Do as I say<i>and</i>as I do: Imitation, pedagogy, and cumulative culture

Fridland, Ellen

doi:10.1111/mila.12178

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 107 publications

(192 reference statements)

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“…Transmission fidelity: accurate imitation and the potential role of trial-and-error Social learning can lead to the emergence of cultural traditions by facilitating the spread of group-specific behavioural patterns and maintaining them in the population over the course of successive generations [1]. It is often assumed that the establishment and stability of such traditions require certain levels of copying fidelity [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. The logic behind this is rather intuitive: when innovations (the invention of new behaviours or novel solutions [10]) appear within the population, faithful copying allows them to spread and persist.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural transmission in an ever-changing world: trial-and-error copying may be more robust than precise imitation

Truskanov¹,

Prat²

2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cultural transmission facilitates the spread of behaviours within social groups and may lead to the establishment of stable traditions in both human and non-human animals. The fidelity of transmission is frequently emphasized as a core component of cultural evolution and as a prerequisite for cumulative culture. Fidelity is often considered a synonym of precise copying of observed behaviours. However, while precise copying guarantees reliable transmission in an ideal static world, it may be vulnerable to realistic variability in the actual environment. Here, we argue that fidelity may be more naturally achieved when the social learning mechanisms incorporate trial-and-error; and that the robustness of social transmission is thereby increased. We employed a simple model to demonstrate how culture that is produced through exact copying is fragile in an (even slightly) noisy world. When incorporating a certain degree of trial-and-error, however, cultures are more readily formed in a stochastic environment and are less vulnerable to rare ecological changes. We suggest that considering trial-and-error learning as a stabilizing component of social transmission may provide insights into cultural evolution in a realistic, variable, world.This article is part of the theme issue 'Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution'.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural transmission in an ever-changing world: trial-and-error copying may be more robust than precise imitation

Truskanov¹,

Prat²

2018

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…to inherited cultural artifacts, practices, and norms, while (relatively) blind imitation supports faithful transmission of cultural knowledge between generations (Fridland 2018). The former may depend on the sorts of dispositions often celebrated as intellectual virtues in contemporary epistemology, but the latter -which is equally essential for the development of cumulative culture and the knowledge it embodies -presents a very different picture.…”

Section: Cumulative Culture As Exemplary Knowledgementioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge From Vice: Deeply Social Epistemology

Levy

Alfano

2019

Mind

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In the past two decades, epistemologists have significantly expanded the focus of their field. To the traditional question that has dominated the debate — under what conditions does belief amount to knowledge? — they have added questions about testimony, epistemic virtues and vices, epistemic trust, and more. This broadening of the range of epistemic concern has coincided with an expansion in conceptions of epistemic agency beyond the individualism characteristic of most earlier epistemology. We believe that these developments have not gone far enough. While the weak anti-individualism we see in contemporary epistemology may be adequate for the kinds of cases it tends to focus on, a great deal of human knowledge production and transmission does not conform to these models. Furthermore, the dispositions and norms that are knowledge-conducive in the familiar cases may not be knowledge-conducive generally. In fact, dispositions that, at an individual level, count as epistemic vices may be epistemic virtues in common social contexts. We argue that this overlooked feature of human social life means that epistemology must become more deeply and pervasively social.

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“…The pedagogical approach to skill teaching within philosophical enquiry was also informed by the work of Dr. Ellen Fridland on skill-learning and refinement in conceptual development (Fridland 2013a, Fridland 2013b, Fridland and Moore 2014and Fridland 2018 were twelve weeks in total, all sessions were filmed. The first and last sessions were used as data points to compare the classes CT skills and MC progress.…”

Section: Pedagogical Approach: Teaching Ct Skills and Developing Metamentioning

confidence: 99%

teaching critical thinking and metacognitive skills through philosophical enquiry. A practitioner's report on experiments in the classroom.

Worley

2019

childphilo

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Although expert consensus states that critical thinking (CT) is essential to enquiry, it doesn’t necessarily follow that by practicing enquiry children are developing CT skills. Philosophy with children programmes around the world aim to develop CT dispositions and skills through a community of enquiry, and this study compared the impact of the explicit teaching of CT skills during an enquiry, to The Philosophy Foundation's philosophical enquiry (PhiE) method alone (which had no explicit teaching of CT skills). Philosophy with children is also said to improve metacognitive (MC) skills but there is little research into this claim. Following observable problems with ensuring genuine metacognition was happening in PhiE sessions - on a reasonably strong understanding of what metacognition is – a method has been developed and trialed in this study to bring together, in mutual support, the development of critical thinking and metacognitive skills. Based on the work of Peter Worley and Ellen Fridland (KCL)The Philosophy Foundation ran an experimental study with King's College London in Autumn 2017 and Autumn 2018 to compare the impact of teaching CT skills and MC skills against classes which just have philosophical enquiry. The approach developed and used for the study employs the explicit teaching of some CT and MC skills within the context of a philosophical enquiry (as opposed to stand-alone teaching of these skills) and yields some positive findings both qualitative and quantitative. Both studies took place over one term (12 weeks) and a control and intervention group were used in each study. This report focuses on the second year of the study, with 220 ten and eleven-year-old children involved in eight classes across three state schools in South East London. Although there were limitations to the study the results indicate that the explicit teaching of these skills during a philosophical enquiry can help children use CT and MC skills more successfully than philosophical enquiry alone.

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Do as I sayandas I do: Imitation, pedagogy, and cumulative culture

Cited by 9 publications

References 107 publications

Cultural transmission in an ever-changing world: trial-and-error copying may be more robust than precise imitation

Cultural transmission in an ever-changing world: trial-and-error copying may be more robust than precise imitation

Knowledge From Vice: Deeply Social Epistemology

teaching critical thinking and metacognitive skills through philosophical enquiry. A practitioner's report on experiments in the classroom.

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