Fluent Essays

Please create a powerpoint, as well as write up a 15-20 minute summary and comparison of the 2 articles. I have already started both the powerpoint and the write up, just continue from there. Keeps the slides concise and instead focus on the write up. Keep the presentation simple and casual, as it is for a general audience. Use informal language. I literally just need to read it out in front of the class.You will find articles, power point and word doc attached. No referencing needed, dont care about plagiarism. Need done in 4 hours okay_so.docx presentation1.pptx csibra___gergely__2009.pdf nielsen___tomaselli__2010.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Okay so, (switch to 1st slide) Today we have 2 articles to compare, to make it simpler I will be referring to them as article 1 and article 2. Both are covering social cognition and learning. Switch to article 1 slide: Past research has shown children to be strong imitators. This makes intuitive sense as, direct replication of others allows the rapid acquisition of novel behaviours, while at the same time avoiding the stress from trial-and-error learning. This behaviour is also evident in the bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura if you still remember it from first year psychology. Overimitation. Overimitation is when young children copy the explicit actions of an adult demonstrator even when a more efficient method of achieving the demonstrated outcome is available. It usually emerges in the 2nd year of life and becomes increasingly pervasive through the pre- school period. This paper, however, largely focuses on 2 experiments and basically compares overimitation in western vs African bushman tribes kids. I found it fitting that the two authors of this article have different educational backgrounds, as one comes from a western university and the other comes from an African one. The authors state that in most Western cultures, children are commonly shown things and taught how to use them via ordered, guided instruction. Children can thus assume that adults have tested the rationality of their actions and that these actions are attempts to transmit relevant knowledge. In contrast, in many indigenous communities, there is minimal adult tuition related to object manipulation and instead children are expected to learn largely through observation. Switch to article 1, Experiment 1 slide: Participants were thirty-two children between 2 and 6 years of age. They were evenly split between western and bushman kids. Children were tasked with opening a set of small boxes and were randomly assigned to either the demonstration condition or the no-demonstration condition. Children were given 60 seconds to explore each of the three boxes in both conditions. All demonstrations comprised two distinct components: an irrelevant action and a causally related, but unnecessary, action. Irrelevant action had no function. The second action resulted in the box being opened and hence was causally related to the target outcome; it was, however, unnecessary because the boxes could have been more easily opened by hand. The non-demonstration condition is self-explanatory. Children in the demonstration condition produced the irrelevant actions on more boxes than did children in the no-demonstra- tion condition Children in the demonstration condition were also more likely to open the boxes using the object SOCIAL AND CULTURAL COGNITION Presentation by Dennis Ten 2 articles to compare: ◦ Article 1: Overimitation in Kalahari Bushman Children and the Origins of Human Cultural Cognition (Nielsen & Tomaselli, 2010) • Article 2: Natural pedagogy (Csibra & Gergely, 2009) Article 1 ◦ Children are strong imitators ◦ Overimitation Experiment 1 and 2 ◦ Guidance: Western children > bushman children ∴ Hypothesis - child descendents of hunter- gatherers would overimitate at lower rates than Western children. Experiment 1 ◦ Participants (n=32) ages 2 - 6. Western (n=16) and Bushman (n=16) ◦ Box opening task ◦ Children randomly assigned to demonstration or no-demonstration condition. ◦ Findings: Experiment 2 ◦ Participants (n=62) ages 2 – 13. All bushman kids. ◦ Apparatus and general procedure almost identical to those of Experiment 1 Article 2 Authors personal copy Opinion Natural pedagogy Gergely Csibra and György Gergely Department of Philosophy, Central European University, Nádor u. 9., H-1051 Budapest, Hungary We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call ‘natural pedagogy’, enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We argue that human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive to ostensive signals that indicate that they are being addressed by communication, (ii) by developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as conveying information that is kind-relevant and generalizable. Communicating knowledge Learning involves acquiring new information and using it later when necessary. Thus, any kind of learning implies generalization of the originally acquired information: to new occasions, new locations, new objects, new contexts, etc. However, any piece of new information that an organism perceives is episodic and particular: it involves a single time, a specific location and context, and particular object(s). The question of how one can learn (i.e. acquire general knowledge) from bits of episodic information is known as the induction problem and has been tackled by various theories of learning. These usually rely on statistical procedures that involve sampling multiple episodes of experience to form the basis of generalization to novel instances. There is, however, a unique way to acquire generic knowledge from a single instance of information intake, namely, when it is transmitted through human communication (see also Ref. [1]). If I point at two aeroplanes and tell you that ‘aeroplanes fly’, what you learn is not restricted to the particular aeroplanes you see or to the present context, but will provide you generic knowledge about the kind of artefact these planes belong to that is generalizable to other members of the category and to variable contexts. Moreover, the transmission of such generic knowledge is not restricted to linguistic communication. If I show you by manual demonstration how to open a milk carton, what you will learn is how to open that kind of container (i.e. you acquire kind-generalizable knowledge from a single manifestation). In such cases, the observer does not need to rely on statistical procedures to extract the relevant information to be generalized because this is selectively manifested to her by the communicative demonstration. Such a ‘short-cut’ to generic knowledge acquisition relies heavily on the communicative Corresponding author: Csibra, G. (csibrag@ceu.hu). 148 cooperation and epistemic benevolence of the communicative partner. Here, we propose that human communication is specifically adapted to fulfil the function of transmitting generic knowledge between individuals (see Box 1 on non-human animals). This is, of course, not the only function that human communication serves: people also communicate about important episodic matters to aid their cooperation [2], to manipulate each other [3], to gossip [4] and for other reasons. Our point is, however, that the minimal cognitive system that could sub-serve episodic communication would not be sufficient to support transmission of generic knowledge without further specific dispositions that motivate experts to manifest, and prepare novices to receive, generic (or, at least, generalizable) knowledge by communication. We have speculated that communication of generic knowledge was selected for during hominin evolution as a consequence of the emergence of recursive tool making practices, which confronted the observational learner with cognitively opaque contents to acquire. This resulted in a new type of learneability problem for existing observational learning mechanisms, and endangered successful inter-generational transmission of valuable novel skills and innovative practices [5,6]. A new type of communicative learning system based on ostensive-referential demonstrations of knowledge could by-pass this problem by having the expert user actively guide the novice by selectively manifesting the information to be acquired and generalized [7]. Clearly, the most likely beneficiaries of communication of generic knowledge are children, who are always novices with respect to the accumulated knowledge of their culture. This is why we call the specific aspects of human communication that allow and facilitate the transfer of generic knowledge to novices ‘natural pedagogy’. Receptivity to natural pedagogy Adults tend to actively facilitate their children’s learning by communicative means [8], although the frequency and the manner of such teaching practices varies widely across cultures (Box 2). Children also learn from adults by unguided observation and overhearing, but whenever they are directly targeted by ostensive demonstrations, their pattern of learning changes fundamentally. For example, studies on imitative learning show that children primarily imitate causally efficacious means to achieve goals, and ignore apparently unnecessary actions unless the demonstrator makes it manifest for them that these cognitively opaque aspects are relevant [9–12]. A recent study tested directly whether toddlers interpret action demonstrations as communicative manifestations [13]. When children are shown an action performed in a particular style leading to a clear end state (e.g. a mouse is hopping across the table into 1364-6613/$ – see front matter ! 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005 Available online 13 March 2009 Authors personal copy Opinion Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.13 No.4 Box 1. Is natural pedagogy unique to humans? Box 2. Is natural pedagogy universal in human cultures? There are many types of social learning mechanisms in the animal kingdom, and they all involve some form of observational learning, in which the observation of an adaptive behaviour of another individual makes it more likely that the observer will produce the same or similar behaviours in the future. In this sense, social learning represents transmission of general knowledge or skills from one individual to another. Although rare, evidence indicates that certain forms of teaching can also be found in non-human animals. For example, Thornton and colleagues [39] found that adult meerkats supply young pups with dead, disabled or intact scorpions according to the perceived prey-handling ability of the pup, and that such practices are costly for the teacher and help the pupil to learn how to kill scorpions. Such examples of ‘opportunity teaching’ satisfy the conventional criteria of teaching in non-human animals [40], and demonstrate that not only human adults can have an active role in the learning of their young. It is also the case that there are many forms of animal communication, and some of them arguably share some features with human communication. For example, although most examples of non-human communication serve the direct interest of the communicator (agonistic displays, territorial or dominance assertions, courtship rituals, etc.), others represent instances of information donation [41], in which the sender’s gain is not direct or not as much as that of the receivers (e.g. food and alarm calls). Animal communication can also be referential in the sense of being ‘about’ some episodic information: such as specific food location (e.g. bees’ dance) or predator approach (monkey alarm calls). However, we know of no examples of communication that would transmit generic knowledge about kinds between individuals in nonhuman species. Rare anecdotal reports indicating tool-use demonstration in chimpanzees [42] have not been confirmed by others. Similarly, the suggestion that the transfer of novel food items from adults to infants in cooperative breeder primate-species teaches the young about the edibility of food kinds [43], has not been supported by experimental evidence [44]. In other words, although non-human animals communicate about episodic, non-generalizable information (that applies only in the ‘here-and-now’) and learn new skills by observation or scaffolded individual learning [39], they do not seem to use communication to pass on generalizable knowledge to others. Thus, although the hypothesis that natural pedagogy is a hominin adaptation would not be refuted by the occurrence of a similar social communicative learning mechanism in other species (as analogous adaptations can emerge independently in distinct lineages), the empirical evidence presently available indicates that it is, indeed, a uniquely human phenomenon. It is a widespread belief among anthropologists that teaching children is a Western practice that does not exist in traditional societies. For example, Henrich [45] asserts that ‘In most small-scale human societies there is very little active teaching’, Fiske claims that ‘Children learn most of their cultures on their own initiative, without pedagogy’ (A. Fiske, unpublished), and even psychologists agree: ‘In observation studies of everyday interaction between children and caretakers, relatively little sign of overt teaching was found’ [46]. If this is true, natural pedagogy is not universal, not ‘natural’ and it would be a mistake to consider it as an evolutionary adaptation. However, we have reasons to doubt the validity of this belief – as long as it is applied to the kind of teaching that natural pedagogy is hypothesized to implement. According to Whiten [47], no examples of teaching were found in rural Nigeria, but he also reports that caretakers sometimes demonstrate for infants how to perform certain acts, and frequently reveal information about object properties for them. (Importantly, no comparable behaviours were found in a gorilla mother [48].) In a monograph on the development of Kpelle children, Lancy [49] concludes that ‘parents influence children by example ... but not through direct teaching’, but lists numerous observations of direct demonstrations, training, apprenticeship and feedback given to children practising difficult skills, and even cites his informants saying, ‘We will teach our children our work’. This discrepancy between general claims about the absence of teaching and the actual reports is likely to reflect the enormous differences between teaching in Western societies and in more traditional cultures. It is not just that Western education relies heavily on formal schooling, but also that it aims to provide verbal explanation and justification for what is being taught. Transmitting such ‘theoretical’ knowledge, and regular coaching by instructions, are indeed very rare in traditional societies. However, when assessing the occurrence of pedagogical practices in various cultures, the baseline should not be Western societies but nonhuman animals (Box 1). In this comparison, natural pedagogy (i.e. transmitting generic knowledge by communication) seems to be universal. This is further supported by recent analyses of archaeological data indicating that the fidelity of transmission and stability of long-term maintenance of patterns and traditions of craft would be difficult to explain without assuming some amount of pedagogical activity in ancestral societies [50]. a house), they tend to reproduce only the end state (put the mouse into the house), often ignoring the manner of action (hopping) [14]. However, if the relevant information concerning the end state is communicated to them verbally by the actor before the demonstration (‘the mouse lives in the house’), they reproduce the action style more often. They do so because they conclude that the demonstrator’s communicative intention cannot be to redundantly present the same information that she has just told them about, and so they identify the manner of action as the new information communicated and to be learnt [13]. Ostensive communication does not only make children pay more attention to the demonstration but they also see it as a special opportunity to acquire generalizable knowledge. Natural pedagogy is a basic cognitive adaptation, which is indicated by the fact that young infants display receptivity to adults’ ostensive communications well before they show evidence of learning from such interactions. Here, we review some recent studies that demonstrate this preparedness in the form of three kinds of early perceptual and cognitive biases: (i) preferential attention for the sources of ostensive signals, (ii) referential expectation induced by ostensive contexts and (iii) an interpretation bias to preferentially encode the content of ostensive-referential communication as representing generalizable knowledge. Sensitivity to ostensive signals Human communication is ostensive: it communicates not just the message destined to influence the targeted recipient but also the very fact that this message is being intentionally communicated to her [7]. Thus, human communication is often preceded, or accompanied, by ostensive signals that (i) disambiguate that the subsequent action (for example, a tool-use demonstration) is intended to be communicative and (ii) specify the addressee to whom the communication is addressed. Because the interpretation of any additional signals might depend crucially on construing the act as communication, sensitivity to at least some of the ostensive signals is most likely to be innate. The most obvious ostensive signal in human communication is direct gaze towards the addressee, which usually results in mutual eye contact. Newborns prefer to look at faces with direct gaze over faces with averted gaze [15], 149 Authors personal copy Opinion Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.13 No.4 Figure 1. 4-month-old infants’ brain responses to dynamic mutual and averted gaze stimuli [21]. These time-frequency plots depict gamma-band electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillatory activation at right fronto-polar sites in response to a gaze shift directed away (top row) or towards (bottom row) the infant (at 0 s), and in response to an eye-brow raise together with a smile (at 1 s). Note that the two ostensive-communicative signals elicit the same activation, and that the infant brain responds to the smile only if it follows mutual gaze (i.e. when it is addressed to the viewer). even if these are schematic face-like patterns [16]. Further results indicate that what newborns are looking for is the prototypical eye-contact stimulus. First, their preference for direct gaze disappears with upside-down faces [16]. Second, newborns’ (and adults’ [17]) preference for upright over upside-down faces is eliminated when the contrast– polarity relation that is characteristic to human eyes (dark iris on the background of white sclera [18]) is reversed [19]. Recent neuroimaging studies provided evidence that 4month-olds interpret dynamic eye-contact as an ostensive signal: (i) similar neural structures are activated by direct gaze as found active in adults [20] in response to communicative signals and (ii) the same neural responses are produced by two different facial signals (direct gaze and eye-brow raise), both interpreted as ostensive stimuli by adults [21] (Figure 1). Ostensive signals also exist in the auditory modality. For example, the special intonation pattern of ‘infantdirected speech’ (‘motherese’) can make it manifest that a child is being addressed, and could indicate to an infant that she is the intended recipient. Newborns prefer infantdirected to adult-directed speech [22] even if they are born to congenitally deaf parents [23]. Interestingly, parents also modify their actions when they ostensively demonstrate them to infants [24], and infants prefer these ‘motionese’ versions to adult-directed action demonstrations [25]. Referential expectation If infants are prepared to learn generic knowledge when adults address them, they should expect the adult to specify the referent about which she is teaching them. However, preverbal infants ... Purchase answer to see full attachment