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Mapping the Cultural Learnability Landscape of Danger
Author(s) -
Clark Barrett H.,
Peterson Christopher D.,
Frankenhuis Willem E.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/cdev.12495
Subject(s) - learnability , cultural transmission in animals , context (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , psychology , domain (mathematical analysis) , process (computing) , geography , social psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , evolutionary biology , mathematics , biology , archaeology , mathematical analysis , operating system
Cultural transmission is often viewed as a domain‐general process. However, a growing literature suggests that learnability is influenced by content and context. The idea of a learnability landscape is introduced as a way of representing the effects of interacting factors on how easily information is acquired. Extending prior work (Barrett & Broesch, [Barrett, H. C., 2012]), learnability of danger and other properties is compared for animals, artifacts, and foods in the urban American children (ages 4–5) and in the Shuar children in Ecuador (ages 4–9). There is an advantage for acquiring danger information that is strongest for animals and weakest for artifacts in both populations, with culture‐specific variations. The potential of learnability landscapes for assessing biological and cultural influences on cultural transmission is discussed.