LOCAL EXTINCTIONS, CONNECTEDNESS, AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION IN STRUCTURED POPULATIONS

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (01n02) ◽  
pp. 1150002 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. S. PREMO
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Local Extinction ◽  
Upper Paleolithic ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Neutral Genetic Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Extinctions ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Total Diversity

Population geneticists have shown that the effects of local extinction and recolonization on selectively neutral genetic diversity are sensitive to the number of individuals that migrate between groups. Here, we employ a spatially explicit metapopulation model to investigate the extent to which the effects of local extinction on selectively neutral cultural diversity and change are sensitive to intergroup cultural transmission — the rate at which cultural variants are transmitted between groups. Our results show that the level of intergroup cultural transmission as well as the topology of the social network that mediates cultural transmission between groups influence the way in which local extinctions affect total diversity, group differentiation, and the rate at which copy errors accumulate in structured populations. The results are discussed in the context of the archaeological record of Middle and Upper Paleolithic societies.

A growing network for cultural transmission

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Alberto Acerbi
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
The Social ◽  
Exchange Information ◽  
Population Sizes ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Growing Network ◽  
Share Information

The first chapter discusses how digital media increased, and are still increasing, the network in which cultural transmission can occur. Research inspired by the social brain hypothesis shows that our social networks did not change radically in the last years. The size of our digital social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) is similar to the size of our offline social networks, and some of their characteristics, such as their geographical extension, are also comparable. Nonetheless, it is argued that digital connections, together with our tendency to share information for limited or null gains, made cultural transmission relatively detached from these networks. In cultural evolutionary terms, online digital media increased cultural population sizes, that is, the number of individuals with whom we may exchange information. This hyper-availability together with new opportunities pose new problems related to cultural evolution. One is that, when we can copy from everybody, it may become potentially more difficult to decide from whom we should.

scholarly journals Body pedagogics, culture and the transactional case of Vélo worlds

2021 ◽  
pp. 136843102199664
Author(s):  
Chris Shilling
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
The Body ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Significant Growth ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cognitive Information ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Ways Of Life

During the past two decades, there has been a significant growth of sociological studies into the ‘body pedagogics’ of cultural transmission, reproduction and change. Rejecting the tendency to over-valorise cognitive information, these investigations have explored the importance of corporeal capacities, habits and techniques in the processes associated with belonging to specific ‘ways of life’. Focused on practical issues associated with ‘knowing how’ to operate within specific cultures, however, body pedagogic analyses have been less effective at accounting for the incarnation of cultural values. Addressing this limitation, with reference to the radically diverse norms involved historically and contemporarily in ‘vélo worlds’, I develop Dewey’s pragmatist transactionalism by arguing that the social, material and intellectual processes involved in learning physical techniques inevitably entail a concurrent entanglement with, and development of, values.

scholarly journals Experimental studies illuminate the cultural transmission of percussive technologies in Homo and Pan

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1682) ◽  
pp. 20140359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Special Power ◽  
Social Learning Processes

The complexity of Stone Age tool-making is assumed to have relied upon cultural transmission, but direct evidence is lacking. This paper reviews evidence bearing on this question provided through five related empirical perspectives. Controlled experimental studies offer special power in identifying and dissecting social learning into its diverse component forms, such as imitation and emulation. The first approach focuses on experimental studies that have discriminated social learning processes in nut-cracking by chimpanzees. Second come experiments that have identified and dissected the processes of cultural transmission involved in a variety of other force-based forms of chimpanzee tool use. A third perspective is provided by field studies that have revealed a range of forms of forceful, targeted tool use by chimpanzees, that set percussion in its broader cognitive context. Fourth are experimental studies of the development of flint knapping to make functional sharp flakes by bonobos, implicating and defining the social learning and innovation involved. Finally, new and substantial experiments compare what different social learning processes, from observational learning to teaching, afford good quality human flake and biface manufacture. Together these complementary approaches begin to delineate the social learning processes necessary to percussive technologies within the Pan – Homo clade.

Experience, Culture, and a Future Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Diego Silva Balerio ◽  
Paola Pastore
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
Social Pedagogy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Future Project

Many young people in South America experience repeated conditions of economic, social, and cultural exclusion, with low rates of secondary school completion and high unemployment exposing them to social violence. Yet, they are also the driving force for change in the region; their creativity is a transformative power. This chapter proposes a pedagogical reflection on the learning process and on social and educational participation. Each young person’s individual experiences and the knowledge they acquire in institutions and diverse social contexts are a platform to develop cultural promotion opportunities that produce the conditions to build a future project. Social educators practice one of the social tie professions that help generate bonds with culture, institutions, and other people, whereas educational action relates each young person to common cultural heritage. Social pedagogy faces the challenge and responsibility of creating strategies and cultural transmission methods for all youth, becoming a political action that fosters equality.

Social Science and Ideology

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Gunnell
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Reform Movements ◽  
Cognitive Authority ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Theory Of Democracy

The origins of the social sciences were in ideologies associated with moral philosophy and social reform movements. The turn to science was initially to secure the cognitive authority to speak truth to power about matters of social policy. This heritage was particularly salient in the controversy about behaviouralism in American political science. The debate between what was becoming mainstream political science and a growing number of individuals in the subfield of political theory was actually less about whether the discipline could emulate the methods of natural science than about an underlying conflict between competing visions of democracy. This was to some extent the residue of a dispute, which began in the 1920s, between pluralism as the basis of a theory of democracy and a more communitarian image, but it was also a reflection of more recent work in political philosophy as well as ideological differences in the American political context.

Facultative sociality in a subterranean rodent, the highland tuco-tuco (Ctenomys opimus)

2020 ◽  
Vol 129 (4) ◽  
pp. 918-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon L O’Brien ◽  
Mauro N Tammone ◽  
Pablo A Cuello ◽  
Eileen A Lacey
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Subterranean Rodents ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Subterranean Rodent ◽  
Nest Sites ◽  
The Social ◽  
Below Ground ◽  
Number Of Individuals ◽  
Facultative Sociality

Abstract Understanding why social relationships vary among conspecifics is central to studies of animal behaviour. For many species, patterns of space use provide important insights into social behaviour. To characterize the social organization of the highland tuco-tuco (Ctenomys opimus), we used visual observations and radiotelemetry to quantify spatial relationships among adults in a population at Laguna de los Pozuelos, Jujuy Province, Argentina. Specifically, we sought to confirm anecdotal reports that these subterranean rodents are social, meaning that adults share burrow systems and nest sites. Our data indicate that the animals live in spatially distinct groups, although the number of individuals per group varies markedly. Although these relationships were robust with regard to location (above vs. below ground) and type of data (visual vs. telemetry), some groups identified during the daytime fissioned during the night. We suggest that the population of C. opimus at Pozuelos is facultatively social, meaning that individuals display predictable, adaptive differences in social relationships with conspecifics. More generally, our findings add to the growing number of subterranean species of rodents recognized as social, thereby generating new opportunities for comparative studies of these animals aimed at assessing the causes and consequences of variation in social organization.

The Development of Behaviour Therapy in Australia

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syd H. Lovibond
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Behaviour Therapy ◽  
Behaviour Modification ◽  
The Social ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Number Of Individuals

In his address to the Annual Conference of the Australian Behaviour Modification Association in 1986, Dr. Robin Winkler chose the topic “The social history of behaviour modification in Australia” (Winkler & Krasner, 1987). Dr. Winkler was concerned to recognise the contributions of a number of individuals who were prominent in the new movement in the 50s, 60s and 70s. My aim is rather different. I want to try to capture what the early workers were trying to achieve, what they saw as the problems, and how they viewed the early developments. I will then look at more recent developments in Australian behaviour therapy, and try to characterise its current status. Finally, I'll discuss what seem to me the major current problems, and suggest some possible solutions. Where I feel able to do so, and it seems to me appropriate, I'll make some comparisons with the situation in the USA. Many of the more general points, of course, will be relevant to behaviour therapy in any country.

A simulation assessment of methods to infer cultural transmission on dark networks

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rouslan Karimov ◽  
Luke J Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Random Effects ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Diffusion Processes ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Network Parameter ◽  
Central Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Data Points ◽  
Comprehensive Search ◽  
Dark Networks

The social transmission of beliefs, behaviors, and technologies is a central function of dark networks, just as it is in legitimate networks. One motivation for disrupting dark networks is to break the flow of information and learning. It is often unclear, however, which network should be targeted for disruption because individuals inhabit multiple and correlated networks, and the most relevant network for a given cultural process must be inferred from limited empirical data. Three analytic methods potentially are able to distinguish among alternative network diffusion processes: autoregression, dyadic regression with permutations, and dyadic regression with or random effects. All three rely on having measureable cultural outcomes and network or tree-like connections among the data points. We tested the ability of each method to infer cultural diffusion correctly within 4000 simulated datasets generated on two historical networks that linked violent and pacifist Anabaptist religious groups. Under both frequentist and Bayesian inference procedures, regression of dyadic matrices with random effects exhibited the best statistical performance. We found similar results in a more comprehensive search of the network parameter space that simulated both network structures and the diffusion of traits.

Neural reuse in the social and emotional brain

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang ◽  
Joan Y. Chiao ◽  
Alan P. Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Social And Emotional ◽  
Cultural Effects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neural Reuse ◽  
Mental Techniques ◽  
Modes Of Thought

AbstractPresenting evidence from the social brain, we argue that neural reuse is a dynamic, socially organized process that is influenced ontogenetically and evolutionarily by the cultural transmission of mental techniques, values, and modes of thought. Anderson's theory should be broadened to accommodate cultural effects on the functioning of architecturally similar neural systems, and the implications of these differences for reuse.

scholarly journals Non-Vertical Cultural Transmission, Assortment, and the Evolution of Cooperation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dor Cohen ◽  
Ohad Lewin-Epstein ◽  
Marcus W. Feldman ◽  
Yoav Ram
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Horizontal Transmission ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Stochastic Simulations ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Population Mean ◽  
Mean Fitness ◽  
Lower Population

AbstractCultural evolution of cooperation under vertical and non-vertical cultural transmission is studied, and conditions are found for fixation and coexistence of cooperation and defection. The evolution of cooperation is facilitated by its horizontal transmission and by an association between social interactions and horizontal transmission. The effect of oblique transmission depends on the horizontal transmission bias. Stable polymorphism of cooperation and defection can occur, and when it does, reduced association between social interactions and horizontal transmission evolves, which leads to a decreased frequency of cooperation and lower population mean fitness. The deterministic conditions are compared to outcomes of stochastic simulations of structured populations. Parallels are drawn with Hamilton’s rule incorporating assortment and effective relatedness.

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