Forms Of Cultural Transmission Research Articles

From Storytelling to Facebook

Cultural evolution researchers use transmission chain experiments to investigate which content is more likely to survive when transmitted from one individual to another. These experiments resemble oral storytelling, wherein individuals need to understand, memorize, and reproduce the content. However, prominent contemporary forms of cultural transmission—think an online sharing—only involve the willingness to transmit the content. Here I present two fully preregistered online experiments that explicitly investigated the differences between these two modalities of transmission. The first experiment (N = 1,080 participants) examined whether negative content, information eliciting disgust, and threat-related information were better transmitted than their neutral counterpart in a traditional transmission chain setup. The second experiment (N = 1,200 participants) used the same material, but participants were asked whether or not they would share the content in two conditions: in a large anonymous social network or with their friends, in their favorite social network. Negative content was both better transmitted in transmission chain experiments and shared more than its neutral counterpart. Threat-related information was successful in transmission chain experiments but not when sharing, and finally, information eliciting disgust was not advantaged in either. Overall, the results present a composite picture, suggesting that the interactions between the specific content and the medium of transmission are important and, possibly, that content biases are stronger when memorization and reproduction are involved in the transmission—as in oral transmission—than when they are not—as in online sharing. Negative content seems to be reliably favored in both modalities of transmission.

Conformity and content-biased cultural transmission in the evolution of altruism

The evolution of altruism has been extensively modeled under the assumption of genetic transmission, whereas the dynamics under cultural transmission are less well understood. Previous research has shown that cultural transmission can facilitate the evolution of altruism by increasing (1) the probability of adopting the altruistic phenotype, and (2) assortment between altruists. We incorporate vertical and oblique transmission, which can be conformist or anti-conformist, into models of parental care, sibling altruism, and altruism between individuals that meet assortatively. If oblique transmission is conformist, it becomes easier for altruism to invade a population of non-altruists as the probability of vertical transmission increases. If oblique transmission is anti-conformist, decreasing vertical transmission facilitates invasion by altruism in the assortative meeting model, whereas in other models, there is a trade-off: greater vertical transmission produces greater assortment among genetically related altruists, but lowers the probability of adopting altruism via anti-conformity. Compared to conditions for invasion under genetic transmission, e.g., Hamilton’s rule, we show that invasion can be easier with sufficiently strong anti-conformity, and in some models, with sufficiently high assortment even if oblique transmission is conformist. We also explore invasion by an allele A that increases individuals’ content bias for altruism, in the absence of other forms of cultural transmission. If costs and benefits combine additively, A invades under previously known conditions. If costs and benefits combine multiplicatively, invasion by A and by altruism become more difficult than in the corresponding additive models.

Gender and culture

Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on gender and culture. Gender gaps in various outcomes (competitiveness, labour force participation, and performance in mathematics, among many others) show remarkable differences across countries and tend to persist over time. The economics literature initially explained these differences by looking at standard economic variables such as the level of development, women’s education, the expansion of the service sector, and discrimination. More recent literature has argued that gender differences in a variety of outcomes could reflect underlying cultural values and beliefs. This article reviews the literature on the relevance of culture in the determination of different forms of gender gap. I examine how differences in historical situations could have been relevant in generating gender differences and the conditions under which gender norms tend to be stable or to change over time, emphasizing the role of social learning. Finally, I review the role of different forms of cultural transmission in shaping gender differences, distinguishing between channels of vertical transmission (the role of the family), horizontal transmission (the role of peers), and oblique transmission (the role of teachers or role models).

Emotional Expression of Material in Installation Art - Based on my work “Inside the Universe”

As a form of cultural transmission, installation art is always a unique visual effect. Material is one of the most important creative elements in the technique of installation art. In addition, every advance in science and technology promotes innovation and development in the arts. In the 21st century, the merging of art with science and technology provides more possibilities for the development of the new media. However, the function of the information output and the function of the environment depend on the technique of “shell,” which is not sufficient, and it is necessary to explore the new forms of media expression, the quality of material, and the texture of the material. Therefore, this paper analyses the influence of visual language in artistic creation and the transmission of artistic expression in the medium of media art. Based on its own artistic works, the author analyzes the causes of production, material selection, and emotion. This paper analyzes the material language of famous domestic and international installations and discusses the meaning of the artistic works and the meaning of transmission.

Home literacy as cultural transmission: Parent preferences for shared reading in the United Arab Emirates

Abstract This paper examines parents' literacy preferences for their young children as a reflection of the greater culture within a Muslim, Arab context. We describe literacy as a social practice and form of cultural transmission. Parent preferences among nationals in the United Arab Emirates ( n = 118) are described across the following dimensions: children's book genre and content, and purpose of shared reading. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed based on the constant comparison data reduction method. Parents valued books that were a reflection of their culture and values. Nonfiction texts were favored due to their realistic content, which allowed parents to more easily assess a book's suitability for their child. They preferred life, earth and space science texts that teach facts and morality. Favorite folk stories included The Arabian Nights and Tales of Juha because of their entertainment value and lessons taught. The purpose of shared reading is mainly to teach isolated reading skills and develop factual knowledge, deemphasizing meaning making. Parents allowed boys to self-select reading materials more than girls. Study implications call for literacies that unite and empower rather than spark opposition from the local culture.

Tracking down ruins: Anita Desai and the ethics of postcolonial writing

“The Museum of Final Journeys” is the opening novella of Anita Desai’s collection of short fiction, The Artist of Disappearance (2011). The story is about an enigmatic art collection left in a state of ruin and dereliction in an unnamed province of postcolonial India. Yet behind the literary representation of ruins lies a profound meditation on the ethical role of the writer in transmitting the past. Indeed, Desai’s text is an imaginative adaptation of the story of a 19th-century Italian aristocrat, Prince Bardi of Bourbon, and his legendary artistic collection, which is kept today in the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice. By referring to Bardi’s story in transfigured form, Desai addresses the potential of literary works to take care of the past, bring it into the present and preserve it from forgetting and destruction. Desai’s imagery of ruins provides a suggestive exploration of the ethics of postcolonial writing as a form of cultural transmission.

Pensando la educación desde lo plural: el "animal educandum, ex diversitate" en el acto educativo

La educación intercultural se encuentra en auge y en consecuencia surgen interrogantes con respecto a la teoría y la práctica de esta propuesta educativa, de modo que no se quede solo en el discurso sino que sea una realidad. Esta educación no puede darse aisladamente sino dentro de un conjunto, semejante a un organismo, por ello se acepta que ésta sea parte de la educación inclusiva donde se pueda conformar un todo sin menosprecio a las partes, es decir, para valorar a todos los seres humanos sea por sus capacidades o discapacidades, sea por su color o su dialecto, sea por el hecho de presentar dificultades específicas del aprendizaje. Que la educación inclusiva sea una realidad es tarea de todos porque la primera forma de transmisión cultural viene de la familia, por ello desde la familia hasta la sociedad en general, deben encargarse de que la inclusividad sea un ‘hecho’.

Memorates and memory. Reevaluation of Lauri Honko’s theory.

This paper deals with the phenomena where culture and society influence the content of personal experiences. It confronts psychological knowledge about autobiographical memory and folkloristic theories associated with the concept of memorate – a personal experience narrative which is build upon a supernatural belief. Autobiographical memory is not a vessel in which static information is deposited and later recalled; rather it is a dynamic process of repeated construction and reconstruction of memories, which is subject to many internal and external influences. Ideas and concepts, widespread in society, dreams and beliefs, stories and experiences of others, can be, and often are incorporated into autobiographical memories. Similarly folklorists found out that memorates (personal experience narratives) often consist of traditional elements. The author of this paper argues that the theory of Lauri Honko regarding the formation and transmission of memorates (1964) largely coheres with psychological knowledge about autobiographical memory. This kind of social contagion of memory suggests a possibility for a specific form of cultural transmission of beliefs and concepts related to experiences.

Culture for Sale? An Exploratory Study of the Crow Fair

This paper describes an ethnographically-oriented participant-observation study conducted during the annual Crow Fair, held in south central Montana. Data collected included audio-recorded interviews with participants, participant observations, photographic and video recordings. Narrative interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the constant comparison method. Multiple data sources improved the veracity of this study through triangulation, and four themes emerged from the data: commercialization, alcohol abuse, spirituality, and community. The researchers discuss these themes and their conclusions regarding the "selling" of Native American culture as a form of cultural transmission. Theme analysis revealed the researchers recognized that the principal researcher had changed his view of the Crow Fair as being frivolous to having a deeper purpose and meaning to participants.

Cultural evolution of cooperation: The interplay between forms of social learning and group selection

The role of cultural group selection in the evolution of human cooperation is hotly debated. It has been argued that group selection is more effective in cultural evolution than in genetic evolution, because some forms of cultural transmission (conformism and/or the tendency to follow a leader) reduce intra-group variation while creating stable cultural variation between groups. This view is supported by some models, while other models lead to contrasting and sometimes opposite conclusions. A consensus view has not yet been achieved, partly because the modelling studies differ in their assumptions on the dynamics of cultural transmission and the mode of group selection. To clarify matters, we created an individual-based model allowing for a systematic comparison of how different social learning rules governing cultural transmission affect the evolution of cooperation in a group-structured population. We consider two modes of group selection (selection by group replacement or by group contagion) and systematically vary the frequency and impact of group-level processes. From our simulations we conclude that the outcome of cultural evolution strongly reflects the interplay of social learning rules and the mode of group selection. For example, conformism hampers or even prevents the evolution of cooperation if group selection acts via contagion; it may facilitate the evolution of cooperation if group selection acts via replacement. In contrast, leader-imitation promotes the evolution of cooperation under a broader range of conditions.

The Tomorrow's Warriors Jam Sessions: Repertoires of Transmission and Hospitality

While jam sessions in London do not enjoy a centrality in jazz lore comparable to the New York scene, there has been a tradition of jamming (albeit a discontinuous one) since the beginnings of the music in the United Kingdom. In the years since the development of modern jazz in the UK, jam sessions have gradually become a steady if rather uneven fixture on the London scene. In this study, I document a number of jam sessions organized by the Tomorrow's Warriors (TW) educational program, a program developed by the black arts organization, Dune Music. Through this article I open a particular window on the theme of this issue, black British jazz, examining how these jam sessions offered ways into jazz for the black participants and articulated a particular vision of affiliation to jazz more generally. Data for the article were taken from audiovisual recordings of jam sessions in 2009 and numerous interviews with jam session participants as well as black British musicians who were interviewed as part of the overall project, What is Black British Jazz?, of which this piece of research forms a part. Before looking at the TW sessions, it is worth considering the nature and function of the jam session more generally. Gunter Schuller describes the jam session as informal gathering of jazz or rock musicians playing for their own pleasure.... The idea of a jam session, or simply jamming, has come to mean any meeting of musicians in private or public, where the emphasis is on unrehearsed material or improvisation (2011). He goes on to describe how the nature of this type of performance has changed since the 1930s from being a private pleasure for musicians away from the rigors of public performance to a more formally managed mode of public performance. According to this description, the public face of the jam gradually undermined another function of the original sessions, which was as a training ground for aspiring musicians. Schuller's (2011) brief entry in Grove Music Online, however, points to a rather less recondite and complex performance mode than seems to me to be the case. At once improvised and regulated, at a boundary point between public entertainment and personal development, caught between the formal and informal, the jam offers important insights into the nature of musical sociability and communication, although it has been a focus of attention for only a small number of scholars (Cameron 1954, Kisliuk 1988, Dempsey 2008, Doffman 2012). The article approaches the TW sessions through two lenses, then: first through understanding them as a form of cultural transmission, and second, through a claim for the sessions to be seen as a site of a hospitality. For black British jazz musicians, hospitality and cultural transmission (and its stewardship) are not necessarily to be taken for granted (Toynbee and Banks, forthcoming). Cultural transmission in jazz has long been a blend of informal absorption of practice through listening, attending gigs, and jamming, alongside more formal routes such as adult education courses and university degrees (the latter being a relatively recent phenomenon in the UK). Although there has been a sustained shift in the UK over the last forty years from informal learning within relatively close-knit groups of players (that could be characterized as an apprenticeship model of learning) to formal courses of study on a much larger scale, the promise of greater inclusion for black musicians has remained at best spasmodic, and at worst almost nonexistent. For many it has felt as though this lack is simply part of a wider, historical effacement of the black presence in the UK. To give a quantitative measure of this presence in music education, The Higher Education Statistics Agency records 40 black students at six leading English conservatoires for the academic year 2009-10 out of a total of 3,230 UK-domiciled students (Higher Education Statistics Agency 2011, Table 3). …

Human development and cultural transmission

Transmission of cultural knowledge to children takes several forms. This paper argues that there are three basic forms of cultural transmission, which are introduced sequentially at different stages of development. Earlier forms are retained as new ones are added, and all three forms are used in adult cultural transmissions. The introduction of new forms is made possible by the cognitive and behavioral consequences of neurological and hormonal changes in the developing body.

A simulation study exploring the role of cultural transmission in language evolution

This paper proposes a language acquisition framework that includes both intra-generational transmission among children and inter-generational transmission between adults and children. A multi-agent computational model that adopts this framework is designed to evaluate the relative roles of these forms of cultural transmission in language evolution. It is shown that intra-generational transmission helps accelerate the convergence of linguistic knowledge and introduce changes in the communal language, while inter-generational transmission helps preserve an initial language to a certain extent. Due to conventionalisation during transmission, both forms of transmission collectively achieve a dynamic equilibrium of language evolution: On short time-scales, good understandability is maintained among individuals across generations; in the long run, language change is inevitable.

Limited Knowledge

Limited Knowledge Robert Fyne Repicturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television. Michael Paris, Editor. Palgrave, 2007. 235 pages; $85.00 In the festive, nocturnal hours of January 12, 2005, a bright-eyed, twenty-yearold, third in line to the British crown partygoer, showed up at a Wiltshire costume ball dressed in a spiffy Nazi uniform much to the glee of some paparazzi lurking in the nearby shadows. Moving stealthily, these photographers soon spotted the gregarious prince soul-kissing another reveler, a smiling female, also dressed in Third Reich regalia. When these pictures appeared the next morning, on the front page of The Sun, under the headline, Harry the Nazi, the Royal family, who lived through the 1940 [End Page 93] Blitz, gasped. Why did Prince Harry behave so irresponsibly? Was he trying to impress the girls? Did he feel robust and daring wearing an Afrika Korps swastika? Or, was he simply another silly undergraduate playing the role of the big cheese? Within hours, Buckingham Palace proffered an apology. Young people—the monarchy lamented—have a limited knowledge of World War II. Why wouldn’t they? For many young people World War II resembles a distant blur, a shapeless, one-paragraph entry in some textbook, about forgotten places. And what about the heroes and villains? The opposing forces? Altering world history events? Did the conflict really matter or were they faded memories, resurrected like the Punic Wars, for end-of-the-semester examinations? But what about Prince Harry? Isn’t he hooked up to a cable television network? Doesn’t he watch World War II reruns? Did he enjoy Raid on Rommel? Probably. After all, he wore the North Afrika Korps outfit to the soirée. For Harry’s generation, popular movies probably explain everything. Want to learn about Pearl Harbor? Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! The Arnhem debacle? Check out A Bridge too Far. Need information about the Normandy invasion? Look at The Longest Day. But World War II motion pictures, like slow-moving lava, often change direction, creating revisionist storylines or facile interpretations. As Professor Michael Paris explains, “the Second World War has been shaped more by the moving image than by any other form of cultural transmission.” To expand his point, Professor Paris brings together fifteen wonderful essays in a 2008 anthology examining cinema and the global conflict. As an innovative study, Repicturing the Second World War offers contemporary interpretations about events that are now three decades old. Film titles such as Land Girls and Foyle’s War take a hard look at British home front life while Tea With Mussolini and Mediterraneo concentrate on Il Duce’s expansionism. Similarly, a French photoplay Safe Conduct and two German productions Aimée and Jaguar and Sophie Scholl detail life under the iron boot, while an American made-for-television drama, The Tuskegee Airmen, glorifies the exploits of an all-volunteer Black fighter squadron even though another U.S. production, Come See the Paradise takes some nasty swipes at Executive Order 9066, the federal law authorizing the Japanese internment camps. Finally, an HBO screenplay Conspiracy documents the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference where top-ranking Nazis plotted the final solution while an Italian drama, Life is Beautiful and a French title, Train of Life approach the Shoah experience in a frivolous manner. On the Eastern Front, Enemy at the Gates contains many examples of post-Cold War politics and BBC’s Bomber Harris disputes the famed British general’s tactical air war against Germany while two other motion pictures, Saving Private Ryan and Downfall, examine the Normandy invasion and the Führer’s final days. In all, these essays reiterate the oft proclaimed notion that both motion pictures and television productions provide twenty-first century viewers their World War II history even though a great deal of superficial and inaccurate information emanates from these media. And with each passing generation—as the events of this global conflict edge toward oblivion—it comes as no surprise that a young man, who someday might wear the crown of England, would masquerade as a Nazi. Maybe the rubescent youth should take a look at Repicturing the Second World War. Why not...

Social learning of food preferences by white-tailed ptarmigan chicks

The social-learning function of a food call is to share information about resources with conspecifics. Field studies on the social learning of food and parent–offspring interactions regarding food in a natural environment are rare. Our aims in a 2-year study in the Rocky Mountain National Park, U.S.A., were to monitor white-tailed ptarmigan, Lagopus leucurus , hens' food calls, a vocalizing and tidbitting display, to determine whether the hens selected foraging areas based on food availability and whether chicks learned about important food resources from hen food calls. Our findings indicate that the white-tailed ptarmigan hen's food call is a form of cultural transmission in which information regarding available food is disseminated from hens to chicks. Hens chose foraging patches where certain plant species were abundant and called their chicks to these foods, which dominated their diet. Chick consumption mirrored the calling rates of hens and as a result chicks ate high-protein foods, which are critical for chick growth and development. The results suggest that white-tailed ptarmigan hens' food calls may function to enhance survival of juvenile ptarmigan.

That Seductive Thing: Representing the Illiterate as Readers*

In “That Seductive Thing: Representing the Illiterate as Readers”, it is argued that a historical approach to representations of readers and reading may highlight some issues pertaining to books and education. Far from being simple and neutral illustrations of some cultural practices and commodities in the past, both images and texts about books, reading and the illiterate are here considered as forms of perception and normalization of reading through the representation of (socially) contrasting readers. Thus, images and texts are in fact cultural discourses used to promote and to impose certain models of social behaviour. Yet, they are also part of the doxa which legitimate the “natural” supremacy of written forms of cultural transmission and, therefore, the excellence of books and schooling in the making of “the reader”. This guiding perspective in understanding problems of books and education is analysed here with a closer look at questions of age, race and schooling in Portuguese society during the first half of the 20th century. In that period, several institutions (State, School, Church and so forth) participate, not necessarily in the same way, in what we might call “the Portuguese battle for (national) literacy”. Books and school education are important topics within those social politics fighting “illiteracy”, generating images which represent the advantages of education and of a “culture of books” and, though in different and divergent ideological and political circumstances, creating a certain sociology of reading. * The authors would like to thank the support of the Centra de Estudos em Educação e Psicologia and the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, as well as our colleague Francesca Rayner, who helped to improve this revised version of the paper, where any possible errors are exclusively due to authors’ responsibility.

The Parable as Performance: Interpretation, Cultural Transmission and Political Strategy in Lessing's Nathan der Weise

In Rettung des Inepti Religiosi, Lessing advised the interpreter to read the Bible just as one reads Livy, in other words, to read the Holy Scripture just as one reads historical texts: Lies die Bibel, nicht anders als du den Livius ... liesest.' Was he merely stating that the interpretation of Scripture should proceed in the same way as the interpretation common to all other books? Was he simply following the historical-grammatical school of C. A. G. Keil and J. A. Ernesti in Germany, and John Toland in England, who insisted on an interpretation of the Bible in accordance with the principles of philological text-criticism? Was Lessing simply reiterating J. S. Semler's critique of the unity of the canon? Or was he asserting something fundamentally different, namely, that religious tradition and scripture are not essentially different from any other form of cultural transmission, and that one should therefore read the Bible as a historical artifact, as a secular product of cultural tradition? I shall argue that Lessing sought to defend this second, more radical proposition; that Lessing was not only interested in the problem of interpretation from a secular standpoint, but that he formulated, in the indirect form of the parable, an essentially political form of what might be termed hermeneutic intervention. By historicizing the claim to truth and validity of conflicting interpretations and questioning the distinction between the interpretation of sacred scripture and profane text, Lessing created the discursive possibility of secular reading as a process of historically situated individuals who, at least in principle, could make incommensurable, yet equally justified claims regarding texts and the cultural transmission

A family study of anthropometric traits in a Punjabi community: II. An investigation of familial transmission.

Path analysis is used to characterize family resemblance for anthropometrics in twins and nuclear families from the Punjabi population of India. Significant positive assortative mating exists with respect to many body measurements, but not for cranial or facial variables. Evidence of a maternal effect for five measurements of bone diameter is reported. Twin resemblance is increased by a component not found in other pairs of relatives for all variables except nasal height, facial length, ear length, and head breadth. Although all variables have significant transmissible components, many have parameter estimates which are not consistent with strictly polygenic inheritance. Some form of cultural transmission is implicated for such variables, especially for those related to fatness levels.