Cultural variation in the use of overimitation by the Aka and Ngandu of the Congo Basin.
Cultural variation in the use of overimitation by the Aka and Ngandu of the Congo Basin.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0120180
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Hewlett BS
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Berl RE;Hewlett BS
西方文化的研究发现，儿童和成人都倾向于过度模仿，在有明确因果信息的情况下复制与因果无关的行为。对非西方群体这一特征的调查发现，在不同文化背景下，个人过度模仿的频率或方式几乎没有差异。然而，迄今为止研究的每一个非西方人口都有与西方文化密切互动的历史，因此他们现在远离了狩猎采集或其他小规模文化的生活。为了在有限的西方文化影响下调查过度模仿，我们对中非共和国南部刚果盆地雨林的阿卡狩猎采集者和邻近的Ngandu园艺家进行了一项研究。阿卡儿童、Ngandu儿童和阿卡成人被提出了一个与先前研究类似的奖励检索任务，涉及一系列因果相关和不相关的行为。阿卡儿童并没有像预期的那样过度模仿，相反，在类似的条件下，他们的过度模仿率是最低的。阿卡儿童模仿的不相关动作比阿卡成年人少，使用不相关动作的比例比Ngandu儿童和阿卡成年人低，模仿的保真度比阿卡成年人低。来自Ngandu儿童的测量结果介于两个Aka组之间。在成功取回奖励的参与者中，60%的阿卡儿童使用模仿而不是模仿，相比之下，Ngandu儿童为15%，阿卡成人为11%，同龄的西方儿童为0%。根据这些结果，我们得出结论，儿童时期过度模仿存在跨文化差异。为了调查过度模仿的认知基础及其对社会学习和我们物种的生物和文化进化的可能影响，需要在更多样化的文化和社会经济群体的代表下进行进一步的研究。
Studies in Western cultures have observed that both children and adults tend to overimitate, copying causally irrelevant actions in the presence of clear causal information. Investigation of this feature in non-Western groups has found little difference cross-culturally in the frequency or manner with which individuals overimitate. However, each of the non-Western populations studied thus far has a history of close interaction with Western cultures, such that they are now far removed from life in a hunter-gatherer or other small-scale culture. To investigate overimitation in a context of limited Western cultural influences, we conducted a study with the Aka hunter-gatherers and neighboring Ngandu horticulturalists of the Congo Basin rainforest in the southern Central African Republic. Aka children, Ngandu children, and Aka adults were presented with a reward retrieval task similar to those performed in previous studies, involving a demonstrated sequence of causally relevant and irrelevant actions. Aka children were found not to overimitate as expected, instead displaying one of the lowest rates of overimitation seen under similar conditions. Aka children copied fewer irrelevant actions than Aka adults, used a lower proportion of irrelevant actions than Ngandu children and Aka adults, and had less copying fidelity than Aka adults. Measures from Ngandu children were intermediate between the two Aka groups. Of the participants that succeeded in retrieving the reward, 60% of Aka children used emulation rather than imitation, compared to 15% of Ngandu children, 11% of Aka adults, and 0% of Western children of similar age. From these results, we conclude that cross-cultural variation exists in the use of overimitation during childhood. Further study is needed under a more diverse representation of cultural and socioeconomic groups in order to investigate the cognitive underpinnings of overimitation and its possible influences on social learning and the biological and cultural evolution of our species.
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