CDC seminar March 17

The next talk in the Cognitive Development Center seminar series at the CEU will be given by: Olivier Morin Institut Jean-Nicod Title: Mechanisms of cultural transmission : beyond social learning Date and time: Wednesday, 17 March 2010, 5.00 pm Abstract What makes traditions survive? What makes some technologies, songs or social norms spread in populations and stand the test of time ? While neglected by mainstream anthropologists, this issue has been of increasing interest to psychologists and biologists. They tend to emphasize the importance of mechanisms of social learning like imitation or teaching. These mechanisms, I argue, cannot tell us the whole story of cultural transmission. They tell us how a cultural practice can be passed on from one individual from another, during your typical episode of cultural transmission, but not why such transmission episodes multiply and eventually result in the diffusion of a tradition through a long transmission chain. In other words, social learning mechanisms explain transmission, not diffusion. It is my contention that mechanisms of transmission and mechanisms of diffusion are distinct to a certain extent. At small scales of space and time - like when you are trying to get a message across a building in three steps - the two kinds of mechanisms are so completely overlapping that the distinction is useless. Your message will most probably make it across the building if you managed to communicate it, and it most probably won't, if you didn't. Only when you consider greater scales - nations, centuries - does the distinction become relevant. My model helps make sense of a set of data regarding a long- studied phenomenon : the bafflingly long life-span of children's playground rhymes and games, as compared to similar adult practices. Consequences will be drawn regarding the interplay between the evolution of our capacity for communication and the emergence of culture. CEU Cognitive Development Center Hattyuhaz, Level 3, Hattyu u. 14., 1015 Budapest Map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=1015+Budapest,+Budapest,+Hattyu+utca+14,+Hung… Everyone is welcome to attend. Our seminars start on time and we may not be able to let latecomers in. -- Ágnes M. Kovács Marie Curie Research Fellow-DISCOS MTA PKI Hungarian Academy of Sciences & CEU, Cognitive Development Centre Budapest Hungary tel: +3612796095