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How Culture Drove Us Into the Cognitive Niche
How Culture Drove Us Into the Cognitive Niche
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202103602
- ISBN
- 9798280716988
- DDC
- 150
- 저자명
- Zeng, Tian Chen.
- 서명/저자
- How Culture Drove Us Into the Cognitive Niche
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : Harvard University, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 290 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-12, Section: A.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Henrich, Joseph.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약How have humans become such outliers in our behavioral flexibility and our rapid learning? How have our brains evolved to learn and reason in evolutionarily novel domains, such as mathematics and number systems, laws and mores, or science and medicine? In this dissertation, combining work in cognitive science and cultural evolution, I seek to answer such questions by building informational-ecological models that show how minds that perform different computational strategies fare under different conditions. In the first chapter, I show, using a simple and general model, that any species that is heavily dependent on social learning to acquire much of its adaptive behavior would evolve to make increasingly accurate generalizations. This in turn demands greater mental capacity to learn abstract concepts and world-models. This model ties the evolution of our brains directly to the fact that our babies can expect to be born into a world where they can learn from other skilled individuals. However, our nature as a cultural species has done more than just making available skilled models to learn from. Culture can shape our informational environments (i.e. informational niche construction) in other ways as well. In chapter two of my dissertation, I show how differences between cultural populations in communication styles, or in how knowledge flows across a population, can alter how information is sampled, in such a way as to explain computationally why different cultural groups develop Analytic or Holistic thought--a major distinction made by cross-cultural psychologists. In the third chapter, I extend this informational-ecological perspective to the physical world of tools and dwellings, and the social world of norms, institutions and organizations, to show how the phenomenon of standardization in cultural products is yet another form of informational-niche construction, with far-reaching consequences that explain a wide range of cross-cultural findings in cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science. One source of increasing standardization in a cultural system is increased population mobility, and on my final chapter, I present archaeogenetic work showing how an ancient episode of increased mobility has led to the development of just such a standardized suite of bronze weaponry that took on ritual, political and economic significance across Northern Eurasian societies in the Bronze Age.
- 일반주제명
- Behavioral sciences
- 일반주제명
- Cognitive psychology
- 일반주제명
- Biology
- 일반주제명
- Cultural anthropology
- 기타저자
- Harvard University Human Evolutionary Biology
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 86-12A.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■006m o d
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■020 ▼a9798280716988
■035 ▼a(MiAaPQ)AAI32042562
■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a150
■1001 ▼aZeng, Tian Chen.▼0(orcid)0000-0001-6697-8691
■24510▼aHow Culture Drove Us Into the Cognitive Niche
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bHarvard University▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a290 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 86-12, Section: A.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Henrich, Joseph.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University, 2025.
■520 ▼aHow have humans become such outliers in our behavioral flexibility and our rapid learning? How have our brains evolved to learn and reason in evolutionarily novel domains, such as mathematics and number systems, laws and mores, or science and medicine? In this dissertation, combining work in cognitive science and cultural evolution, I seek to answer such questions by building informational-ecological models that show how minds that perform different computational strategies fare under different conditions. In the first chapter, I show, using a simple and general model, that any species that is heavily dependent on social learning to acquire much of its adaptive behavior would evolve to make increasingly accurate generalizations. This in turn demands greater mental capacity to learn abstract concepts and world-models. This model ties the evolution of our brains directly to the fact that our babies can expect to be born into a world where they can learn from other skilled individuals. However, our nature as a cultural species has done more than just making available skilled models to learn from. Culture can shape our informational environments (i.e. informational niche construction) in other ways as well. In chapter two of my dissertation, I show how differences between cultural populations in communication styles, or in how knowledge flows across a population, can alter how information is sampled, in such a way as to explain computationally why different cultural groups develop Analytic or Holistic thought--a major distinction made by cross-cultural psychologists. In the third chapter, I extend this informational-ecological perspective to the physical world of tools and dwellings, and the social world of norms, institutions and organizations, to show how the phenomenon of standardization in cultural products is yet another form of informational-niche construction, with far-reaching consequences that explain a wide range of cross-cultural findings in cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science. One source of increasing standardization in a cultural system is increased population mobility, and on my final chapter, I present archaeogenetic work showing how an ancient episode of increased mobility has led to the development of just such a standardized suite of bronze weaponry that took on ritual, political and economic significance across Northern Eurasian societies in the Bronze Age.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0084.
■650 4▼aBehavioral sciences
■650 4▼aCognitive psychology
■650 4▼aBiology
■650 4▼aCultural anthropology
■653 ▼aCognitive evolution
■653 ▼aComputational cognitive science
■653 ▼aCross-cultural psychology
■653 ▼aEvolutionary anthropology
■690 ▼a0602
■690 ▼a0633
■690 ▼a0306
■690 ▼a0326
■71020▼aHarvard University▼bHuman Evolutionary Biology.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g86-12A.
■790 ▼a0084
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17357804▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.
