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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050207T000000
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DTSTAMP:20201006T231353Z
CREATED:20200922T213653Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231353Z
UID:3979-1107734400-1107734400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Richard McElreath - Applying evolutionary models to the laboratory study of social learning
DESCRIPTION:Richard McElreath: UC Davis Department of AnthropologyCultural evolution is driven in part by the strategies individuals employ to acquire behavior from others. These strategies themselves are partly products of natural selection\, making the study of social learning an inherently Darwinian project. Formal models of the evolution of social learning suggest that reliance on social learning should increase with task difficulty and decrease with the probability of environmental change. These models also make predictions about how individuals integrate information from multiple peers. We present the results of micro-society experiments designed to evaluate these predictions. The first experiment measures baseline individual learning strategy in a two-armed bandit environment with variation in task difficulty and temporal fluctuation in the payoffs of the options. Our second experiment addresses how people in the same environment use minimal social information from a single peer. Our third experiment expands on the second by allowing access to the behavior of several other individuals\, permitting frequency-dependent strategies like conformity. In each of these experiments\, we vary task difficulty and environmental fluctuation. We present several candidate strategies and compute the expected payoffs to each in our experimental environment. We then fit to the data the different models of the use of social information\, and identify the best-fitting model via model comparison techniques. We find substantial evidence of both conformist and non-conformist social learning and compare our results to theoretical expectations.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/McElreath_2-7-05.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/richard-mcelreath-applying-evolutionary-models-to-the-laboratory-study-of-social-learning/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050214T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050214T000000
DTSTAMP:20201006T231353Z
CREATED:20200922T213655Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231353Z
UID:3981-1108339200-1108339200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Dwight Read - Where Does Culture Fit In?
DESCRIPTION:Dwight Read: UCLA Department of AnthropologyA long standing issue in human societies has been the relationship between culture and behavior. One extreme position views culture as arising primarily out of behavior structured by a variety of processes\, ranging from external factors such as environmental conditions to internal factors such as behavioral consequences arising directly from interactions of individuals within groups. The other extreme sees behavior as a consequence of the roles and identities that individuals take on. Change in those roles and identities are seen as occurring over relatively long time scales\, thereby giving primacy to viewing behavior as arising from the cultural context in which individuals are embedded. The sociologist James March has recently argued that neither position has successfully demonstrated the irrelevancy of the other position\, but his argument leaves unanswered how these two positions might be integrated into a more encompassing view of the processes affecting and structuring human behavior\, including the capacity of human systems for self-restructuring. I will address these two positions by considering two sharply contrasting hunting and gathering groups\, the Netsilik Inuit of Hudson Bay in Canada the Tiwi on Melville and Bathurst Islands off of the NW coast of Australia.\nI will use the Netsilik as an example amenable to the first position and argue that the Netsilik cultural framework of infant naming and sealing partners provided a cultural basis for implementing methods of resource procurement that were necessary for survival in their extreme\, Arctic region. At the same time I will argue that the cultural framework is more complex than simply reflecting necessary patterns of behavior in that the cultural framework not only provides a cultural basis for implementing the required behaviors\, but the cultural framework has its own dynamics and thereby adds another dimension that structured their particular behavioral means for coping with the environmental constraints to which they had to adapt. \nThe Tiwi\, I argue\, provide a stark contrast to the Netsilik and exemplify the way in which the cultural framework can have far reaching consequences for social organization and behavior that only makes sense by reference to the cultural system(s) in which the behavior is grounded\, rather than by reference to behavior as the means to interact with their environment or as arising from the consequences of individual interaction\, per se. In brief\, the Tiwi had an extremely complex social system structured by a kinship framework that appears to bear little relevance to what was required to procure resources on Melville and Bathurst Islands.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Read_2-14-05_a.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/dwight-read-where-does-culture-fit-in/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050228T000000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20050228T000000
DTSTAMP:20201006T231353Z
CREATED:20200922T213656Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201006T231353Z
UID:3982-1109548800-1109548800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Neil Tsutsui - Genetics and social organization of an invasive ant in its native and introduced ranges
DESCRIPTION:Neil Tsutsui: UC Irvine Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyCultural evolution is driven in part by the strategies individuals employ to acquire behavior from others. These strategies themselves are partly products of natural selection\, making the study of social learning an inherently Darwinian project. Formal models of the evolution of social learning suggest that reliance on social learning should increase with task difficulty and decrease with the probability of environmental change. These models also make predictions about how individuals integrate information from multiple peers. We present the results of micro-society experiments designed to evaluate these predictions. The first experiment measures baseline individual learning strategy in a two-armed bandit environment with variation in task difficulty and temporal fluctuation in the payoffs of the options. Our second experiment addresses how people in the same environment use minimal social information from a single peer. Our third experiment expands on the second by allowing access to the behavior of several other individuals\, permitting frequency-dependent strategies like conformity. In each of these experiments\, we vary task difficulty and environmental fluctuation. We present several candidate strategies and compute the expected payoffs to each in our experimental environment. We then fit to the data the different models of the use of social information\, and identify the best-fitting model via model comparison techniques. We find substantial evidence of both conformist and non-conformist social learning and compare our results to theoretical expectations.http://www.bec.ucla.edu/papers/Tsutsui_2-28-05.pdf
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/neil-tsutsui-genetics-and-social-organization-of-an-invasive-ant-in-its-native-and-introduced-ranges/
CATEGORIES:Past Presentation,Presentation
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