Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cultural Transmission in the Real World: A quantitative study of teaching and cultural learning in the Yasawa Islands, Fiji

加州大学洛杉矶分校的博士生米歇尔·克莱恩在罗伯特·T.博伊德将进行研究，以测试假设的预测，即累积的文化进化是人类适应不可或缺的，人类拥有独特的社会学习能力，与文化共同进化。这项研究将产生实验室外最广泛的现有文化传播数据集。Kline的项目有四个目标：（1）测试微妙的教学是否对小规模社会中的社会学习很重要;（2）测量与适应技能相关的知识的组内差异;（3）测试理论化的学习偏见是否会在实验室外产生适应行为;（4）测试学习偏差是否会在实验室外产生适应行为。（4）测量社会互动模式，以推断文化信息网络的几何结构。她将在斐济亚萨瓦岛的村庄进行研究。每个村庄大约有100人，主要以捕鱼和园艺为生。政治单位由相互关联的氏族、长老理事会和世袭酋长组成。这里没有当地市场、广播电视、汽车或公共设施。由于像这样的面对面的社会更类似于人类思维最初进化的环境，这是这项研究的理想环境。共同主要研究者将使用混合方法收集数据，包括焦点跟踪、结构化访谈、录像观察和视频辅助访谈。这项研究的发现将对人类起源的研究具有重要意义，因为文化是人类适应性的主要来源，而且准确解释早期人类考古记录需要关于文化传播如何创造文化变异模式的经验验证理论。调查结果也将引起教育领域研究人员的兴趣。该项目将培训一名研究生和一名斐济女研究助理。

University of California at Los Angeles doctoral student Michelle Kline, with the guidance of Dr. Robert T. Boyd, will undertake research to test predictions of the hypothesis that cumulative cultural evolution is integral to human adaptation, and that humans possess unique social learning capacities that have coevolved with culture. The research will produce the most extensive existing data set on cultural transmission outside the laboratory. The research is important both to cultural evolutionary theory and to more general understanding of how human beings learn.Kline's project has four aims: (1) test whether subtle teaching is important to social learning in a small-scale society; (2) measure within-group variation in knowledge relevant to adaptive skills; (3) test whether theorized learning biases generate adaptive behavior outside the laboratory; and (4) measure patterns of social interaction to infer the geometry of cultural information networks. She will carry out the research in villages on Yasawa Island, Fiji. Each village is about 100 people, who subsist mainly on fishing and horticulture. Political units are composed of interrelated clans, a council of elders, and a hereditary chief. There are no local markets, broadcast television, automobiles, or public utilities here. Since face-to-face societies like this one are more similar to the environments to which the human mind first evolved, this is an ideal setting for this study. The Co-PI will collect data using mixed methodology, including focal follows, structured interviews, and video-recorded observation and video-assisted interviews. Findings from this research will be significant for the study of human origins, because culture is a major source of human adaptability, and because interpreting the early hominin archaeological record accurately requires empirically verified theory about how cultural transmission creates patterns of cultural variation. Findings will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of education. The project will train a graduate student and will train a female Fijian research assistant.