PSYC 391 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Psych

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 391
• Professor: Tanya Broesch

Document Summary

The extent of human culture is unmatched in other species. Theories of cultural learning: some have proposed the human social learning facilitates cumulative cultural knowledge. The debate: teaching is rare in non western, small scale societies (social anthropologists, teaching is necessary for human culture (cognitive psychologists) The responsibility is on the child: who to observe and when. Lancy on teaching: absent or rare in non-western societies, synonymous with parenting" in western societies. Learning without teaching: observation and imitation. Or, teaching is innate: unique features on human cognition. Babies are born on receptive of those cues: opaque knowledge transmission. Does not rely on understanding intentions or language understanding. De ning teaching: modifying ones behaviour to facilitate learning in another, costly to the teacher. Emulation: fall in umbrella of imitation. Modes of transmission- think who and how: parent-child (vertical, peers, friends (horizontal, other adults (oblique) Fijian villages: seen more as the farmers, incredibly isolated. Methods: series of interviews to examine.