[In the news] Watch Dorsa Amir give a TEDx talk on how childhood is changing

Learn more about Dorsa and her work here, and follow her on twitter here.

[Paper spotlight] Spatial cognitive ability, exploration, and formal education in traditional and tr

This paper was presented by Helen Davis in the session Ages and Stages at the 2018 AAA annual meeting. Helen is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

Abstract: In many societies, males range farther than females, and this greater environmental experience may foster better spatial ability. We evaluated these relationships among 6-18 year old Tsimané and OvaTwa children, two populations with subsistence based economies with vastly different ecologies. In both societies girls and boys have few constraints on spatial exploration. Mobility was assessed through GPS tracking and interview, spatial ability through pointing accuracy, perspective-taking and mental rotation, and harm avoidance through interview. Few gender differences were found in mobility or spatial ability. Among the Tsimané we also found that greater regional travel and winding daily tracks were predictive of better navigation, however, increased time in school was inversely correlated with both regional travel and navigational ability.

[Paper spotlight] Physical activity and time budgets of Hadza forager children: Implications for sel

This paper by Froehle and colleagues examines the ontogeny of the the sexual division of labor among the Hadza. Read the full paper here!

Abstract Objectives: To determine the effects of age and sex on physical activity and time budgets of Hadza children and juveniles, 5-14 years old, including both in-camp and out-of-camp activities. Methods: Behavioral data were derived from ~15 000 hourly in-camp scan obser- vations of 76 individuals and 13 out-of-camp focal follows on nine individuals. The data were used to estimate energy expended and percentage of time engaged in a variety of routine activities, including food collection, childcare, making and repairing tools, and household maintenance. Results: Our results suggest that (1) older children spend more time in economic activities; (2) females spend more time engaged in work-related and economic activities in camp, whereas males spend more time engaged in economic activities out of camp; and (3) foraging by both sexes tends to net caloric gains despite being energetically costly. Conclusions: These results show that, among the Hadza, a sexual division of labor begins to emerge in middle childhood and is well in place by adolescence. Further- more, foraging tends to provide net caloric gains, suggesting that children are capa- ble of reducing at least some of the energetic burden they place upon their parents or alloparents. The findings are relevant to our understanding of the ways in which young foragers allocate their time, the development of sex-specific behavior pat- terns, and the capacity of children’s work efforts to offset the cost of their own care in a cooperative breeding environment.