ABSTRACT

Emerging understanding of the extent to which the childhood environment can influence long-term neural and cognitive development may justify greater attention to its role in prehistory. In this review, we attempt to identify a range of ways in which changes to the rearing environment might impact on cognitive function with the potential to modify processes of cultural transmission. We focus on the types of change to the infant environment that may arise when moving from mobile hunter-gather to more settled agrarian lifeways. We consider the evidence for such early environmental factors bringing about enduring effects on perceptual tuning, shared attention, behavioural regulation and observational learning, and how these might contribute to differences in processes of cultural transmission across lifeways. We conclude that the potential developmental significance of cultural changes to the infant environment suggests more attention should be paid by archaeologists to lines of evidence related to early childhood environments in prehistory.

摘要

对童年环境对长期神经和认知发展的影响程度的新认识可能证明对其在史前时代的作用给予更多关注。在这篇综述中，我们试图确定饲养环境的变化可能影响认知功能的一系列方式，并有可能改变文化传播的过程。我们关注从流动的狩猎采集向更定居的农业生活方式转变时可能出现的婴儿环境变化类型。我们考虑了这些早期环境因素对知觉调整、共同关注、行为调节和观察学习产生持久影响的证据，以及这些因素如何导致不同生活方式的文化传播过程的差异。