当前位置: X-MOL 学术Human Nature › 论文详情
Our official English website, www.x-mol.net, welcomes your feedback! (Note: you will need to create a separate account there.)
Social Learning and Innovation in Adolescence
Human Nature ( IF 2.750 ) Pub Date : 2021-04-21 , DOI: 10.1007/s12110-021-09391-y
Bonnie Hewlett 1
Affiliation  

This paper examines how innovative skills and knowledge are transmitted and acquired among adolescents in two hunter-gatherer communities, the Aka of southern Central African Republic and the Chabu of southwestern Ethiopia. Modes of transmission and processes of social learning are addressed. Innovation as well as social learning have been hypothesized to be key features of human cumulative culture, enhancing the fitness and survival of individuals in diverse environments. The innovation literature indicates adult males are more innovative than children and female adults and therefore predicts that adolescents will seek out adult males. Further, the mode of transmission should be oblique (i.e., learning from adults other than parents). Thus, learning of innovations should be oblique or horizontal rather than vertical, with adolescents paying particular attention to “successful” innovative individuals (prestige bias). The social learning literature indicates that complex skills or knowledge is likely to be learned through teaching, and therefore that teaching will be an important process in the transmission of innovations. In-depth and semi-structured interviews, informal observations, and systematic free-listing were used to evaluate these hypotheses. The study found that (1) cultural context patterned whether or not adolescents sought out adult male or female innovators; (2) oblique modes of transmission were mentioned with greater frequency than horizontal or vertical modes; (3) knowledge and skill bias was notable and explicitly linked by the adolescents to reproductive effort; and (4) teaching was biased toward same-sex individuals and was an important but not an exclusive means of transmitting complex skills and social knowledge.



中文翻译:

青少年社会学习与创新

本文考察了中非共和国南部的阿卡人和埃塞俄比亚西南部的查布这两个狩猎采集社区的青少年如何传播和获取创新技能和知识。讨论了社会学习的传播方式和过程。创新和社会学习被假设为人类累积文化的关键特征,可提高个体在不同环境中的适应能力和生存能力。该创新文献表明成年男性比儿童和成年女性更具创新性,因此预测青少年会寻找成年男性。此外,传播方式应该是倾斜的(即向父母以外的成年人学习)。因此,对创新的学习应该是倾斜的或水平的,而不是垂直的,青少年特别关注“成功”的创新个人(声望偏差)。在社会学习文献表明,复杂的技能或知识可能通过学习教育,因此,教学将是创新传播的重要过程。深度和半结构化访谈、非正式观察和系统的免费列表被用来评估这些假设。研究发现,(1)文化背景决定了青少年是否寻找成年男性或女性创新者;(2) 斜传输模式的频率高于水平或垂直模式;(3) 知识和技能偏见是显着的,青少年明确地将其与生殖努力联系起来;(4) 教学偏向于同性个体,是传播复杂技能和社会知识的重要但不是唯一的手段。

更新日期:2021-04-21
down
wechat
bug