Mapping the Cultural Learnability Landscape of Danger

Abstract

Cultural transmission is often viewed as a domain-general process. However, a growing literature suggests that learnability is influenced by content and context. The idea of a learnability landscape is introduced as a way of representing the effects of interacting factors on how easily information is acquired. Extending prior work (Barrett & Broesch, ), learnability of danger and other properties is compared for animals, artifacts, and foods in the urban American children (ages 4-5) and in the Shuar children in Ecuador (ages 4-9). There is an advantage for acquiring danger information that is strongest for animals and weakest for artifacts in both populations, with culture-specific variations. The potential of learnability landscapes for assessing biological and cultural influences on cultural transmission is discussed.