title: 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.
authors.affiliation: UCLA.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Clark Barrett
authors.affiliation: UCLA.
authors.forename: Christopher D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Peterson
authors.affiliation: Radboud University Nijmegen.
authors.forename: Willem E
authors.initials: WE
authors.lastname: Frankenhuis
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D004484:Ecuador / Q000208:ethnology; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D015141:Los Angeles / Q000208:ethnology; D008297:Male