Conférence donnée par Christine Caldwell dans le cadre du colloque international organisé par le Groupe Compas, avec le soutien du Collège d’études mondiales/FMSH, de l’École normale supérieure, de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne (équipe Sciences, normes, décision) et du GDRI « Éducation et neurosciences » du CNRS.
Exposé lors de la table-ronde intitulée "The development of teacher-learner interaction"
In human populations, skills and knowledge accumulate over generations, giving rise to behaviours and technologies far more complex than any single individual could achieve alone. This ratchet-like property of human culture appears absent in nonhuman species, as socially transmitted behaviours in animal populations are generally no more complex than those that can be acquired by trial and error. The human propensity for teaching appears to be similarly unique, and so it is unsurprising that there has been considerable speculation over the possibility that the presence of one capacity might have created conditions favouring the other. In order to investigate whether particular transmission mechanisms, such as teaching, are necessary in order to generate cumulative culture, we have carried out experimental studies of cultural evolution under laboratory conditions, using small groups of human participants (termed “microsocieties”). Using these methods we have found that cumulative culture can be elicited under a wide range of different learning conditions. In this presentation I will discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the evolutionary relationship between cumulative culture and teaching.
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Dernière mise à jour : 26/02/2016