Neste trabalho, procurou-se construir uma aproximação da experiência de um grupo de cultura popular no que diz respeito à transmissão de seus valores e práticas entre as gerações e à transformação deles nesta passagem. Experiência, tal como é compreendida por Benjamin (1985), conta aqui como lente fundamental na medida em que requer do olhar do pesquisador um voltar-se sobre si mesmo, tendo em vista a elaboração do que ele encontra como sua matéria-prima. O trabalho de campo da pesquisa foi feito com o grupo de Jongo do Tamandaré (Guaratinguetá-SP), portador da herança de um ritmo brasileiro de origem africana, que foi tomado como interlocutor, no espírito da pesquisa etnográfica. A etnografia é tomada não como prescrição metodológica, mas como disposição intelectual (Geertz, 1978) a partir da qual o pesquisador se constitui como tradutor de sua própria experiência em campo junto a seus interlocutores, aberto a lógicas insuspeitadas e desconcertantes. No contexto de globalização e do investimento crescente nas ações de salvaguarda do patrimônio cultural imaterial brasileiro, o processo de transmissão da cultura revelou-se como uma esfera de tensões, em que o repertório de saberes da memória coletiva e a linguagem das novas tecnologias disputam entre si e se hibridizam, configurando no grupo pontos de vista diversos e dilemáticos. Porém, para além da aproximação com essas forças de permanência e mudança que se contrapõe e se compõe no seio do grupo, o trabalho de campo suscita sobretudo indagações acerca de como os caminhos de transmissão da cultura criados nessa tensão se situam em relação à necessidade moral de elaboração e transmissão da experiência (Bosi, 1992). Nessa direção, é o próprio sentido mesmo da cultura como modo de estar no mundo (Arendt, 2005) e sua significância na teia de relações humanas que é retomado, tendo em vista uma visada qualitativa dos caminhos e desafios que a cultura popular e seus criadores vêm encontrando para deixarem, na sua passagem pela vida, um rastro (Ricoeur, 1997) / At this assignment, we looked into building an approach from the experience of a group of popular culture in regard to the transmission of its values and practices among generations and also to their transformations at this passage. The experiences as much as it is comprehended by Benjamin (1994), tells us here as something fundamental as it requests from the way we look at it, a quick look at ourselves, having as a target the elaboration from what we found as our raw material. At this research, the field work was done along with the Jongo of Tamandaré group that bears the memories of the Brazilian people that originated from Africa, which, here was taken as the interlocutor in he spirit of this ethnographic research. The ethnography is taken not as a methodological prescription, but as an intellectual disposition (Geertz, 1978) from which the researcher becomes a translator of his own experiences fielded along with his interlocutors, therefore opened to logics that are inconspicuous and sometimes clumsy. In the context of the globalization, and the growing investments in the actions of preserving the abstracted cultural material, the transmission process of the culture came up as a sphere of tensions, in which the collective repertoire of knowledges and memories and the language of the new technologies put up with each other into a fusion, configuring in the group different points of view and dilemmatic. However in order to go beyond this approach with these forces of permanence and changings that many times go against each other in the heart of the group, the field work is based over all in the questionings about how the different ways of transmission of the culture created in this tension is allocated in relation to the moral necessity of elaboration and transmission of backgrounds (Bosi, 1992). Towards it, it is the sense of the culture like the same sense as being in the world (Arendt, 2005) and its meaning in the net of human relations envisioning paths and challenges that the popular culture and its creators are facing in order to leave traces of their lives in the memorabilia of humanity (Ricoeur, 1997)

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

Traditional food knowledge (TFK) refers to a cultural tradition of sharing food, recipes and cooking skills and techniques and passing down that collective wisdom through generations. The value of this knowledge is hidden in a global food system offering an abundance of commercial convenience foods. This study defines TFK and explores its value to assert space for its recovery and renewal. Using Trevor Hancock’s research on healthy communities and models, such as the Mandala of Health (1985), traditional food knowledge will be analyzed for its potential to contribute to individual and community ecosystem health. The role of traditional food knowledge is examined with respect to promoting biocultural diversity and improving the capacity for food production among citizens. Food diversity is an important component of human nutrition and can be an indicator for a bioculturally diverse region. Studies on biocultural diversity recognize the close connection between cultural and biological diversity. Only recently have the losses in cultural heritage, such as traditional food knowledge garnered academic and policy attention. Traditional food knowledge can be one means of asserting cultural identity and can be a way to connect people to the natural world. Transmitting this knowledge is one important means of fostering sustainable livelihoods, ecosystem health and enhanced individual and community capacity. Traditional food knowledge can provide an individual with the capacity to prepare meals that are nutritious, safe and culturally relevant. This skill can support adaptation to altered food environments, such as is the case for immigrants and indigenous populations. The food system itself has rapidly changed with global industrialization, urbanization and cultural homogenization; and traditional food knowledge is no exception. The distinct expressions of taste and place are facing a continuity gap when traditional food knowledge is not passed forward, but rather sidelined as an abstract, historical concept. This study takes a qualitative case study approach exploring the concept of traditional food knowledge. The existing literature is compared to the lived experience of immigrants and their families in the Canadian suburban context, specifically in Mississauga, Ontario. This study explores the relevance and value of traditional food knowledge to Indonesian-Chinese New Canadians, their families and the wider community. Despite the colossal challenges posed by a global food industry, there are personal and community benefits to gaining or relearning traditional food knowledge. The community capacity increases with a greater number of skilled practitioners and educated consumers. Informal sharing of the cultural life skills engages people from various walks of life as they learn about, and from, each other. Governance that enables and sustains this type of community exchange will require changes to ensure equitable support for the opportunity for such informal learning and capacity building to occur among all citizens.

Traditional food knowledge (TFK) refers to a cultural tradition of sharing food, recipes and cooking skills and techniques and passing down that collective wisdom through generations. The value of this knowledge is hidden in a global food system offering an abundance of commercial convenience foods. This study defines TFK and explores its value to assert space for its recovery and renewal. Using Trevor Hancock’s research on healthy communities and models, such as the Mandala of Health (1985), traditional food knowledge will be analyzed for its potential to contribute to individual and community ecosystem health. The role of traditional food knowledge is examined with respect to promoting biocultural diversity and improving the capacity for food production among citizens. Food diversity is an important component of human nutrition and can be an indicator for a bioculturally diverse region. Studies on biocultural diversity recognize the close connection between cultural and biological diversity. Only recently have the losses in cultural heritage, such as traditional food knowledge garnered academic and policy attention. Traditional food knowledge can be one means of asserting cultural identity and can be a way to connect people to the natural world. Transmitting this knowledge is one important means of fostering sustainable livelihoods, ecosystem health and enhanced individual and community capacity. Traditional food knowledge can provide an individual with the capacity to prepare meals that are nutritious, safe and culturally relevant. This skill can support adaptation to altered food environments, such as is the case for immigrants and indigenous populations. The food system itself has rapidly changed with global industrialization, urbanization and cultural homogenization; and traditional food knowledge is no exception. The distinct expressions of taste and place are facing a continuity gap when traditional food knowledge is not passed forward, but rather sidelined as an abstract, historical concept. This study takes a qualitative case study approach exploring the concept of traditional food knowledge. The existing literature is compared to the lived experience of immigrants and their families in the Canadian suburban context, specifically in Mississauga, Ontario. This study explores the relevance and value of traditional food knowledge to Indonesian-Chinese New Canadians, their families and the wider community. Despite the colossal challenges posed by a global food industry, there are personal and community benefits to gaining or relearning traditional food knowledge. The community capacity increases with a greater number of skilled practitioners and educated consumers. Informal sharing of the cultural life skills engages people from various walks of life as they learn about, and from, each other. Governance that enables and sustains this type of community exchange will require changes to ensure equitable support for the opportunity for such informal learning and capacity building to occur among all citizens.

The initial purpose of this study was to explore how tourism in Guatemala is affecting indigenous weavers, weaving practices, and the transmission of weaving knowledge and experience from the current generation of Guatemalans to the next. Through extended on-site study and interviews with weavers in three towns in Guatemala—San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Antigua, and Santiago Zamora—it was learned that weaving practices in Guatemala are much more culturally and socially complex than what is disclosed on the surface. This study revealed that the transmission of weaving practices between generations is influenced significantly by the growing effects of globalization. Not only is globalization shaping the emerging generation’s participation in weaving in Guatemala, but it was seen in this study that prevalent global ideas and practices are also molding education, clothing styles, entertainment, economics, technology, and social media within the current younger generation of Guatemalans. These growing influences on Guatemalan society contribute to a diminished interest in weaving and perceived need for weavers in this country, and are thus constricting the transmission of local Maya culture from past generations to the next. This research was a combination of the weavers’ stories and my own journey through the cultural complexities found in three Guatemalan towns in order to reveal a rich and purposed view of current cultural practices of weaving in Guatemala. / text

Managing language choice in speech-language intervention is increasingly an issue for speech-pathologists treating bilingual children. Frequently L2 approaches only are implemented, resulting in negative effects on L1 acquisition, familial ties, and cultural transmission. This study examined the impact of a bilingual intervention on a school-aged child and her family. Providing intervention and therapy activities in the L1 resulted in increased parental engagement, increased L1 use by the child, and increased awareness of strategies for treating bilingual children among SLPs at the study site.

Culture is an important means by which both human and non-human animals transmit useful behaviours between individuals and generations. Amongst animals, chimpanzees live particularly varied cultural lives. However, the processes and factors that influence whether chimpanzees will be motivated to copy an observed behaviour are poorly understood. In this thesis, I explore various factors and their influence on social learning decisions in chimpanzees. In turn, the chapters examine the influence of (i) rank-bias towards copying dominant individuals, (ii) majority and contextual influences and finally (iii) individual differences in proclivity for social learning. In my first experiment, I found evidence that chimpanzees are highly motivated to copy the behaviour of subordinate demonstrators and innovators in an open-diffusion puzzle-box paradigm. In contrast, behaviours seeded by dominant individuals were not transmitted as faithfully. This finding has important implications for our understanding of the emergence of novel traditions. In my second experiment, I found that some chimpanzees are highly motivated to relinquish an existing behaviour to adopt an equally rewarding alternative if it is consistently demonstrated by just one or two individuals within a group context, but not in a dyadic context. This contrasts with prior studies which argue that chimpanzees are highly conservative and may hint at a hitherto unrecognised process by which conformity-like behaviour might occur. Finally, I performed a novel type of ‘meta' analysis on 16 social learning studies carried out at our research site to determine whether individuals demonstrated consistency in their social learning behaviour across experimental contexts. Strong evidence for individual differences in social information use was found, with females more likely to use social information than males. No effect of age, research experience or rearing history was found. This presents a promising new method of studying individual differences in behaviour using the accumulated findings of previous work at a study site.

Non-representational cognitive science is a promising research field that provides an alternative to the view of the brain as a “computer” filled with symbolic representations of the world and cognition as “calculations” performed on those symbols. Autopoiesis is a biological, bottom-up, non-representational theory of cognition, in which representations and meaning are framed as explanatory concepts that are constituted in an observer’s description of a cognitive system, not operational concepts in the system itself. One of the problems of autopoiesis, and all non-representational theories, is that they struggle with scaling up to high-level cognitive behaviour such as language. The Iterated Learning Model is a theory of language evolution that shows that certain features of language are explained not because of something happening in the linguistic agent’s brain, but as the product of the evolution of the linguistic system itself under the pressures of learnability and expressivity. Our goal in this work is to combine an autopoietic approach with the cultural transmission chains that the ILM uses, in order to provide the first step in an autopoietic explanation of the evolution of language. In order to do that, we introduce a simple, joint action physical task in which agents are rewarded for dancing around each other in either of two directions, left or right. The agents are simulated e-pucks, with continuous-time recurrent neural networks as nervous systems. First, we adapt a biologically plausible reinforcement learning algorithm based on spike-timing dependent plasticity tagging and dopamine reward signals. We show that, using this algorithm, our agents can successfully learn the left/right dancing task and examine how learning time influences the agents’ task success rates. Following that, we link individual learning episodes in cultural transmission chains and show that an expert agent’s initial behaviour is successfully transmitted in long chains. We investigate the conditions under which these transmission chains break down, as well as the emergence of behaviour in the absence of expert agents. By using long transmission chains, we look at the boundary conditions for the re-establishment of transmitted behaviour after chain breakdowns. Bringing all the above experiments together, we discuss their significance for non-representational cognitive science and draw some interesting parallels to existing Iterated Learning research; finally, we close by putting forward a number of ideas for additions and future research directions.

There is something unique about human culture. Its complex technologies, customs, institutions, symbolisms and norms, which are shared and maintained and improved across countless generations, are what sets it apart from the ‘cultures' of other animals. The fundamental question that researchers are only just beginning to unravel is: How do we account for the gap between their ‘cultures' and ours? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of culture's complex constituent components: from the micro-level psychological mechanisms that guide and facilitate accurate social learning, to the macro-level cultural processes that unfold within large-scale cooperative groups. This thesis attempts to contribute to two broad themes that are of relevance to this question. The first theme involves the evolution of accurate and high-fidelity cultural transmission. In Chapter 2, a meta-analysis conducted across primate social learning studies finds support for the common assumption that imitative and/or emulative learning mechanisms are required for the high-fidelity transmission of complex instrumental cultural goals. Chapter 3, adopting an experimental study with young children, then questions the claim that mechanisms of high-fidelity copying have reached such heights in our own species that they will even lead us to blindly copy irrelevant, and potentially costly, information. The second theme involves investigations of the mutually reinforcing relationship predicted between cultural complexity and ultra-cooperativeness in humans, employing a series of laboratory-based experimental investigations with adults. Chapter 4 finds only limited support for a positive relationship between cooperative behaviour and behavioural imitation, which is believed to facilitate cultural group cohesion. Finally, Chapter 5 presents evidence suggesting that access to cultural information is positively associated with an individual's cooperative reputation, and argues that this dynamic might help to scaffold the evolution of increased cultural complexity and cooperation in a learning environment where cultural information carries high value.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-05-07T14:49:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivototal.pdf: 965039 bytes, checksum: 51c0c81b78ae36cf3f73a7e1f5dc897d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-02-10 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The value of vegetal resources becomes dependent on demographic factors emphasizing the need for researching these issues in rural communities. The present study documents knowledge dynamics and patterns depending on age and gender in use of native plants in a rural community at semiarid region of Paraíba, Northeast Brazil. Socioeconomic factors and ethnobotanical data were registered from 123 household heads through semi-structured interviews. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to evaluate similar uses between species. Comparisons between men and women knowledge and between age groups about species richness, number of citations mentioned as well as species-plants use knowledge measures were made to determine inter-and intra-cultural variations. The findings will reveal what age and gender were important elements of knowledge. In general, elder individuals showed greater knowledge than those younger, in addition, differential knowledge between men and women in some categories confirms occurrence of intra-cultural variations associated with gender. These outcomes show that differentiation of botanical knowledge from a gender and age perspective reinforces the importance of recognizing specific activities and needs in men and women on the design and definition of sustainable management strategies, policies and economic interventions over vegetation legacy, also acting as a priority inclusion indicator of certain species in conservation processes as a contribution to the culture and biodiversity conservation. / A valorização dos recursos vegetais torna-se dependente dos elementos demográficos enfatizando a necessidade de pesquisas que abordem essas questões nas comunidades rurais. Este estudo documenta a dinâmica e os padrões de conhecimento em função da idade e o sexo referente ao uso de plantas nativas em uma comunidade rural da região semiárida da Paraíba, Nordeste, Brasil. Aspectos socioeconômicos e dados etnobotânicos foram registrados para 123 chefes domiciliares por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas. Análise de Componente Principal (PCA) foi utilizada para avaliar a similaridade de uso entre as espécies. Comparações entre os conhecimentos de homens e mulheres e entre grupos etários em relação à riqueza de espécies, ao número de citações mencionadas e às medidas de conhecimento de espécies e uso de plantas, foram feitas para determinar variações inter e intra culturais. Os resultados revelaram que a idade e o gênero foram elementos importantes para o conhecimento. De modo geral, indivíduos mais velhos demonstraram ter maior conhecimento que aqueles mais jovens, além disso, o conhecimento diferencial entre mulheres e homens para algumas categorias confirma a ocorrência de variações intraculturais associadas ao sexo. Estes resultados mostram que a diferenciação do conhecimento botânico na perspectiva de gênero e idade reforça a importância do reconhecimento das atividades e das necessidades específicas de homens e mulheres, no desenho e na definição de estratégias de gestão sustentável e nas intervenções políticas e econômicas sobre o patrimônio vegetal. Além disso, o conhecimento constitui-se como um indicador que permite priorizar a inclusão de determinadas espécies em processos de conservação como uma contribuição na manutenção da cultura e da biodiversidade.