Biological Categorization and Ecological Reasoning Across Cultures

跨文化的生物分类和生态推理

• 批准号: 9707761
• 负责人: Scott Atran
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1997
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1997-09-15 至 2000-02-29
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9707761&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Biological; Categorization; Ecological; Reasoning; Across

This research by a cultural anthropologist, psychologists and linguists explores biological categorization and reasoning about ecological relationships. The investigators will ask where and how differences in cultural belief systems and experience with nature affect folk-biological categorization and reasoning. Using elicitation techniques from anthropology and psychology involving prepared stimulus materials as well as open-ended discussions and observations of people's interactions with their natural environment, the investigators will seek to show how the perceptual and morphological organization of living kinds, which is apparent in the folk taxonomies of cultures the world over, is integrated with a more causal and relational understanding of biology. Native Maya and Spanish speaking residents of Peten, Guatemala will be studied. The extent to which local knowledge of plants and animals represents the structure of ecological communities will be a special focus of the study. The project builds on prior fieldwork and laboratory experiments, using methods including consensus analysis and computational models of categorization and reasoning. This study is important because it will advance our understanding of how people categorize and reason about the living world, and will provide a cognitive baseline for understanding similarities and differences in the ways humans interact with nature.

这项研究由文化人类学家，心理学家和语言学家探索生物分类和生态关系的推理。研究人员将询问文化信仰体系和自然经验的差异在哪里以及如何影响民间生物分类和推理。使用人类学和心理学的启发技术，包括准备好的刺激材料以及开放式的讨论和人们与自然环境相互作用的观察，调查人员将试图展示生物种类的感知和形态组织，这在世界各地文化的民间分类中是显而易见的，与生物学的因果关系和关系理解相结合。将研究危地马拉贝登的玛雅土著和西班牙语居民。当地的动植物知识在多大程度上代表了生态群落的结构，这将是研究的一个特别重点。该项目建立在先前的实地考察和实验室实验的基础上，使用的方法包括共识分析和分类和推理的计算模型。 这项研究很重要，因为它将促进我们对人们如何对生活世界进行分类和推理的理解，并将为理解人类与自然互动方式的相似性和差异提供认知基线。