Social and Cultural Cognition Articles Comparison Presentation & Summary Please create a powerpoint, as well as write up a 15-20 minute summary and compari

Social and Cultural Cognition Articles Comparison Presentation & Summary Please create a powerpoint, as well as write up a 15-20 minute summary and comparison of the 2 articles. I have already started both the powerpoint and the write up, just continue from there. Keeps the slides concise and instead focus on the write up. Keep the presentation simple and casual, as it is for a general audience. Use informal language. I literally just need to read it out in front of the class.You will find articles, power point and word doc attached. No referencing needed, don’t care about plagiarism. Need done in 4 hours Okay so, (switch to 1st slide)
Today we have 2 articles to compare, to make it simpler I will be referring to them as article
1 and article 2. Both are covering social cognition and learning.
Switch to article 1 slide:
Past research has shown children to be strong imitators. This makes intuitive sense as,
direct replication of others allows the rapid acquisition of novel behaviours, while at the
same time avoiding the stress from trial-and-error learning. This behaviour is also evident in
the bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura if you still remember it from first year
psychology.
Overimitation. Overimitation is when young children copy the explicit actions of an adult
demonstrator even when a more efficient method of achieving the demonstrated outcome
is available. It usually emerges in the 2nd year of life and becomes increasingly pervasive
through the pre- school period.
This paper, however, largely focuses on 2 experiments and basically compares overimitation
in western vs African bushman tribes kids. I found it fitting that the two authors of this
article have different educational backgrounds, as one comes from a western university and
the other comes from an African one.
The authors state that in most Western cultures, children are commonly shown things and
taught how to use them via ordered, guided instruction. Children can thus assume that
adults have tested the rationality of their actions and that these actions are attempts to
transmit relevant knowledge. In contrast, in many indigenous communities, there is minimal
adult tuition related to object manipulation and instead children are expected to learn
largely through observation.
Switch to article 1, Experiment 1 slide:
Participants were thirty-two children between 2 and 6 years of age. They were evenly split
between western and bushman kids.
Children were tasked with opening a set of small boxes and were randomly assigned to either the demonstration
condition or the no-demonstration condition. Children were given 60 seconds to explore each of the three boxes
in both conditions.
All demonstrations comprised two distinct components: an irrelevant action and a causally related, but
unnecessary, action.
Irrelevant action had no function. The second action resulted in the box being opened and hence was causally
related to the target outcome; it was, however, unnecessary because the boxes could have been more easily
opened by hand.
The non-demonstration condition is self-explanatory.
Children in the demonstration condition produced the irrelevant actions on more boxes than did children in the
no-demonstra- tion condition
Children in the demonstration condition were also more likely to open the boxes using the object
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL COGNITION
Presentation by Dennis Ten
2 articles to compare:
◦ Article 1:
Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman
Children and the Origins of Human Cultural
Cognition (Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010)
• Article 2:
Natural pedagogy (Csibra & Gergely, 2009)
Article 1
◦ Children are strong imitators
◦ Overimitation
Experiment 1 and 2
◦ Guidance:
Western children > bushman children
∴ Hypothesis – child descendents of
hunter- gatherers would overimitate at
lower rates than Western children.
Experiment 1
◦ Participants (n=32) ages 2 – 6. Western (n=16) and Bushman (n=16)
◦ Box opening task
◦ Children randomly assigned to demonstration or no-demonstration condition.
◦ Findings:
Experiment 2
◦ Participants (n=62) ages 2 – 13. All bushman kids.
◦ Apparatus and general procedure almost identical to those of Experiment 1
Article 2
Author’s personal copy
Opinion
Natural pedagogy
Gergely Csibra and György Gergely
Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Nádor u. 9., H-1051 Budapest, Hungary
We propose that human communication is specifically
adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge
between individuals. Such a communication system,
which we call ‘natural pedagogy’, enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural
knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on
purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We
argue that human infants are prepared to be at the
receptive side of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive
to ostensive signals that indicate that they are being
addressed by communication, (ii) by developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by
being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as conveying information that is kind-relevant
and generalizable.
Communicating knowledge
Learning involves acquiring new information and using it
later when necessary. Thus, any kind of learning implies
generalization of the originally acquired information: to
new occasions, new locations, new objects, new contexts,
etc. However, any piece of new information that an organism perceives is episodic and particular: it involves a single
time, a specific location and context, and particular
object(s). The question of how one can learn (i.e. acquire
general knowledge) from bits of episodic information is
known as the induction problem and has been tackled by
various theories of learning. These usually rely on statistical procedures that involve sampling multiple episodes
of experience to form the basis of generalization to novel
instances. There is, however, a unique way to acquire
generic knowledge from a single instance of information
intake, namely, when it is transmitted through human
communication (see also Ref. [1]). If I point at two aeroplanes and tell you that ‘aeroplanes fly’, what you learn is
not restricted to the particular aeroplanes you see or to the
present context, but will provide you generic knowledge
about the kind of artefact these planes belong to that is
generalizable to other members of the category and to
variable contexts. Moreover, the transmission of such generic knowledge is not restricted to linguistic communication. If I show you by manual demonstration how to
open a milk carton, what you will learn is how to open
that kind of container (i.e. you acquire kind-generalizable
knowledge from a single manifestation). In such cases, the
observer does not need to rely on statistical procedures
to extract the relevant information to be generalized
because this is selectively manifested to her by the communicative demonstration. Such a ‘short-cut’ to generic
knowledge acquisition relies heavily on the communicative
Corresponding author: Csibra, G. (csibrag@ceu.hu).
148
cooperation and epistemic benevolence of the communicative partner.
Here, we propose that human communication is specifically adapted to fulfil the function of transmitting generic
knowledge between individuals (see Box 1 on non-human
animals). This is, of course, not the only function that
human communication serves: people also communicate
about important episodic matters to aid their cooperation
[2], to manipulate each other [3], to gossip [4] and for other
reasons. Our point is, however, that the minimal cognitive
system that could sub-serve episodic communication would
not be sufficient to support transmission of generic knowledge without further specific dispositions that motivate
experts to manifest, and prepare novices to receive, generic
(or, at least, generalizable) knowledge by communication.
We have speculated that communication of generic
knowledge was selected for during hominin evolution as
a consequence of the emergence of recursive tool making
practices, which confronted the observational learner with
cognitively opaque contents to acquire. This resulted in a
new type of learneability problem for existing observational learning mechanisms, and endangered successful
inter-generational transmission of valuable novel skills
and innovative practices [5,6]. A new type of communicative learning system based on ostensive-referential demonstrations of knowledge could by-pass this problem by
having the expert user actively guide the novice by selectively manifesting the information to be acquired and
generalized [7]. Clearly, the most likely beneficiaries of
communication of generic knowledge are children, who are
always novices with respect to the accumulated knowledge
of their culture. This is why we call the specific aspects of
human communication that allow and facilitate the transfer of generic knowledge to novices ‘natural pedagogy’.
Receptivity to natural pedagogy
Adults tend to actively facilitate their children’s learning
by communicative means [8], although the frequency and
the manner of such teaching practices varies widely across
cultures (Box 2). Children also learn from adults by
unguided observation and overhearing, but whenever they
are directly targeted by ostensive demonstrations, their
pattern of learning changes fundamentally. For example,
studies on imitative learning show that children primarily
imitate causally efficacious means to achieve goals, and
ignore apparently unnecessary actions unless the demonstrator makes it manifest for them that these cognitively
opaque aspects are relevant [9–12]. A recent study tested
directly whether toddlers interpret action demonstrations
as communicative manifestations [13]. When children are
shown an action performed in a particular style leading to a
clear end state (e.g. a mouse is hopping across the table into
1364-6613/$ – see front matter ! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005 Available online 13 March 2009
Author’s personal copy
Opinion
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Vol.13 No.4
Box 1. Is natural pedagogy unique to humans?
Box 2. Is natural pedagogy universal in human cultures?
There are many types of social learning mechanisms in the animal
kingdom, and they all involve some form of observational learning,
in which the observation of an adaptive behaviour of another
individual makes it more likely that the observer will produce the
same or similar behaviours in the future. In this sense, social
learning represents transmission of general knowledge or skills
from one individual to another.
Although rare, evidence indicates that certain forms of teaching
can also be found in non-human animals. For example, Thornton
and colleagues [39] found that adult meerkats supply young pups
with dead, disabled or intact scorpions according to the perceived
prey-handling ability of the pup, and that such practices are costly
for the teacher and help the pupil to learn how to kill scorpions.
Such examples of ‘opportunity teaching’ satisfy the conventional
criteria of teaching in non-human animals [40], and demonstrate
that not only human adults can have an active role in the learning of
their young.
It is also the case that there are many forms of animal
communication, and some of them arguably share some features
with human communication. For example, although most examples
of non-human communication serve the direct interest of the
communicator (agonistic displays, territorial or dominance assertions, courtship rituals, etc.), others represent instances of information donation [41], in which the sender’s gain is not direct or not as
much as that of the receivers (e.g. food and alarm calls). Animal
communication can also be referential in the sense of being ‘about’
some episodic information: such as specific food location (e.g. bees’
dance) or predator approach (monkey alarm calls).
However, we know of no examples of communication that would
transmit generic knowledge about kinds between individuals in nonhuman species. Rare anecdotal reports indicating tool-use demonstration in chimpanzees [42] have not been confirmed by others.
Similarly, the suggestion that the transfer of novel food items from
adults to infants in cooperative breeder primate-species teaches the
young about the edibility of food kinds [43], has not been supported
by experimental evidence [44]. In other words, although non-human
animals communicate about episodic, non-generalizable information (that applies only in the ‘here-and-now’) and learn new skills by
observation or scaffolded individual learning [39], they do not seem
to use communication to pass on generalizable knowledge to
others. Thus, although the hypothesis that natural pedagogy is a
hominin adaptation would not be refuted by the occurrence of a
similar social communicative learning mechanism in other species
(as analogous adaptations can emerge independently in distinct
lineages), the empirical evidence presently available indicates that it
is, indeed, a uniquely human phenomenon.
It is a widespread belief among anthropologists that teaching
children is a Western practice that does not exist in traditional
societies. For example, Henrich [45] asserts that ‘In most small-scale
human societies there is very little active teaching’, Fiske claims that
‘Children learn most of their cultures on their own initiative, without
pedagogy’ (A. Fiske, unpublished), and even psychologists agree:
‘In observation studies of everyday interaction between children
and caretakers, relatively little sign of overt teaching was found’
[46]. If this is true, natural pedagogy is not universal, not ‘natural’
and it would be a mistake to consider it as an evolutionary
adaptation.
However, we have reasons to doubt the validity of this belief – as
long as it is applied to the kind of teaching that natural pedagogy is
hypothesized to implement. According to Whiten [47], no examples
of teaching were found in rural Nigeria, but he also reports that
caretakers sometimes demonstrate for infants how to perform
certain acts, and frequently reveal information about object properties for them. (Importantly, no comparable behaviours were found
in a gorilla mother [48].) In a monograph on the development of
Kpelle children, Lancy [49] concludes that ‘parents influence
children by example … but not through direct teaching’, but lists
numerous observations of direct demonstrations, training, apprenticeship and feedback given to children practising difficult skills, and
even cites his informants saying, ‘We will teach our children our
work’.
This discrepancy between general claims about the absence of
teaching and the actual reports is likely to reflect the enormous
differences between teaching in Western societies and in more
traditional cultures. It is not just that Western education relies
heavily on formal schooling, but also that it aims to provide verbal
explanation and justification for what is being taught. Transmitting
such ‘theoretical’ knowledge, and regular coaching by instructions,
are indeed very rare in traditional societies. However, when
assessing the occurrence of pedagogical practices in various
cultures, the baseline should not be Western societies but nonhuman animals (Box 1). In this comparison, natural pedagogy (i.e.
transmitting generic knowledge by communication) seems to be
universal. This is further supported by recent analyses of archaeological data indicating that the fidelity of transmission and stability
of long-term maintenance of patterns and traditions of craft would
be difficult to explain without assuming some amount of pedagogical activity in ancestral societies [50].
a house), they tend to reproduce only the end state (put the
mouse into the house), often ignoring the manner of action
(hopping) [14]. However, if the relevant information concerning the end state is communicated to them verbally by
the actor before the demonstration (‘the mouse lives in the
house’), they reproduce the action style more often. They do
so because they conclude that the demonstrator’s communicative intention cannot be to redundantly present the
same information that she has just told them about, and so
they identify the manner of action as the new information
communicated and to be learnt [13]. Ostensive communication does not only make children pay more attention to
the demonstration but they also see it as a special opportunity to acquire generalizable knowledge.
Natural pedagogy is a basic cognitive adaptation, which
is indicated by the fact that young infants display receptivity to adults’ ostensive communications well before they
show evidence of learning from such interactions. Here, we
review some recent studies that demonstrate this preparedness in the form of three kinds of early perceptual and
cognitive biases: (i) preferential attention for the sources of
ostensive signals, (ii) referential expectation induced by
ostensive contexts and (iii) an interpretation bias to preferentially encode the content of ostensive-referential communication as representing generalizable knowledge.
Sensitivity to ostensive signals
Human communication is ostensive: it communicates not
just the message destined to influence the targeted recipient but also the very fact that this message is being
intentionally communicated to her [7]. Thus, human communication is often preceded, or accompanied, by ostensive
signals that (i) disambiguate that the subsequent action
(for example, a tool-use demonstration) is intended to be
communicative and (ii) specify the addressee to whom the
communication is addressed. Because the interpretation of
any additional signals might depend crucially on construing the act as communication, sensitivity to at least some of
the ostensive signals is most likely to be innate.
The most obvious ostensive signal in human communication is direct gaze towards the addressee, which usually
results in mutual eye contact. Newborns prefer to look at
faces with direct gaze over faces with averted gaze [15],
149
Author’s personal copy
Opinion
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.13 No.4
Figure 1. 4-month-old infants’ brain responses to dynamic mutual and averted gaze stimuli [21]. These time-frequency plots depict gamma-band electroencephalographic
(EEG) oscillatory activation at right fronto-polar sites in response to a gaze shift directed away (top row) or towards (bottom row) the infant (at 0 s), and in response to an
eye-brow raise together with a smile (at 1 s). Note that the two ostensive-communicative signals elicit the same activation, and that the infant brain responds to the smile
only if it follows mutual gaze (i.e. when it is addressed to the viewer).
even if these are schematic face-like patterns [16]. Further
results indicate that what newborns are looking for is the
prototypical eye-contact stimulus. First, their preference
for direct gaze disappears with upside-down faces [16].
Second, newborns’ (and adults’ [17]) preference for upright
over upside-down faces is eliminated when the contrast–
polarity relation that is characteristic to human eyes (dark
iris on the background of white sclera [18]) is reversed [19].
Recent neuroimaging studies provided evidence that 4month-olds interpret dynamic eye-contact as an ostensive
signal: (i) similar neural structures are activated by direct
gaze as found active in adults [20] in response to communicative signals and (ii) the same neural responses are
produced by two different facial signals (direct gaze and
eye-brow raise), both interpreted as ostensive stimuli by
adults [21] (Figure 1).
Ostensive signals also exist in the auditory modality.
For example, the special intonation pattern of ‘infantdirected speech’ (‘motherese’) can make it manifest that
a child is being addressed, and could indicate to an infant
that she is the intended recipient. Newborns prefer infantdirected to adult-directed speech [22] even if they are born
to congenitally deaf parents [23]. Interestingly, parents
also modify their actions when they ostensively demonstrate them to infants [24], and infants prefer these ‘motionese’ versions to adult-directed action demonstrations [25].
Referential expectation
If infants are prepared to learn generic knowledge when
adults address them, they should expect the adult to
specify the referent about which she is teaching them.
However, preverbal infants …
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