Oral Presentation Session - Invited Status Awarded

Invited by: Evolutionary Anthropology Society

Primary Theme: Evolution

Secondary Theme: Science

(4-0745) Ages and Stages: Child learning, exploration, and helping behaviors in foraging and transitioning populations.

Hunting and gathering is, evolutionarily, the defining subsistence strategy of our species. Furthermore, many societies are in the process of transitioning from hunting and gathering to market integration, either by choice or by external pressure. Studying how children learn in these societies can, therefore, provide us with key data to test theories about the evolution of human life history, cognition, social behavior, adaptive learning responses, and culture change. However, at present, many assumptions in regard to normative teaching and learning behaviors among children are based only on data from what have been coined Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic (WEIRD) societies. In line with this year’s theme Change in the Anthropological Imagination, we aim to expand the dialogue on, and articulate the ways in which, current anthropological research may support or refute long standing ideas about how children learn, when and what they learn, from whom they learn, and how cultures are maintained and changed across generations.

For this session we will focus on learning behaviors in foraging and transitioning populations during middle childhood and adolescence. Middle childhood (about age 6-11) marks a turning point in development, both hormonally (adrenarche) and socially, as children in all cultures broaden their social sphere and engage in more gender-typical roles. Adolescence (11-19) is a time of great motivational and emotional changes, and marks the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood. We are interested in both how forager children learn and explore during these periods of development, and how cultural and social transitions affect traditional modes of childhood learning, confidence and exploration, as well as subsistence behaviors.

The studies in this panel will address: child-to-child transmission of knowledge; free-range exploration and spatial cognitive development; natural pedagogy; and variation in risk and time preferences.

Presenter(s)

• Karen Kramer

  University of Utah

• Michelle Scalise Sugiyama

  University of Oregon

Chair(s)

• Alyssa Crittenden

  Associate Professor
  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Presenter(s)

• Alyssa Crittenden

  Associate Professor
  University of Nevada, Las Vegas

• Sheina lew-Levy

  University of Cambridge

• Lawrence Sugiyama

  University of Oregon

Organizer(s)

• Helen Davis

  Postdoc
  Harvard University

Chair(s)

• Helen Davis

  Postdoc
  Harvard University

Presenter(s)

• Helen Davis

  Postdoc
  Harvard University

Discussant(s)

• Elizabeth Cashdan

  University of Utah

Presentations:

• 2:00 PM - 2:15 PM

  Learning While Doing. Children Becoming Productive and Cooperative Foragers
  Karen L. Kramer – University of Utah
• 2:15 PM - 2:30 PM

  Natural Pedagogy in Oral Storytelling: Evidence that Humans are a Teaching Species
  Michelle Scalise Sugiyama – University of Oregon
• 2:30 PM - 2:45 PM

  Harm avoidance and spatial anxiety among young Hadza foragers
  Alyssa Crittenden – University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• 2:45 PM - 3:00 PM

  Who teaches children? Investigating the primacy of child-to-child teaching among Hadza and Mbendjele hunter-gatherers of Tanzania and Congo
  Sheina lew-Levy – University of Cambridge
• 3:00 PM - 3:15 PM

  The effect of market integration on children’s risk and time preferences: Evidence from diverse populations
  Lawrence Sugiyama – University of Oregon
• 3:15 PM - 3:30 PM

  Spatial cognitive ability and mobility among children in two traditional and transitioning populations, the Tsimane of Bolivia and the Twe of Namibia
  Helen Elizabeth Davis – Harvard University
• 3:30 PM - 3:45 PM

  Discussion
  Elizabeth Cashdan – University of Utah