Cognitive development and the generation of culture

1
Cognitive development and the generation of
culture

• Childrens concepts of race
• Supernatural ideas gods, spirits, and ancestors
• What is the design of the instinct that causes
  learning in a given domain?
• How does the activation of evolved cognitive
  mechanisms shape the ideas people form?
• Does this influence which ideas spread easily
  from mind to mind and which do not? (cultural
  transmission)
• Final Bring pink parscore.Thursday, Dec 11,
  730-1030pm

2
Views of culture flow from views of the evolved
architecture of the mind, structure of concepts,
conceptual development

• The Standard Social Science Model (20th century)
• Blank slate/ driven by perception
• Classical concepts, Family resemblance concepts
• Concept formation is bottom-up driven by
  perception, language (wug blue triangle)
• Implies mind is like a video cameraall cultural
  content comes solely from perception, social
  experience

3
Alternative to Standard Social Science Model

• Mind reliably develops evolved inference systems
  that are domain-specialized, each with
  proprietary concepts, inferences, privileged
  hypotheses
• Theory of mind (intuitive psychology)
• Intuitive physics artifact (tool) concepts
• Natural kind concepts / essentialism
• Intuitive biology
• Intuitive sociology??
• Evolved inference mechanisms structure our
  cultural ideas
• Language still important one mode of cultural
  transmission

4
Alternative to Standard Social Science Model

• Evolved inference mechanisms structure our
  cultural ideas
• Proper domain versus actual domain
• Proper domain inference system evolved for
• Actual all domains in which the inference
  system is activated (that meet input conditions)
• dueling triangles
• Does not imply one inference system per cultural
  idea
• Cultural ideas may be shaped by activation of
  multiple domain-specific concepts
• Example Development of racial thinking in
  children

5
Development of racial thinking in children

• We see distinct racial categories, BUT
• Humanity is not divided into discrete racial
  types
• Most genetic variation is within population, not
  between populations
• Virtually no expressed genes that are present in
  all members of one race that are not present in
  substantial percentage of members of another race
  
• Genetic variation exists, but is geographically
  graded, and dimensions of variation not highly
  correlated
• What counts as a race varies over time
• Mixed race marriage, early 1900s??
• Southern European Catholic with Protestant
  (Italian English)

6
Where are they from?
7
Development of racial thinking in children

• For those reasons
• Races are not just out there to be discovered
  by the mind
• Do not correspond to biological kinds
• So where do racial categories and racial thinking
  come from?

8
Natural Kinds and Essentialism

• When it comes to natural kinds, both children and
  adults are psychological essentialists we act as
  though natural kinds have hidden essences,
  underlying natures that make them the thing that
  they are (Medin, 1989, pp. 1476-1477).
• Living species (racoons, tigers, oak trees)
• Minerals (gold, granite)
• The claim is not that things in the world in fact
  have defining essences, but that we have an
  inference system that represents them as such.

9
Question Do children treat social groups as
natural kinds?

• Are social groups seen as having underlying
  essences?
• Ethnic groups? Racial groups?
• Are ethnic and racial groups interpreted as
  species by our folk biology system? (Gil-White)
• Are our minds equipped with an intuitive
  sociology?
• Larry Hirschfeld Race in the Making Cognition,
  culture, and the childs construction of human
  kinds. (1996, MIT Press)

10
Essentialism Folk Sociology

• According to Hirschfeld
• humans organize themselves into collectivities
  and define themselves into social kinds as a
  function of group membership
• the human cognitive architecture has evolved an
  intuitive theory of society (analogous to
  theory of mind theory of bodies (object
  mechanics)
• Function to produce expectations about the
  skeletal structure of society, including what
  kinds of people there are.
• Uses an essentialist mode of construal (as do
  other systems, such as the folk biology system).

11
Essentialism Folk Sociology (Hirchfeld)

• Because the essentialist mode is activated both
  by kind labels and by perceptual similarity,
  children encountering racial terms (and, perhaps,
  some within race perceptual similarity), they
  interpret racial labels as refering to social
  kinds.
• The essentialist inference system then generates
  inferences about that racial category
• In this view, essentialist reasoning enables (but
  does not require) the notion that humans are
  biologically clustered, because this same
  essentialist mode functions across many domains,
  and plays a role in generating a folk biology.

12
Properties of an essentialist inference system

• (Based on experiments discussed by Markman, Keil,
  Springer, S. Gelman, Gil-White, etc.)
• Possessing the right essence is what makes an
  entity a member of a particular natural kind.
• Members of a natural kind e.g., raccoons
  might share a large number of perceptual
  properties, and may look very similar. But
  possession of the same essence, not perceptual
  similarity, is what makes them all raccoons.
  Having the right essence is a necessary
  condition, as well as a sufficient one.

13
Properties of an essentialist inference system

• Essence causes other properties.
• domain-specific constraints on which properties
  an essence causes / associated with kind
  membership, esp. for animals (e.g., manner of
  breathing, but not weight color of fur, but not
  habits)
• Individuals with the same essence / members of
  same natural kind will have similar properties.
• many shared properties, including non-obvious
  ones
• internal organs, ways of breathing, melting
  temperatures (for elements), temperament, dietary
  preferences, etc. (Markman, Springer)

14
Properties of an essentialist inference system

• The defining essence is inalienable
• For natural kinds, altering surface appearances
  does not change the essence.
• An animal can look like a skunk yet be a raccoon,
• all that glitters is not gold
• E.g., Keil raccoon painted to look like skunk
  still a raccoon, will continue to give birth to
  raccoon babies, will have raccoon innards (etc),
  (Keil, 1989).

15
Properties of an essentialist inference system

• Essence-based reasoning is implicit it can occur
  independently from explicit beliefs about what an
  essence is or how it is acquired.
• Diverse theories, culturally transmitted, about
  what counts as an essence how it is acquired
  (generated when asked)
• Essence genes, an immortal soul, a particular
  atomic structure, possession of a special
  internal organ
• Acquired by divine grace, inheritance of genes,
  transmission through mothers milk, possession of
  same blood

16
How does mind decide whether two things belong in
the same natural kind category?

• Cues to natural kindhood
• Surface similarity.
• The essence gives rise to other properties,
  including surface properties. Makes members of a
  natural kind perceptually similar to one another.
  
• As a result, perceptual similarity can be one cue
  the system uses in guessing whether two entities
  belong to the same kind.
• essentialist heuristic the hypothesis that
  things that look alike tend to share deeper
  properties (similarities). (Medin, 1989)

17
Cues to natural kindhood

• Surface similarity (perceptual cues)
• Verbal labels (this fish, this dolphin)
• Nouns, not adjectives
• Label can trump perceptual similarity.
• Gelman Markman

18
Category membership vs. perceptual similarity
See this fish? It breathes under water.
See this dolphin? It pops up above the water to
breathe.
What does this fish do? Does it pop up above the
water to breathe, or does it breathe under water?
19
Race and Essentialist Reasoning

• Is the human mind (mis)interpreting race /
  ethnicity as indicating membership in a natural
  kind category?
• Racial group seen as a living kind, a species
• And/Or
• Is the mind equipped with a theory of society
  that uses the essentialist reasoning system?
• If either is true, then
• the assumptions and inferences that the
  essentialist inference system produces should be
  produced in response to racial categories.

20
Cross-culturally recurrent features of racial
thinking

• there are different kinds of humans
• people of different races are different in kind
• being of a certain race causes many properties,
  both physical and non-physical
• including nonobvious ones such as inner traits
  and dispositions (temperament, character, shared
  blood)
• possessing the correct underlying nature is
  what makes one of given race, regardless of
  perceptual properties
• how you look may be a good clue to your race, but
  a person may look like one race yet really be
  of another.
• Racial terms (noun labels) invite natural kind
  inferences
• She has blonde hair versus Shes a blonde

21
Natural Kinds and Essentialism

• People act as if things (e.g., objects) have
  essences or underlying natures that make them the
  thing that they are. Furthermore, the essence
  constrains or generates properties that may vary
  in their centrality. One of the things that
  theories do is to embody or provide causal
  linkages from deeper properties to more
  superficial or surface properties. Medin (1989)
• Culturally transmitted, explicitly held
  (metarepresented) racial theories of causal
  linkages from race to supposed properties
• These differ from place to place

22
What about racial inferences in children?

• Development of racial categories, racial thinking
• Racial categories are not out there to be found
  in the world
• Racial categories not induced bottom up from
  perception
• Early emergence (4 years old)
• Matching person to race doesnt map onto adults
  perceptual cues
• Verbal labels more important than perceptual
  properties
• Some features more likely to be inferred on basis
  of race than others

23
Which is the adult as a child? (identity)Which
is the child of the adult? (inheritance)Which
looks more like the adult? (similarity)
24
Identity Which is the adult as a child?
25
Which is the adult as a child? (identity/growth)W
hich is the child of the adult? (inheritance)
Growth Inheritance of features show same pattern
26
Identity versus Similarity

• Judgments of identity DO NOT follow same pattern
  as judgments of similarity
• Perceptual similarity per se is not driving
  judgments of who the adult was as a child
• Same occupation judged more similar than same race

Occupation over body build
27
Is the effect specific to persons? (Yes)
Which is his car? No consistent pattern
28
Kind labels Nouns

• Rose eats a lot of carrots (describes action)
• Rose is a carrot-eater (noun)
• 5 7 year olds evaluate preferences as stronger,
  more stable with noun
• Narratives Verbal versus visual (like a comic)
• After which does child recall more racial
  categories?

29
Verbal narrative
Visual narrative
With pictures in plain view
30
Verbal labels more potent than perceptual cues
(as in natural kind reasoning...)

• Children recalled more about a characters race
  after listening to complex verbal narrative than
  after viewing complex visual narrative
• True even when racial labels primed just before
  viewing visual
• Visual led to more identification and recall of
  gender
• Having a social context decreased salience of
  race as a factor in classifying people
• Recalled less about race than occupation or
  behavior in contrast to first study)

31
Kinship Inheritance of biological properties
(Springer, ducks)

• Is racial identity inherited from parent to
  child?
• Is there a developmental change as child becomes
  more assimilated into surrounding culture?
• Does the inheritance of physical properties show
  the same pattern as the inheritance of racial
  identity?
• Skin color, hair color
• Do all physical properties show same pattern, or
  are some induced more like identity than others?

32
Hibbles and Glerks

• Island on which 2 kinds of people live hibbles
  and glerks
• Show color drawing of white family (glerks) and a
  black family (hibbles)
• Color drawings of man, woman and infant, with
  green dot over infants face (no skin visible)
• Is the baby a hibble, a glerk, or something else?
• 2nd graders did not know term race, so cant ask
  what race is the baby? black and white
  ambiguous race or skin color?

33
Identity What is their baby? (one parent
black, one white)
34
Do other physical traits generalize like identity
does? (not really)
Identity
Skin color
Y-axes are not lined up
35
Do other physical traits generalize like identity
does?
Identity
Hair color
Y-axes not lined up
36
Skin and hair similar?
Hair color
Skin color
Y-axes not lined up
37
Is racial thinking shaped by multiple
domain-specific inference systems?

• Race encoding can decrease extent to which
  adults encode (notice and remember) targets race
  by creating coalitions where race does not
  predict coalitional alliance
• Is race encoding a byproduct of coalition
  encoding?
• Do identity judgments tap into system for
  identifying coalitional membership?
• Do physical judgments tap into intuitive biology?
• Adults identity and physical judgments very
  different
• Coalition can also predict similar underlying
  dispositions

38
Supernatural ideas Gods, ghosts and spirits

• Pascal Boyer Religion Explained The
  evolutionary roots of religious thought
• No evolved dispositions designed for religious
  ideas
• Supernatural concepts are a byproduct of normal
  cognitive functioning
• Domain-specific concepts/ inference systems
• Metarepresentational abilities (ToM)

39
Metarepresentation (Theory of Mind Mechanism)

• File folder in the mind
• Propositions decoupled from semantic memory

40
Metarepresentations as a learning mechanism(Dan
Sperber)

• Strange statment There are male and female
  plants
• What if you are 3, and your concept of male and
  female involves having long hair, etc?
• Contradiction! False belief? True? Dont retire
  info to mental encyclopedia of knowledge until it
  can be reconciled with other knowledge (avoid
  data corruption)
• Store proposition in a metarepresentation
• My teacher says that there are male female
  plants
• Agent Attitude Proposition
• Metarep of contradiction recruits attention until
  statement can be reconciled or is abandoned

41
Contagious supernatural ideas have 2
characteristics

• They activate an evolved, domain-specific
  inference system, with its concepts, assumptions
• Kind of person, plant, artefact, etc
• They include counterintuitive information
• Not merely strange counter to what the inference
  systems make intuitive
• Talking table counterintuitive
• Chocolate table merely strange
• Concepts with counter-intuitive info are better
  remembered than the merely strange
• Gabon (Africa), Nepal, America

42
Widespread supernatural concepts
43
What is transmitted verbally?

• Verbally transmit counter-intuitive information.
• Verbally transmit which domain concept is
  relevant (kind of person, plant, artifact, etc)
• No need to verbally transmit default assumptions
  of the activated domain-specific inference system
• These come for free
• Ghosts see, feel, think

44
Why are they memorable?

• Counter-intuitive is metarepresented, recruits
  attention (byproduct of learning mechanism)
• Domain-specific inference system automatically
  supports many inferences
• Ghosts see, feel, think, get mad
• Can imagine many scenarios involving them
• Activates social inference systems
• ToM Ghosts know strategic social
  informationwhat would they think if they knew
  what I had done?
• Social exchange maybe I should appease them?

45
What is not memorable?

• Supernatural concepts that tie into NO
  domain-specific inference system
• Do not automatically support many inferences
• Not memorable Chosts not person, not plant,
  not tool, not mountain... What is it?
• Certain esoteric religious concepts like
  thisthey stay esoteric
• Same for certain scientific concepts
• Freud (lust after your mother contradiction!)
• Electron (not a particle, not a wave... What is
  it??)

46
Does a similar analysis apply to scientific
concepts?

• Theory of mind and economics??
• Behavior caused by beliefs, desires
• Intuitive physics and quantum physics
• Mathematically defined entities versus billiard
  ball causality (Newton)
• Folk taxonomy and scientific taxonomy

47
(No Transcript)
48
Questions to think about throughout 142...

• What does the child know about the world?
• How does the child come to know what she knows?
• Is the childs mind different from the adults
  mind, or does the child just know less?
• Does the child come factory equipped with any
  knowledge of the world?

49
Questions to think about throughout 142...

• How does the environment affect development?
• How does maturation affect development?
• Why did scientists underestimate how much infants
  know?
• What is the competence/ performance distinction?
• Can one part of the brain know something that
  another part of the brain does not know?

50
Questions to think about throughout 142...

• What is the difference between studying natural
  competences and side-effects?
• What does learning mean?
• How many learning processes are there?
• Is instinct the opposite of learning?
• What is the design of the instinct that causes
  learning in a given domain?