Psyc3282 Origins Of Human Culture

Front 1

In terms of population dynamics, what is necessary for cumulative culture to emerge?

Back 1

Big population where there are lots of ideas for innovation to occur. Large number of experts to teach. Need to talk to people other than in our kin --> By spending time outside of the kin group we see much greater opportunity for learning.

Front 2

What is Co-operative Breeding and is this seen in animals

Back 2

Any breeding system in which individuals other than parents (allo-parents) help to care and look after the offspring. Yes, seen in Callitrichids

Front 3

What is the Grandmother Hypothesis?

Back 3

Menopause may have evolved because the benefits of care provision outweigh costs of further reproduction. Grandmothers help their offspring leave more descendants than mothers whose own mothers are no longer around (Hawkes et al., 2008)

Front 4

Whats the relationship between the neo cortex and group size?

Back 4

As the neo cortex ratio goes up, so too does the mean group size. Not causal, but a very clear association that amongst primates the larger the general group size, the bigger the neo cortex. The argument that the brain develops along side social group

Front 5

According to Aiello & Dunbar (1993) why did language emerge?

Back 5

language emerged as a way of grooming. Language emerged as a way for us to gossip. With language you can groom a room full of people whereas with normal grooming you can only do one on one

Front 6

what are Bratman’s (1992) three criteria for shared intentionality?

Back 6

1) Interactants are mutually responsive to one another
2) There is a shared goal in the sense that each participant has the goal that we do X together
3) The participants coordinate their plans of action and intentions some way down the hierarchy

Front 7

what are the 3 types of engagement (for shared intentionality)?

Back 7

Dyadic Engagement
Triadic Engagement
Collaborative Engagement

Front 8

What is Dyadic Engagement?

Back 8

Infants by the second month
Focus their attention on the internal features of the face
Reciprocate in the context of face-to-face interactions

The Still Face Paradigm: Infants engage for several minutes in a normal face-to-face interaction with an adult social partner. The adult suddenly holds a neutral still face. By 2 months of age, infants react to the still face with reduced smiling and gazing, together with increased self-comforting,

Front 9

What is Triadic Engagement?

Back 9

Sharing goals and perception. Often referred to as “joint attention”
Adult and infant will gaze at the object together, acknowledge what they are doing
-Shared goal
-Shared intentionality

Front 10

When does the use of pointing and gaze emerge in infancy?

Back 10

Around 12 months. Social referencing. Infants begin to point. Protoimperative gestures (ie,. “give it to me”). Proto-declarative gestures (ie., Hey look!)

Front 11

What is collaborative engagement?

Back 11

shared goals and intentions including coordinated action plans, with complementary and potentially reversible roles

Front 12

Can children with Autism imitate? Explain

Back 12

children with autism are deficient in imitating non-meaningful (tapping on head for no reason whereas a normal developing child will happily copy it) or body-oriented gestures, however, their capacity for reproducing others’ object-directed actions appears to be intact

Front 13

How do Autistic children perform on the False Belief Task?

Back 13

Individuals with autism do not perform as well as children without autism in false belief tasks, however, it may be something about motivation, not capacity. Make the False Belief Task a competitive one (get the toy if they get it right etc.) The children are doing better on the competitive task then the standard task and significantly better than the three year olds (like a normal child would).

Front 14

Do people with Autism have problems with their Mirror Neuron System?

Back 14

If there was a deficits in the mirror neuron system you would assume they would have a problem with this task but they didn’t so there aint homie

Front 15

How many cultural variations do chimps have?

Back 15

Chimps have 39 cultural variations

Front 16

How many cultural variations do orangutans have?

Back 16

orangutans have 19 behavioural traditions

Front 17

How many cultural variations do White-Faced Capuchin Monkeys have?

Back 17

Around 4 behavioural traditions (hand sniffing, greeting)

Front 18

According to Dawkins, what are memes?

Back 18

"an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture." A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena.

Front 19

What is Lumsden and Wilson argument about culture and genes?

Back 19

First people to suggest that culture and genes interact and they cant be looked at in isolation. Children are born with certain predisposition's, some things common to all children. Those predispositions constrain just how much culture can affect behaviour, personalities, traits that get expressed as children develop. Example, seeing white and black in a culture. all children afraid of snakes. We come into the world prepared with these things are part of our mental tool kit but it is only then that these get adapted by culture.

Front 20

What is convergent evolution?

Back 20

Convergent: things that appear to be highly similar but in fact don’t have a common evolutionary groundpoint. Wings of birds and wings of bats. Evolved from different mechanisms and origins. Bats wings more closer to our hands than the wings of birds. They aren’t the same

Front 21

What is Divergent evolution?

Back 21

Divergent – has a common evolutionary framepoint. Different in appearance but we need to be aware of the ancestors.

Front 22

According to Nielsen (2006) when does over-imitation emerge?

Back 22

emerges at 18 months but is very apparent in 24 months. Over-imitation

Front 23

According to Uzgiris, 1981 what are the two functions of imitation?

Back 23

→ a cognitive function that promotes learning about events in the world (learning)
→ An interpersonal function that promotes children’s sharing of experience with others (social)

Front 24

What are the costs and benefits of overimitation?

Back 24

Loss of innovation - Children perhaps are not very capable of coming up with solutions.
benefits: It allows for rapid skill acquisition – but only by exploiting stored adaptive knowledge (copying experts rather than a random)

Front 25

In terms of the physical and social domain how do humans and chimps differ?

Back 25

Reported that across physical domain, children, chimps and orangutans have similar abilities. Where it differs is the social domain, children way above, outperforming primate cousins.

Front 26

What happened in Rendell et al. (2010) study about a computer tournament? Who succeeded?

Back 26

The most important outcome of the tournament is the remarkable success of strategies that rely heavily on copying when learning in spite of the absence of a structural cost to asocial learning, an observation evocative of human culture.

Front 27

What was Dezecache and Dunbar (2012) theory about how we groom in modern day humans?

Back 27

We’ve evolved gossip as a way of social grooming. By talking about others, we can groom, and ingratiating yourself to others. Way of doing it on mass, groom a whole lot of people in one shot.

Front 28

According to Platow et al., 2005 do people attend to who is laughing depending on the ingroup and outgroup members?

Back 28

→ Ingroup: when there’s laughter, you laugh more than any of the other conditions.
→ Outgroup: when there’s laughter, you don’t laugh.

Front 29

According to Locke & Bogin (2006), The period following the cessation of breastfeeding in humans is characterized by what?

Back 29

1. Slow and steady rate of body growth and relatively small body size
2. Large, fast growing brain
3. Higher resting metabolic rate than any other mammalian species
4. Immature dentition
5. Dependence on older people for care and feeding
6. Motor and cognitive advances

Front 30

What is the simulation theory?

Back 30

How do we understand others’ mental/emotional states,
→ Simulate others’ situation and mental state in our mind
→ “Put ourselves in their shoes”
→ Understand others’ through simulation of the same state in our mind

Front 31

What is the Theory Theory?

Back 31

→ Rationale evaluation of others’ situation, based on knowledge from past experience
→ Based on Gopnik & Meltzoff – learning through “theory revision”. Children learning as the scientist model, rationale hypotheses about what’s happening in a situation and update their hypothesis as new information comes in

Front 32

Where are Mirror Neurons found?

Back 32

Ventral Premotor Cortex (later in Inferior Parietal Cortex)

Front 33

What is the Striae of Retzius?

Back 33

Ameloblasts deposit tooth enamel in a circadian manner and the resulting daily enamel increments can be used as a chronometer of tooth growth and dental development
→ as your teeth grow and they lay down enamel, they do so like how rings get laid down in a tree, rings in the bark, same with the enamel of the teeth. Enamel gets laid down, leaves these lines and you can look at enamel how old you are at death. Growth rates, this that you can start to use to see when childhood emerged. We should find a clear indication of when childhood started to emerge

Front 34

When do they suggest that childhood first emerged?

Back 34

Dean et al. (2001) Neanderthal teeth to the modern human teeth, suggestive that childhood emerged.

Front 35

When does pretend play emerge in humans?

Back 35

Toward the end of the second year

Front 36

What is a Causal Usage Functions

Back 36

→ uses could be discerned purely by looks and usage
→ Stumble upon a hammer, you would figure out that a hammer is used for banging things. In a way that is aligned with it’s intended purpose. Same with a knife, sharp edge, you could figure out what to use it for.

Front 37

what is a Status Function

Back 37

Contrast with casual usage functions because there are things that their uses aren’t obvious, their uses only have value and meaning because we agree on it. A cross, if you go into a chapel you know immediately that it is a religious symbol. Money, never seen it before, but if you go to Australia, this colour green, we agree that it is worth $100.
Only worth something because we agree that it does

Front 38

Why are Status Functions important?

Back 38

Status functions are assigned merely on the basis of and constituted by a collective practice
→ X counts as Y in context C
$100 counts as $100 in Australian stores. This red brick is a poisonous fish in this game.
THROUGH AGREEMENT --> negotiation

Front 39

What happens in transmission chains? Compared to putting it in a playful context?

Back 39

When children are placed in transmission chains – demonstrate to a child how to do something – give child to transmit info onto another child – and the next child does so to another child – etc.
If you include redundant actions, over-imitation actions. The child passes on the information ONLY THE FUNCTIONAL ACTIONS
Model for the first child, the child will model the redundant actions and do it to the next child but THE SECOND CHILD DOES NOT TAKE ON REDUNDANT ACTIONS Learning does not take on redundant actions.
--> But if you put it on a playful context. Playful in appearance, then they will transmit those things on. Provides a way that children can convey cultural information to each other. Rely on older peers and adults