their Children’s First Teachers of Cultural Knowledge, Languages and Identity at Galiwin’ku FaFT Playgroup

2021 ◽  
pp. 183693912110389
Author(s):  
Dorothy Gapany ◽  
Marilyn Murukun ◽  
Jessica Goveas ◽  
Jonica Dhurrkay ◽  
Verity Burarrwanga ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Educational Program ◽  
Learning Experiences ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Aboriginal Children

Embracing and embedding the rich cultural knowledge, languages, concepts and skills that Aboriginal families and children bring to playgroup is key to empowering families as their children’s first teachers and strengthening young children’s self-esteem, pride, confidence and identities. In this article, we share our story of how we have explored and upheld the strengths of Yolŋu identity, cultural knowledge and language in the Galiwin’ku Families as First Teachers (FaFT) playgroup early educational program. We highlight the ways we have supported mothers to embed gesture, sign language, Yolngu Matha language conventions, Yolŋu kinship, clan concepts and dance into their daily interactions with their children at FaFT. We reflect on what has empowered mothers to feel agentic in their children’s learning in these playgroups and to build strong Yolŋu identities in young children and argue that playgroup is a vital educational platform through which to deliver culturally meaningful early learning experiences for Aboriginal children prior to preschool.

Toward a Relational Cosmopolitanism

2019 ◽  
pp. 140-185
Author(s):  
Margaret A. McLaren
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Self ◽  
Gender Justice ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Structural Inequality ◽  
Rabindranath Tagore ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
Political Relationships ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich

This chapter argues that cosmopolitanism as a framework for global gender justice fails to capture the rich diversity and the power differences among women. It evaluates two prominent cosmopolitan positions, individualist cosmopolitanism and institutional cosmopolitanism. Individualist cosmopolitanism relies on an abstract and atomistic notion of the self. Abstracting from social and cultural context diminishes the significance of identity, and holding a strongly individualist notion of the self obscures the power relationships that undergird structural inequality. Institutional cosmopolitanism accounts for our interconnections through unequal global economic and political relationships, but it leaves aside issues of gender and culture. The chapter draws on the work of Rabindranath Tagore to construct a new type of cosmopolitanism, relational cosmopolitanism, that recognizes our interdependence, appreciates diversity, and criticizes power relationships. Supplemented by feminist ideas of world traveling and difference as a creative resource, relational cosmopolitanism is a promising framework for feminists interested in global gender justice.

Identity Meanings and Categorical Inequality

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly B. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Affect Control Theory ◽  
Affect Control ◽  
The People ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
The Rich

I use affect control theory (ACT) to show how we apply cultural knowledge to classify and form impressions of the people we encounter, producing inequality as widely shared cultural beliefs are translated into predictable patterns of social action. I apply ACT measurement dimensions (evaluation, potency, and activity) to show that cultural beliefs about social groups, known as “social identity meanings,” convey groups’ relative positions within systems of inequality such as race/ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexuality, religion, and social class. I find that privileged groups (e.g., whites, the rich, heterosexuals, Americans, and Christians) are higher in power (potency) but lower in status (evaluation) than other groups across dimensions of inequality. This meaning profile is shared by roles, traits, and behaviors that signify authority across diverse social domains. I consider the implications of these findings and of ACT more broadly for understanding how inequalities reflected in cultural meanings are often reproduced through interactions.

Social learning across the life cycle: cultural knowledge acquisition for honey collection among the Jenu Kuruba, India

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 460-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Demps ◽  
Francisco Zorondo-Rodríguez ◽  
Claude García ◽  
Victoria Reyes-García
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Cultural Knowledge

Research on Production of Bluecoke with Low Temperature Carbonization Process

2012 ◽  
Vol 724 ◽  
pp. 221-224
Author(s):  
Lei Wu ◽  
Jun Zhou ◽  
Xin Zhe Lan ◽  
Xi Cheng Zhao ◽  
Yong Hui Song ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Temperature ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Coke Oven ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Carbonization Process ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich

Bluecoke is a new type carbon product that prepared by low temperature carbonization process, which take lignite, long flame coal, not sticky and weak glue coal as raw material. At the same time tar and coke oven gas as by-products can be obtained. Two new technologies of Bluecoke production were introduced based on summary of way of producing Bluecoke by low metamorphic coal, namely the rich oxygen carbonization and the microwave carbonization. Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages. By contrast, the quality of coke and the content of valid gas are better using microwave carbonization, which to follow-up industry chains development significantly.

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