Genomic Imprinting and the Cognitive Architecture Mediating Human Culture

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Michael Brown
Keyword(s):  
Genomic Imprinting ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Transmitted Information ◽  
Human Culture

AbstractGenomic imprinting may be implicated in the origin and maintenance of the cognitive architecture required for cultural transmission. Relatedness asymmetries are expected to lead to increases in the receptibility of matrilineally transmitted information. This may help explain why maternal genes contribute preferentially to the neocortex. That is, maternal genes could influence biases in the transmission and/or acquisition of information. This perspective is complementary to gene-culture coevolutionary approaches.

scholarly journals Two-year old children preferentially transmit simple actions but not pedagogically demonstrated actions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Bazhydai ◽  
Priya Silverstein ◽  
Eugenio Parise ◽  
Gert Westermann
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Information Transmission ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Previous Literature ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Transmitted Information ◽  
Preferential Transmission ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
Competing Hypotheses

Children are sensitive to both social and non-social aspects of the learning environment. Among social cues, pedagogical communication has been shown to not only play a role in children’s learning, but also in their own active transmission of knowledge. Vredenburgh et al. (2015) showed that 2-year-olds are more likely to demonstrate an action to a naive adult after learning it in a pedagogical than in a non-pedagogical context. This finding was interpreted as evidence that pedagogically transmitted information has a special status as culturally relevant. Here we test the limits of this claim by setting it in contrast with an explanation in which the relevance of information is the outcome of multiple interacting social (e.g., pedagogical demonstration) and non-social properties (e.g., action complexity). To test these competing hypotheses, we varied both pedagogical cues and action complexity in an information transmission paradigm with 2-year-old children. In Experiment 1, children preferentially transmitted simple non-pedagogically demonstrated actions over pedagogically demonstrated more complex actions. In Experiment 2, when both actions were matched for complexity, we found no evidence of preferential transmission of pedagogically demonstrated actions. We discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy between our results and previous literature showing an effect of pedagogical cues on cultural transmission and conclude that our results are compatible with the view that pedagogical and other cues interact, but incompatible with the theory of a privileged role for pedagogical cues.

Metarepresentation and human capacities

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Bejarano
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Second Line ◽  
Motor Patterns ◽  
Double Line ◽  
Operating Modes ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Difference

Both metarepresentation and cultural learning have an identical origin. The imitation of new and complex motor patterns (also articulatory-phonetic patterns) is a crucial skill not only because it enables cultural transmission but also because its high requisites give rise to the exclusively human mind. The premotor plan at the base of such imitation requires the ability to fictionalize bodily postures, which implies a second line of awareness. Only by means of this second line can the human being deal with situations different from his own real and current situation. This permanent double cognitive architecture explains finger-pointing, laughing, and also all capacities considered metarepresentational. Evocation and metabeliefs (these latter being the starting point of syntax) result in language formation. There are two operating modes of the double line, which starting respectively with motor learning and finger-pointing, give rise to pretence and metabelief, and whose distinct nature can also account for the difference between fictionally triggered emotions and morality.

scholarly journals Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avel GUÉNIN--CARLUT
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Cognitive Architecture ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Cognitive Dynamics ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Sociocultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Traits

Models of sociocultural evolution generally study the population dynamics of cultural traits given known biases in social learning. Cognitive agency, understood as the dynamics underlying a specific agent’s adoption of a given trait, is essentially irrelevant in this framework. This article argues that although implementing and instrumenting agency in computational models is fundamentally challenging, it is ultimately possible and would help us overcome major limitations in our understanding of sociocultural dynamics.Indeed, the behaviour of humans is not causally generated by a set of predefined behavioural laws, but by the situated activity of their cognitive architecture. Idealised models of biased transmission certainly help us understand specific features of population dynamics. However, they distract us from the deep intrication of the cognitive and ecological processes underlying sociocultural evolution, and erase their embodied, subjective nature.In line with the earlier “Thinking Through Other Minds” account of sociocultural evolution, this article highlights how the Active Inference framework can help us implement and instrument computational models that address these limitations. Such models would not only help ground our understanding of sociocultural evolution in the underlying cognitive dynamics, but also help solve (or frame) open questions in the study of ritual, relation between cultural transmission and innovation, as well as scales of cultural evolution.

Genomic imprinting and culture in mammals

2001 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Michael Brown
Keyword(s):  
Genomic Imprinting ◽  
Multiple Paternity ◽  
Transmitted Information ◽  
Neocortical Development

Genomic conflicts are potentially involved in the evolution and maintenance of culture. Maternal genes contributing to neocortical development could influence biases in the acquisition of information. Specifically, relatedness asymmetries due to multiple paternity are expected to lead to an increased reliability and receptivity of matrilineally-transmitted information. This view complements the gene-culture coevolutionary model adopted by Rendell and Whitehead.

Mechanisms by which parasites influence cultures, and why they matter

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schaller ◽  
Damian R. Murray
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Genetic Evolution ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Rigorous Research ◽  
Mediating Mechanisms

AbstractAt least four conceptually distinct mechanisms may mediate relations between parasite-stress and cultural outcomes: genetic evolution, developmental plasticity, neurocognitive flexibility, and cultural transmission. These mechanisms may operate independently or in conjunction with one another. Rigorous research on specific mediating mechanisms is required to more completely articulate implications of parasite stress on human psychology and human culture.

Transportation, Transformation, and Metaphoricity

2019 ◽  
pp. 28-51
Author(s):  
Veronika Pöhnl
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Media Theory ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Cultural Media

This chapter discusses similarities of and differences between the epistemological premises of ANT and German media theory concerning concepts of transmission. The applicability of ANT for media investigations and the compatibility of ANT concepts in media studies have been discussed intensively for several years now. The profound similarities as well as the critical differences in the study of the material conditions of human culture have also stimulated current reconsiderations and reformulations in cultural media studies, as German media theory is most commonly called in Germany. The chapter gives a brief overview of recently published approaches to cultural techniques and intersections of media and techno-philosophy that are increasingly being translated into English and therefore also internationally accessible, alongside with the discussion concerning their compatibility with ANT in respect of cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Selection, adaptation, inheritance and design in human culture: the view from the Price equation

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1797) ◽  
pp. 20190358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Nettle
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Price Equation ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Cultural Systems ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Minimal Description ◽  
Cultural Evolutionary ◽  
The Mind

For decades, parts of the literature on human culture have been gripped by an analogy: culture changes in a way that is substantially isomorphic to genetic evolution. This leads to a number of sub-claims: that design-like properties in cultural traditions should be explained in a parallel way to the design-like features of organisms, namely with reference to selection; that culture is a system of inheritance; and that cultural evolutionary processes can produce adaptation in the genetic sense. The Price equation provides a minimal description of any evolutionary system, and a method for identifying the action of selection. As such, it helps clarify some of these claims about culture conceptually. Looking closely through the lens of the Price equation, the differences between genes and culture come into sharp relief. Culture is only a system of inheritance metaphorically, or as an idealization, and the idealization may lead us to overlook causally important features of how cultural influence works. Design-like properties in cultural systems may owe more to transmission biases than to cultural selection. Where culture enhances genetic fitness, it is ambiguous whether what is doing the work is cultural transmission, or just the genetically evolved properties of the mind. I conclude that there are costs to trying to press culture into a template based on Darwinian evolution, even if one broadens the definition of ‘Darwinian’. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fifty years of the Price equation’.

scholarly journals Culture evolves

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 938-948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Whiten ◽  
Robert A. Hinde ◽  
Kevin N. Laland ◽  
Christopher B. Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Animal Kingdom ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Contrary View ◽  
Ancient Times

Culture pervades human lives and has allowed our species to create niches all around the world and its oceans, in ways quite unlike any other primate. Indeed, our cultural nature appears so distinctive that it is often thought to separate humanity from the rest of nature and the Darwinian forces that shape it. A contrary view arises through the recent discoveries of a diverse range of disciplines, here brought together to illustrate the scope of a burgeoning field of cultural evolution and to facilitate cross-disciplinary fertilization. Each approach emphasizes important linkages between culture and evolutionary biology rather than quarantining one from the other. Recent studies reveal that processes important in cultural transmission are more widespread and significant across the animal kingdom than earlier recognized, with important implications for evolutionary theory. Recent archaeological discoveries have pushed back the origins of human culture to much more ancient times than traditionally thought. These developments suggest previously unidentified continuities between animal and human culture. A third new array of discoveries concerns the later diversification of human cultures, where the operations of Darwinian-like processes are identified, in part, through scientific methods borrowed from biology. Finally, surprising discoveries have been made about the imprint of cultural evolution in the predispositions of human minds for cultural transmission.

scholarly journals Cumulative cultural learning: Development and diversity

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (30) ◽  
pp. 7877-7883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristine H. Legare
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Causal Account ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Acquisition Strategies ◽  
Learning Development ◽  
Insight Into

The complexity and variability of human culture is unmatched by any other species. Humans live in culturally constructed niches filled with artifacts, skills, beliefs, and practices that have been inherited, accumulated, and modified over generations. A causal account of the complexity of human culture must explain its distinguishing characteristics: It is cumulative and highly variable within and across populations. I propose that the psychological adaptations supporting cumulative cultural transmission are universal but are sufficiently flexible to support the acquisition of highly variable behavioral repertoires. This paper describes variation in the transmission practices (teaching) and acquisition strategies (imitation) that support cumulative cultural learning in childhood. Examining flexibility and variation in caregiver socialization and children’s learning extends our understanding of evolution in living systems by providing insight into the psychological foundations of cumulative cultural transmission—the cornerstone of human cultural diversity.

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