Seminar: The Development and Diversity of Cumulative Culture Learning with Cristine Legare

Abstract:

Human culture is unique among animal species in its complexity, diversity, and variability. Children develop within highly diverse cultural ecologies that contain knowledge systems, beliefs, practices, artifacts, and technologies that are transmitted and modified over generations. In her talk, Dr. Legare will use a cross-cultural perspective and draw from work in developmental and cognitive science, anthropology, and comparative education to address how cumulative cultural learning across multiple generations is the product of universal processes of embodied learning, which vary in kind and frequency based on the particular cultural ecology that the child inhabits. She will present evidence that these universal learning processes are shaped by values and socialization practices associated with educational institutions and systems of knowledge. The processes by which children acquire and transmit the culture of their communities provide unique insight into the cognitive foundations of cumulative cultural transmission—the cornerstone of human cultural diversity.

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About the Speaker:

Cristine Legare is a Professor of Psychology and the Founder and Director of the Center for Applied Cognitive Science at The University of Texas at Austin. An author of more than 100 articles, her research examines how the human mind enables us to learn, create, and transmit culture. Dr. Legare’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the McDonnell Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the John Templeton Foundation, USAID, and The National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Legare is the recipient of the 2015 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions (2015) and the APA Boyd McCandless Award (2016) for her research on the evolution and ontogeny of cognition and culture.