Languages evolve, adapting to pressures arising from their learning and use. As these pressures may be different in different sociocultural environments, non-linguistic factors relating to the group structure of the people who speak a language may influence the features of the language itself. Identifying such factors, and the mechanisms by which they operate, would account for some of the diversity seen in the complexity of different languages. This thesis considers two key hypotheses which connect group structure to complex language features and evaluates them experimentally. Firstly, languages spoken by greater numbers of people are thought to be less morphologically complex than those employed by smaller groups. I assess two mechanisms by which group size could have such an effect: different degrees of variability in the linguistic input learners receive, and the effects of adult learning. Four experiments conclude that there is no evidence for different degrees of speaker input variability having any effect on the cross-generational transmission of complex morphology, and so no evidence for it being an explanation for the effect of population size on linguistic complexity. Three more experiments conclude that adult learning is a more likely mechanism, but that linking morphological simplification at the level of the individual to group-level characteristics of a language cannot be simply explained. Idiosyncratic simplifications of adult learners, when mixed with input from native speakers, may result in the linguistic input for subsequent learners being itself complex and variable, preventing simplified features from becoming more widespread. Native speaker accommodation, however, may be a key linking mechanism. Speakers of a more complex variant of a language simplify their language to facilitate communication with speakers of a simpler language. In doing so, they may increase the frequency of particular simplifications in the input of following learners. Secondly, esoteric communication | that carried out by smaller groups in which large amounts of information is shared and in which adult learning is absent | may provide the circumstances necessary for the generation and maintenance of more complex features. I assess this in four experiments. Without a learnability pressure, esoteric communication illustrates how complexity can be maintained, but there is generally no evidence of how smaller groups or those with greater amounts of shared information would develop comparatively more complex features. Any observable differences in the complexity of the languages of different types of groups is eliminated through repeated interaction between group members. There is, however, some indication that the languages used by larger groups may be more transparent, and so easier for adult learners to understand.

No description available.

This thesis is an investigation, on the basis of three texts chosen from early Castilian literature, of the importance of thirteenth and fourteenth century Castilian as a vehicle by which information about Islam and the Muslims reached the Christian West. In the Middle Ages, the Iberian Peninsula was in a special position for the transmission of culture, for there, Christian and Muslim communities existed alongside each other. Two authors, Alphonso X of Castile and Don Juan Manuel, recommended themselves for study as they both had contacts with Muslims and produced works containing references to Islam and the Muslims. Of their work, specific texts were chosen to provide evidence of culture contact: Primera Cronica General, Calila e Dimna and El Conde Lucanor. In the thesis, three main questions are posed: firstly, what knowledge was possessed by Christian Spaniards of the Islamic culture, especially as it flourished in Southern Spain; secondly, what sort of cultural material of Islamic origin was most readily transmitted; and thirdly, what was the importance of literature as a means of cultural transmission. The facts that emerge show that religion was a controversial topic, so any cultural material relating to it was transmitted with difficulty; elements of material culture were more readily disseminated. Religious exclusiveness and polemical propaganda on both the Christian and the Muslim side prevented medieval scholars such as Alphonso X from forming a truly accurate picture of the Muslim culture. The. popular literature, as exemplified here by Don Juan Manuel, contributed much to culture transfer, by conveying to Western Europe a relatively favourable view of the Muslims, but literature which bore clerical influences projected a hostile attitude. Therefore, although thirteenth and fourteenth century Castile transmitted much information on the Muslim culture to Western Christendom, the view presented was partly truthful and partly erroneous, and attitudes alternated between' sympathetic and hostile, producing an uneven picture.

abstract: The adaptation and integration of the mainstream and ethnic culture are important processes to understand as they have been associated with immigrant and minority youth's adjustment and family dynamics. However, few studies focusing on youth's cultural experiences have explored youth's active role in their own cultural development, and even less have explored youth's role in influencing parents' cultural development. In the current dissertation, two studies addressed these issues by using a within-family longitudinal design to explore 246 Mexican American youth's role in their own and their families' cultural development. The first study examined the reciprocal associations in parents' and two offspring's cultural values to examine developmental differences in parent-youth socialization processes. Overall, the importance of mothers' values was highlighted as a significant predictor of increases in youths' values, five years later. In addition, Study 1 highlighted situations where youth play an active role in their parents' cultural development as youths' lower endorsement of respect for elders values was associated with increases in fathers' value endorsement, five years later. The second study explored the associations between youth's imitation and de-identification from parents and parent-youth incongruence in Mexican and Anglo cultural orientations. Youths' active role in their cultural development was underscored, as youths' reports of de-identifying from parents were linked to more incongruence in parent-youth Anglo orientations. Further, important family characteristics (i.e., parent-youth warmth and demographic similarities) were shown to predict youths' more imitation and less de-identification from parents. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Family and Human Development 2012

No description available.

Researchers have long argued that ritual plays a crucial role in marking social identities and binding individuals together in a system of shared actions and beliefs. The psychological processes underlying how and why ritual promotes group bonding and influences in- and out-group biases have not yet been fully elucidated. The research presented in this thesis was designed to examine the social and cognitive developmental underpinnings of conventional/ ritualistic behavior. Because learning cultural conventions is essential for participation in group behavior and for signaling group membership and commitment, I propose that conventional/ ritualistic learning is motivated by a drive to affiliate. Experiment 1 investigated the affiliative nature of ritualistic learning by examining the effects of third-party ostracism on imitation of an instrumental versus ritual action sequence and prosocial behavior. Individuals who do not participate in shared group conventions often face the threat of ostracism from the group. Given that attempting re-inclusion is an established response to ostracism, I predicted that the threat of ostracism increases affiliative motivations and thus will increase imitative fidelity, especially in the context of conventional learning. Experiment 2 examined the effects of first-person ostracism in the context of in- and out-groups on children’s imitation of a ritualistic action sequence and pro-social behavior. I predicted that the experience of ostracism by an in-group versus an out-group has important implications for the construal of social exclusion and affiliative behavior. I hypothesized that children would be motivated to re-affiliate by imitating the model and acting pro-socially towards the group, especially when ostracized by in-group members. Based on the findings of this research and insight from anthropology, and social and developmental psychology, I will present a picture of how children acquire the conventions of their group and how these conventions influence social group cognition.

Humans are curious beings. We investigate and explore. We experiment and learn from them. But that process of learning is not very easy to study. Each person learns in different ways. The verbal part of learning is just one piece of the puzzle. The process of learning happens in many other ways, which makes is hard to study (especially in the past). The aim for this thesis is to examine whether experiment could be a tool to use in that research. It also aims to see if cultural transmission theory could be a theoretical base to study learning processes. The thesis describes experiments as a method, the relations between theoretical and practical memory and how culture is usually transmitted. It also studies two examples of experiments that were carried out in order to study learning. The thesis discusses the result of the experiments separately and in connection to cultural transmission theory. It discusses the possibilities of experiments as a method and its relation to the process of learning. It also discusses the relevance of modern novices. / Människan är en nyfiken varelse. Hon undersöker saker, prövar sig fram och lär sig av sina experiment. Något som bidrar till att vi dominerar planeten är att vi inte behåller kunskapen för oss själva, utan delar med oss. Detta inkluderar allt från sociala regler till redskapsrelaterade färdigheter och andra saker vi behöver för att klara oss. Inlärning är en process som sker på mer än det verbala planet, vilket gör det till ett svårstuderat ämne. Det blir ännu svårare i forntiden. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka om experiment skulle kunna vara ett verktyg för att studera den här inlärningsprocessen. Den syftar också till att se om kulturell transmissionsteori skulle kunna utgöra en teoretisk grund för dessa studier. Två experiment med fokus på inlärning används för att utvidga diskussionen. Uppsatsen utgår från följande frågeställningar: Hur kan experiment bidra till att förstå läroprocesser? Kan kulturell transmissionsteori vara en teoretisk grund för att förstå läroprocesser? Uppsatsen inleder med att redogöra för kulturell transmissionsteori. Teorin, som kretsar kring överföring av kulturell information till nästa generation, förklaras. Uppsatsen redogör för de grundläggande dragen, dess grundkomponenter samt vad som kan gå fel under överföringen. Den tar även upp den mer evolutionistiskt betonade inriktningen i teoribildningen kring hantverk, vilken brukar kallas för darwinism. Uppsatsen går sedan över till att fokusera på hur minnet fungerar, både på ett teoretiskt plan men även ett kroppsligt. Därefter beskrivs faktorer i inlärningssituationen som kan påverka resultatet, däribland hur undervisningen går till och vad situationen behöver för att fungera. Uppsatsen förklarar även experimentell arkeologi och hur detta kan appliceras i fallet inlärning. Även Chaîne Opératoire nämns. Därefter ges en övergripande beskrivning av de två exempel som uppsatsen använder sig av. Det ena exemplet innefattar mer än ett experimenttillfälle och med olika undervisningsmetoder. Dess nybörjarexperiment beskrivs sedan i detalj vad gäller utförande, resultat och de undervisningsmetoder hon använder sig av. Uppsatsen övergår sedan till att diskutera resultaten från experimentstudierna och vad man kan notera i det fysiska material som blev resultatet av experimenten. Det fysiska resultatet, alltså föremålen som experimenten resulterade i, sätts i relation till undervisningsmetod, know-how samt hur hög grad fel som uppstod. Resultatet pekar på att en aktivt engagerad lärare lyckas bäst med sin informationsöverföring. Därefter diskuteras hur pass relevant en modern novis egentligen är. Frågor om erfarenhet och djupare förståelse av fyndmaterialet lyfts samt frågan om exakta återgivningar. Därefter diskuterar uppsatsen Chaîne Opératoire, inlärning och kulturell transmission i relation till resultatet från experimenten. Chaîne Opératoire föreslås som ett möjligt sätt att strukturera och identifiera de olika stegen i den tillverkningsprocess som ett experiment går igenom. Begreppet diskuteras också som en teoretisk bas för att studera utvecklingen av know-how hos en elev, vilket bygger på att det finns material från en erfaren individ. Kulturell transmissionsteori diskuteras sedan som en ytterligare teoretisk grund i relation till inlärning och hur olika variationer mellan dess grundkomponenter skulle kunna användas i relation till studier av inlärning. Uppsatsen resonerar kring en kombination av experiment, Chaîne Opératoire och kulturell transmissionsteori som en möjlig teoretisk grund för ett ramverk som inkluderar kroppsliga som teoretiska aspekter samt som en möjlighet till att genom att utforska olika variationer av dessa eftersträva ett fysiskt resultat som är jämförbart med ett arkeologiskt material.

Responder mantido por relação acidental com reforço, comportamento supersticioso, pode ser facilitado por variáveis sociais como a modelação. O presente estudo investigou o comportamento supersticioso em um procedimento com ou sem substituição de participantes. No procedimento com substituição, um participante trabalhava em uma tarefa no computador enquanto outro o observava. Quando terminava a tarefa, o participante observador passava a realizar a tarefa e outro participante era chamado para observá-lo. A tarefa básica envolveu a programação de um esquema múltiplo com componentes de VT e EXT. Os participantes podiam emitir respostas, por meio da manipulação de um mouse, em um retângulo colorido apresentado na tela do computador. Dois grupos de oito participantes foram constituídos para avaliar a transmissão do padrão desenvolvido em VT EXT, designados Cultura A e Cultura B. Cada uma dessas duas culturas começava com um experimentador confederado, que respondia no componente VT e não respondia no componente EXT. As cores do retângulo que sinalizavam os componentes VT e EXT eram alteradas a cada troca de participante, de modo a favorecer o responder em ambas as contingências a cada vez que o novo participante era colocado na tarefa. Em um Grupo de Exposição Individual, cada participante foi exposto a três sessões experimentais seguidas, sem acesso a modelo. Ao final de cada sessão, os participantes eram solicitados a estimar o controle que tinham sobre a tarefa. Resultados mostraram que houve mais respostas em VT e em EXT para os participantes com o procedimento com troca de participantes do que para os do Grupo de Exposição Individual, indicando o efeito do comportamento do outro sobre o desempenho em esquema múltiplo. Participantes responderam tanto em EXT quanto em VT, mostrando que o desempenho não estava sendo mantido pela relação acidental com reforço, mas sim pela história prévia de observação do comportamento do modelo. Não houve qualquer tipo de correlação entre o desempenho não verbal e estimativa de controle / Superstitious behavior as response maintained by accidental relation with reinforcement can be facilitated by social variables such as modelling. Present study examined superstitious behavior in a procedure involving participants replacement or not. In replacement procedure one of the participants worked on a task on the computer while the other watched. When finished the task, the participant who was observing passed to perform the task and another participant was asked to observe. Programmed task involved basically a multiple schedule with VT and EXT components. Participants could emit responses by mouse clicking in a colored rectangle presented on computer screen. Two groups of eight subjects called \"Culture A\" and \"Culture B\" were made to evaluate developed EXT VT transmission. Each of these two cultures began with an experimenter confederate, who answered VT component but not EXT component. Rectangles color signaled VT and EXT components were changed when participant changed in order to favor responding in both contingencies with each new participant. In Individual Exhibition Group, each participant was exposed to three consecutive experimental sessions with no access. At the end of each session, participants were asked to estimate the control they had over the task. Results showed there were more responses in VT and EXT on replacing participants procedure than Individual Exhibition Group, indicating other\'s behavior effect on multiple schedule performance. Participants answered both EXT and in VT, showing that the performance was not being maintained by the accidental relation with reinforcement, but the history of observing models behavior. There was no correlation between nonverbal performance and estimation control

As idéias cotidianas influenciam a aprendizagem de conceitos científicos e afetam a educação científica da população, de maneira que é imprescindível compreender sua origem e dinâmica de transmissão para o planejamento de políticas educacionais. As teorias de evolução cultural contribuem para o entendimento da origem, fixação e distorções das idéias cotidianas em um grupo social, esclarecendo a dinâmica de propagação das idéias cotidianas. Verificar e documentar a transmissão cultural de conhecimento cotidiano exige a identificação e comparação das idéias cotidianas empregadas pelas pessoas para explicar os fenômenos naturais com os quais entram em contato, de modo a permitir a descrição de padrões. Essa comparação é viabilizada pela codificação das idéias em modelos explicativos delimitados pela descrição de determinados atributos e características da explicação. Esse procedimento torna possível a quantificação e permite o teste de hipóteses de transmissão cultural. Sabendo-se obter e comparar as concepções de uma pessoa é possível investigar toda uma comunidade, rastreando a disseminação dessas idéias, possibilitando assim o estudo da transmissão do conhecimento cotidiano através das gerações. Essa dissertação propõe um protocolo de pesquisa a ser empregado no estudo de transmissão cultural de idéias cotidianas sobre os fenômenos patológicos hereditários a ser realizado em Serrinha dos Pintos e municípios vizinhos (RN), contribuindo para a descrição da diversidade de idéias cotidianas e investigação os processos de transmissão e fixação dessas idéias ao longo das gerações. / The learning of scientific concepts is largely influenced by everyday knowledge. It is therefore necessary to understand its origins and transmission dynamics for the proper planning of educational policies. The theories of cultural evolution contribute to understanding the origin, fixation and distortions of everyday ideas within a social group, explaining the spread dynamics of everyday knowledge. Checking and documenting the cultural transmission of everyday knowledge requires the identification and comparison of ideas used by people to explain natural phenomena with which they come in contact, in order to allow the description of patterns. This comparison is possible by the consolidation of the ideas in explanatory models defined by the description of certain explanation attributes and characteristics. This procedure makes it possible to quantify and allows testing of hypotheses of cultural transmission. The proper collection and comparison of a single person\'s ideas and thoughts enables us to form an idea of the community as a whole and to track the spread of these ideas. Consequently, enables us to study the transmission of everyday knowledge through the generations. This work proposes a research protocol to be used in the study of cultural transmission of ideas on the everyday phenomena of hereditary diseases to be held in Serrinha dos Pintos and neighboring counties (RN), thus contributing to the description of the diversity of everyday ideas and research processes related to the transmission and fixation of these ideas through the generations.

Esta tese enfrenta uma dificuldade tradicional da pesquisa em Educação, que é a de associar a cultura que já existe anteriormente ao sujeito e o seu direito de se apropriar dela de maneira não dogmática. Essa dificuldade tem sido acompanhada de dicotomias que nos levam ora a centralizar o currículo no sujeito - o que tende a suprimir o papel de transmissão cultural da escola -, ora no conhecimento como um fim em si mesmo, o que tende a silenciar a voz do sujeito. Ao identificar que as soluções propostas atualmente pelas filosofias liberais fazem uma falsa inclusão do sujeito, reivindicamos propostas que o incluam de fato - propostas éticas. Nossa principal hipótese é a de que este problema educacional carrega problemas filosóficos em torno do conceito de \'conhecimento\' e nos propomos a dissolvê-lo através da desnaturalização do que estamos acostumados a chamar de \'conhecimento\' e de uma posterior redefinição do papel fundamental da escola em diálogo com diferentes filosofias da educação. Para desnaturalizar o conhecimento, realizamos uma terapia wittgensteiniana da linguagem no contexto da física com o intuito de dissolver as dicotomias levantadas e de colher argumentos para o debate geral a respeito do papel da escola. A terapia é realizada através da análise pragmática da linguagem utilizada nos textos de Newton e das criações marginais feitas a partir de sua mecânica pelos físicos André Assis, Julio Garavito e Ernst Mach. Esta metodologia de trabalho reflete a própria natureza da dificuldade, que é a de associação entre \'universal\' e \'particular\'. O diálogo nos levou a redefinir o significado de \'transmissão cultural\' e de \'voz do sujeito\' de acordo com as necessidades do nosso tempo e com as limitações epistemológicas dos conteúdos que escolhemos para compor o currículo escolar, nos auxiliando a escapar a dificuldade inicial e a construir critérios éticos e epistemológicos para a redefinição do papel da escola. A partir dos novos significados, defendemos um papel fundamental da escola em nosso tempo: o de descolonizar o conhecimento. Em outras palavras, a escola, que muitas vezes é considerada como não responsável pela solução de problemas sociais, possui, sim, a grande responsabilidade na libertação das mentes colonizadas, e assim, a de auxiliar na retirada do conhecimento do controle de poucos através da desmistificação da imagem de mundo que o suporta. Essa tarefa só pode ser realizada pela escola pública, única instituição obrigatória para todos e que é consagrada por sua estreita conexão ao conhecimento. / This thesis faces a traditional difficulty of the educational research, which is that of transmitting the pre-existing culture and maintaining the subject\'s right to share it in a non-dogmatic way. This difficulty is usually accompanied of dichotomies that have led us to either centralize the curriculum on the subject - which tends to suppress the school\'s role of transmitting culture, or either on the knowledge as an end in itself, which, in its turn, tends to suppress the subject\'s voice. After identifying that the current solutions proposed by liberal philosophies make a false inclusion of the subject in the curriculum, we claim for proposals that in fact include him (ethical proposals). Our main hypothesis is that this educational problem is founded on philosophical ones, and therefore we propose to dissolve it through the denaturalization of what we are used to call \'knowledge\' followed by a redefinition of the role of school in dialogue with different philosophies of education. In order to denaturalize knowledge, we perform a Wittgensteinian therapy of language in the context of physics with the aim both of dissolving the philosophical dichotomies and of collecting arguments for the general debate about the role of school. The therapy is performed through a pragmatic analysis of the language used by Newton and marginal creations from his mechanics made by the physicists André Assis, Julio Garavito and Ernst Mach. This methodology reflects the very nature of the difficulty, which is that of connecting \'universal\' and \'particular\'. The dialogue led us to redefine the meaning of \'cultural transmission\' and \'the voice of the subject\' in accordance both to the needs of our time and to the epistemological limitations of the content we choose to compose the school curriculum - which allowed us to escape the initial difficulty and to construct ethical and epistemological criteria to redefine the role of school. Based on the new meanings, we were able to redefine the role of school in a way that fits better our current condition: the role of decolonizing knowledge. In other words, contrary to what one thinks, the school has responsibility in the solving of social problems when it is related to the freeing of colonized minds, and in this way, it is responsible for contributing to the removal of knowledge from the hands of groups in control by demystifying it through disclosing the world-picture that gives support to it. This task can only be performed by the public school, the only compulsory institution for all and known for its close connection to knowledge.