The Experts below are selected from a list of 156 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Ton G G Groothuis - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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plasticity of lateralization schooling predicts hand preference but not hand skill asymmetry in a non industrial society
Neuropsychologia, 2012Co-Authors: Reint H Geuze, Sara M Schaafsma, Jessica M Lust, Anke Bouma, Wulf Schiefenhovel, Ton G G GroothuisAbstract:Abstract Considerable variation in the frequency of left-handedness between cultures has been reported, ranging from 0.5 to 24%. This variation in hand preference may have evolved under natural or Cultural Selection. It has been suggested that schooling affects handedness but as in most human societies only a selected and minor part of the population does not attend school this is difficult to test. We investigated to what extent schooling affects both hand preference and asymmetry in hand skill in a non-industrial population in the highlands of New Guinea. This provided unique opportunities because of the relatively recent establishment of a primary school in this population, and where people still live a non-industrial traditional life reflecting conditions in which handedness may have evolved. We interviewed 620 inhabitants (aged 5–70y) to collect demographic data and school history, tested hand preference on 10 ecologically relevant activities, and measured performance of each hand on three tasks (pegboard, grip force, ball throwing). Schooled individuals were overall faster in fine motor performance, had greater grip strength and greater throwing accuracy. This suggests that there is implicit Selection on the fitter part of the population to enter school. Schooling is associated with hand preference, as schooled individuals were more likely to be extremely right-handed and less likely to be strongly right-handed, but not with asymmetry of hand skill (controlled for sex and age). Developmental plasticity in hand preference but not skill asymmetry, and the weak correlations between hand preference and hand skill asymmetry indicate that they represent different aspects of brain lateralization. Furthermore, the weak correlations between hand preference and hand skill asymmetry leave room for moderating factors such as schooling, sex and age to have a differential effect on hand preference and hand skill, and each needs to be studied in its own right.
Nicholas Evans - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Context, culture and structuration in the languages of Australia
Annual Review of Anthropology, 2003Co-Authors: Nicholas EvansAbstract:▪ Abstract Using Australian languages as examples, Cultural Selection is shown to shape linguistic structure through invisible hand processes that pattern the unintended outcomes (structures in the system of shared linguistic norms) of intentional actions (particular utterances by individual agents). Examples of the emergence of Culturally patterned structure through use are drawn from various levels: the semantics of the lexicon, grammaticalized kin-related categories, and culture-specific organizations of sociolinguistic diversity, such as moiety lects, “mother-in-law” registers, and triangular kin terms. These phenomena result from a complex of diachronic processes that adapt linguistic structures to culture-specific concepts and practices, such as ritualization and phonetic reduction of frequently used sequences, the input of shared Cultural knowledge into pragmatic interpretation, semanticization of originally context-dependent inferences, and the input of linguistic ideologies into the systematizati...
Sarah Mathew - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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an evolutionary theory of large scale human warfare group structured Cultural Selection
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2015Co-Authors: Matthew R. Zefferman, Sarah MathewAbstract:When humans wage war, it is not unusual for battlefields to be strewn with dead warriors. These warriors typically were men in their reproductive prime who, had they not died in battle, might have gone on to father more children. Typically, they are also genetically unrelated to one another. We know of no other animal species in which reproductively capable, genetically unrelated individuals risk their lives in this manner. Because the immense private costs borne by individual warriors create benefits that are shared widely by others in their group, warfare is a stark evolutionary puzzle that is difficult to explain. Although several scholars have posited models of the evolution of human warfare, these models do not adequately explain how humans solve the problem of collective action in warfare at the evolutionarily novel scale of hundreds of genetically unrelated individuals. We propose that group-structured Cultural Selection explains this phenomenon.
Reint H Geuze - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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plasticity of lateralization schooling predicts hand preference but not hand skill asymmetry in a non industrial society
Neuropsychologia, 2012Co-Authors: Reint H Geuze, Sara M Schaafsma, Jessica M Lust, Anke Bouma, Wulf Schiefenhovel, Ton G G GroothuisAbstract:Abstract Considerable variation in the frequency of left-handedness between cultures has been reported, ranging from 0.5 to 24%. This variation in hand preference may have evolved under natural or Cultural Selection. It has been suggested that schooling affects handedness but as in most human societies only a selected and minor part of the population does not attend school this is difficult to test. We investigated to what extent schooling affects both hand preference and asymmetry in hand skill in a non-industrial population in the highlands of New Guinea. This provided unique opportunities because of the relatively recent establishment of a primary school in this population, and where people still live a non-industrial traditional life reflecting conditions in which handedness may have evolved. We interviewed 620 inhabitants (aged 5–70y) to collect demographic data and school history, tested hand preference on 10 ecologically relevant activities, and measured performance of each hand on three tasks (pegboard, grip force, ball throwing). Schooled individuals were overall faster in fine motor performance, had greater grip strength and greater throwing accuracy. This suggests that there is implicit Selection on the fitter part of the population to enter school. Schooling is associated with hand preference, as schooled individuals were more likely to be extremely right-handed and less likely to be strongly right-handed, but not with asymmetry of hand skill (controlled for sex and age). Developmental plasticity in hand preference but not skill asymmetry, and the weak correlations between hand preference and hand skill asymmetry indicate that they represent different aspects of brain lateralization. Furthermore, the weak correlations between hand preference and hand skill asymmetry leave room for moderating factors such as schooling, sex and age to have a differential effect on hand preference and hand skill, and each needs to be studied in its own right.
Matthew R. Zefferman - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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an evolutionary theory of large scale human warfare group structured Cultural Selection
Evolutionary Anthropology, 2015Co-Authors: Matthew R. Zefferman, Sarah MathewAbstract:When humans wage war, it is not unusual for battlefields to be strewn with dead warriors. These warriors typically were men in their reproductive prime who, had they not died in battle, might have gone on to father more children. Typically, they are also genetically unrelated to one another. We know of no other animal species in which reproductively capable, genetically unrelated individuals risk their lives in this manner. Because the immense private costs borne by individual warriors create benefits that are shared widely by others in their group, warfare is a stark evolutionary puzzle that is difficult to explain. Although several scholars have posited models of the evolution of human warfare, these models do not adequately explain how humans solve the problem of collective action in warfare at the evolutionarily novel scale of hundreds of genetically unrelated individuals. We propose that group-structured Cultural Selection explains this phenomenon.
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Direct Reciprocity Under Uncertainty Does Not Explain One-Shot Cooperation, But It Can Explain Norm Psychology
2013Co-Authors: Matthew R. ZeffermanAbstract:Humans in many societies cooperate in economic experiments at much higher levels than would be expected if their goal was maximizing economic returns even when interactions are anonymous and one-shot. This is a puzzle because paying a cost to benefit another player in one-shot interactions has no direct benefit to the cooperator. This paper explores the logic of two competing evolutionary hypotheses to explain this behavior. The "norm psychology" hypothesis holds that a player's choice of strategy is heavily influenced by socially-learned Cultural norms. Its premise is that over the course of human evolutionary history, Cultural norms varied considerably across human societies and through a process of gene-culture co-evolution, humans evolved mechanisms to learn and adopt the norms of their particular society. The "evolutionary mismatch" hypothesis holds that pro-social preferences evolved genetically in our hunter-gatherer past where one-shot anonymous interactions were rare and these evolved "protocols" for cooperation are misapplied in modern, laboratory, conditions. I compare these hypotheses by adopting a well known model of the mismatch hypothesis. I show that the cooperation generated by the model is based on a flawed assumption - that the best thing to do is cooperate in a repeated game. I show that repeated games generate a great diversity of behavioral equilibria, in support of the norm psychology hypothesis's premise. When interaction is repeated, adopting local norms is a more evolutionarily successful strategy than automatically cooperating. If various groups are at different behavioral equilibria, then Cultural Selection between groups tends to select for cooperative behavior.
