Journal ArticleDOI
How to learn about teaching: An evolutionary framework for the study of teaching behavior in humans and other animals.
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TLDR
It is argued that disputes about the nature and prevalence of teaching across human societies and nonhuman animals are based on a number of deep-rooted theoretical differences between fields, as well as on important differences in how teaching is defined.Abstract:
The human species is more reliant on cultural adaptation than any other species, but it is unclear how observational learning can give rise to the faithful transmission of cultural adaptations. One possibility is that teaching facilitates accurate social transmission by narrowing the range of inferences that learners make. However, there is wide disagreement about how to define teaching, and how to interpret the empirical evidence for teaching across cultures and species. In this article I argue that disputes about the nature and prevalence of teaching across human societies and nonhuman animals are based on a number of deep-rooted theoretical differences between fields, as well as on important differences in how teaching is defined. To reconcile these disparate bodies of research, I review the three major approaches to the study of teaching – mentalistic, culture-based, and functionalist – and outline the research questions about teaching that each addresses. I then argue for a new, integrated framework that differentiates between teaching types according to the specific adaptive problems that each type solves, and apply this framework to restructure current empirical evidence on teaching in humans and nonhuman animals. This integrative framework generates novel insights, with broad implications for the study of the evolution of teaching, including the roles of cognitive constraints and cooperative dilemmas in how and when teaching evolves. Finally, I propose an explanation for why some types of teaching are uniquely human, and discuss new directions for research motivated by this framework.read more
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Cognition In The Wild
TL;DR: The cognition in the wild is universally compatible with any devices to read and is available in the digital library an online access to it is set as public so you can download it instantly.
References
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Book
Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Jeanne Lave,Etienne Wenger +1 more
TL;DR: This work has shown that legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice is not confined to midwives, tailors, quartermasters, butchers, non-drinking alcoholics and the like.
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Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes
TL;DR: In this paper, Cole and Scribner discuss the role of play in children's development and play as a tool and symbol in the development of perception and attention in a prehistory of written language.
Book
The Evolution of Cooperation
TL;DR: In this paper, a model based on the concept of an evolutionarily stable strategy in the context of the Prisoner's Dilemma game was developed for cooperation in organisms, and the results of a computer tournament showed how cooperation based on reciprocity can get started in an asocial world, can thrive while interacting with a wide range of other strategies, and can resist invasion once fully established.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour. I
TL;DR: A genetical mathematical model is described which allows for interactions between relatives on one another's fitness and a quantity is found which incorporates the maximizing property of Darwinian fitness, named “inclusive fitness”.