[Paper Spotlight] How Do Hunter- Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta- Ethnograph

Our first research team paper has been published online! Take a look at our paper here.

Abstract: Forager societies tend to value egalitarianism, cooperative autonomy, and sharing. Furthermore, foragers exhibit a strong gendered division of labor. However, few studies have employed a cross-cultural approach to understand how forager children learn social and gender norms. To address this gap, we perform a meta-ethnography, which allows for the systematic extraction, synthesis, and comparison of quantitative and qualitative publications. In all, 77 publications met our inclusion criteria. These suggest that sharing is actively taught in infancy. In early childhood, children transition to the playgroup, signifying their increased autonomy. Cooperative behaviors are learned through play. At the end of middle childhood, children self-segregate into same-sex groups and begin to perform gender-specific tasks. We find evidence that foragers actively teach children social norms, and that, with sedentarization, teaching, through direct instruction and task assignment, replaces imitation in learning gendered behaviors. We also find evidence that child-to-child transmission is an important way children learn cultural norms, and that noninterference might be a way autonomy is taught. These findings can add to the debate on teaching and learning within forager populations.

[Paper Spotlight] Teaching among the Aka

Hot off the press, new paper on teaching among Aka foragers and Ngandu farmers of the Congo Basin, by Adam Boyette and Barry Hewlett in Human Nature. Follow this link to see the full paper. 

Abstract: The significance of teaching to the evolution of human culture is under debate. We contribute to the discussion by using a quantitative, cross-cultural comparative approach to investigate the role of teaching in the lives of children in two small-scale societies: Aka foragers and Ngandu farmers of the Central African Republic. Focal follows with behavior coding were used to record social learning experiences of children aged 4 to 16 during daily life. “Teaching” was coded based on a functional definition from evolutionary biology. Frequencies, contexts, and subtypes of teaching as well as the identity of teachers were analyzed. Teaching was rare compared to observational learning, although both forms of social learning were negatively correlated with age. Children received teaching from a variety of individuals, and they also engaged in teaching. Several teaching types were observed, including instruction, negative feedback, and commands. Statistical differences in the distribution of teaching types and the identity of teachers corresponded with contrasting forager vs. farmer foundational cultural schema. For example, Aka children received less instruction, which empirically limits autonomous learning, and were as likely to receive instruction and negative feedback from other children as they were from adults. Commands, however, exhibited a different pattern suggesting a more complex role for this teaching type. Although consistent with claims that teaching is relatively rare in small-scale societies, this evidence supports the conclusion that teaching is a universal, early emerging cognitive ability in humans. However, culture (e.g., values for autonomy and egalitarianism) structures the nature of teaching.

FCS presents poster at the SAA!

Our poster entitled How do hunter-gatherer children learn to make material culture? A meta-ethnographic review was recently presented at the 82nd Society for American Archeology Annual Meeting (March 29th-April 2nd 2017). Do check out our poster here!

Abstract: This poster aims to extrapolate forager-wide trends in how, when, and from whom hunter-gatherer children learn to produce material culture. We use a meta-ethnographic approach, which allows for the systematic extraction, synthesis, and comparison of quantitative and qualitative publications. We extracted a total of eleven publications from psychology, cultural anthropology, and ethnoarchaeology, including studies on the Baka, Aka, San, Kaytetye, Gidra, Penan, Batek, Khanty, Cree and Sioux. Our findings suggest that, cross-culturally, forager children learn to make simple tools effectively by middle childhood, but continue to learn and perfect the skills of complex, multicomponent tool manufacture well into adulthood. From infancy, adults make models of tools like bows, arrows, and digging sticks to give children, from which they are expected during early and middle childhood to reverse engineer their own small tools. During middle childhood, the playgroup is especially important, creating miniature camps complete with hearths and dwellings. As they enter later childhood and adolescence, children begin to receive their first direct instruction on the production of complex material culture like basketry, sledges, or skis. These findings suggest that children create and contribute to material culture in vital ways that archaeologists often fail to consider.