Submitted for publication

Historical Change, Cultural Learning, and Cognitive Representation

in Zinacantec Maya Children

Patricia M. Greenfield

Ashley E. Maynard

UCLA

Carla P. Childs

Germantown Friends School

Address for correspondence: Patricia M. Greenfield, UCLA Department of Psychology, 405 Hilgard Avenue, 1282A Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1563. Phone: (310) 825-7526. Fax: (310) 206-5895. E-mail: Greenfield@psych.ucla.edu.

Historical Change, Cultural Learning, and Cognitive Representation

in Zinacantec Maya Children

This empirical research examines the relationship between ecocultural change on the societal level and learning and development on the individual level. The first generation of Zinacantec Maya children was studied in 1969 and 1970; the next generation in 1991 and 1993. In the intervening two decades, the Zinacantec Maya community was involved in a transition from an economy based primarily on subsistence and agriculture to an economy based primarily on money and commerce. The goal of our studies was to test predictions concerning the effects of this economic transition on modes of cultural learning and styles of cognitive representation. We hypothesized that the growth of entrepreneurial commerce and money as a medium of exchange would lead to a greater emphasis on independent learning, abstraction, and innovation, and, correlatively, a movement away from scaffolded guidance, detail-oriented representation, and conservative tradition. These hypotheses were confirmed by our historical research design, involving a naturalistic study of cultural apprenticeship and an experimental study of cognitive representation. The overarching point is that patterns of socialization and development are not fixed but adapt themselves to changing ecocultural conditions.

Historical Change, Cultural Learning, and Cognitive Representation

in Zinacantec Maya Children

In human history, there have been three major ecological adaptations: hunting and gathering, agriculture, and commerce with advanced technology. Human development is, in part, an adaptation to ecological characteristics (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Super & Harkness, 1986): the characteristics of the surrounding ecology such as the climate and type of land available and the characteristics of cultural practices that arise as adaptations to those ecologies (Berry, 1976; Weisner, 1984). In the anthropological tradition of Beatrice and John Whiting (1975), we hypothesize that each ecology emphasizes a different set of skills, different developmental pathways, and different processes of socialization or cultural apprenticeship. It follows that different socialization patterns are necessary to prepare children for a changing environment, or for an environment that is different from the one the parents themselves were raised in.

The research presented in this paper investigates the historical transformation of a community from agriculture to commerce, focusing on the implications of this economic transformation for learning and development. We focus on changes in three areas of learning and development: cultural apprenticeship, the creation of cultural artifacts, and the cognitive representation of those artifacts. Our goal is to link the macrolevel of social change to the microlevel of individual socialization and development. By dealing with three different areas of learning and development, we can demonstrate the importance of the influence of macrolevel change in the environment.

Our investigation relates to larger questions concerning the relationship between history, culture, and the socialization of the individual. This relationship is central to the fields of cultural and developmental psychology and, particularly, to the sociohistorical approach (Cole, 1996). Culture at any given moment is the product of historical change, as well as a reflection of cultural constancy and conservatism.

The process of cultural transmission from one generation to another links culture at one historical moment with culture at another historical moment. Cultural transmission from the point of view of society is called socialization, while, from the point of view of the individual and the family, it is called development. Socialization is intrinsically future oriented; it prepares children for an adulthood that has not yet arrived. It follows that changing socialization patterns should be a key component of the psychological adaptation to ecocultural change. However, an important question is, in conditions of ecocultural change, do parents merely recreate the socializing process that they underwent as children? Or, do they develop new methods and processes as societal conditions, in this case, economic conditions, change? And what, if any, are the consequences of such changes in socialization for the development of children?

The sociohistorical research tradition, derived from Vygotsky (1962, 1978), emphasizes that development is constructed through social interaction, cultural practices, and the internalization or cognitive appropriation of symbolic tools (Saxe 1991). Vygotsky emphasizes the historical dimension of cultural practices and symbolic tools: practices and tools are viewed as the present residue of cultural development over time (Scribner, 1985). Nonetheless, the implications of historical change in cultural practices and symbolic tools for cognitive development have rarely been studied directly (cf. Beach, 1992).

To answer these questions in a rigorous, controlled way requires data comparing socialization and development in the same families under two different sets of ecological conditions. One must compare the socialization practices of parents in one generation, under one set of ecological conditions, with the socialization practices of their children, when they become parents decades later, under a new set of ecological conditions. This is one facet of our unique historical design. One must also compare the developmental patterns of one generation of children with the developmental patterns of their children at the same ages, decades later. This is a second facet of our historical design. Unlike a longitudinal design, our historical design compares parents and their children, holding participant age constant while varying the historical time period (Elder, 1998). This is a very powerful design for assessing the effects of the broader ecological context on children's learning and development.

Our study site was Nabenchauk, a Zinacantec Maya community in Chiapas Mexico. We studied the first generation in 1969 and 1970 (e.g., Greenfield, 1974, Greenfield & Childs, 1977, 1978; Greenfield, Brazelton, & Childs, 1989); we returned to collect comparable data on the second generation in 1991 and 1993. The intervening period from 1970 to 1991 witnessed an ongoing economic transformation from a more subsistence, agriculturally-based economy to a more money-oriented, commercial economy (Collier, 1990). While our beginning and ending points delimit neither the beginning nor the end of change, the period was one of rapid transition and qualitative change in the Zinacantec way of life. The change was particularly marked in Nabenchauk, our study site, perhaps because of its location next to the Panamerican Highway, the major artery for travel and commerce in the region and in the country.

An important aspect of participation in the developing commercial life was entrepreneurship. This was especially noticeable in the engine for economic development: ownership of vans and trucks. With the help of the Mexican government, Zinacantec corn farmers had, between our two study periods, acquired vehicles for the first time; and these were used to develop transport businesses for people and agricultural products (Cancian, 1990). One of our central hypotheses was based on the notion that entrepreneurship carries with it an ideology of innovation as an important cultural value.

Innovation was in sharp contrast to the values and practices observed in 1969 and 1970. At that time, tradition rather than innovation was valued; there was but a single baz'i or "true" way to do everything from weaving to walking. In an agrarian society, the older generation controls land; this dominance of the elders is a force for traditionalism (Collier, 1990). As commerce expanded, the generations became more independent of each other, and the conservative force of the older generation was lessened. With their entry into textile commerce, albeit modest, women became somewhat more independent of men. However, involvement in commerce was uneven, even in 1991, and this variability became part of our strategy for identifying mediating variables in historically-driven developmental changes. In other words, we could examine whether individual differences in commercial involvement in the contemporary sample correlated with developmental outcomes in the same way as historical differences in commercial involvement.

In both periods, the focus of our study of apprenticeship, cognitive representation, and the creation of cultural artifacts was the domain of weaving, the most complex technological skill acquired by virtually all Zinacantec females (and no males). Weaving was the centerpiece of Zinacantec informal education, an important reason for its selection as a focus for our study. Weaving also became part of commercial entrepreneurship in the 1990s. Girls and women began weaving and embroidering tourist items for sale to outsiders and subsistence items purchased by other members of their community (Greenfield, in press). At the earlier period, weaving was almost exclusively for the use of oneself and one's family.

In sum, we see weaving as an example of cultural learning that can illustrate general processes relevant to other learning activities and other contexts of parallel social change. We focus on the effects of economically-driven social change on two interrelated processes, cultural apprenticeship and cognitive representation.

Because schooling was an influence of external origin, we chose to study informal education in the home, the center of cultural learning processes in Zinacantan. Processes of informal education have been documented by many researchers in recent years (e.g., Greenfield, 1984; Greenfield & Lave, 1982; Lave & Wenger, 1990; Rogoff, 1989). We have come to understand informal education as an apprenticeship process that expresses cultural goals (Rogoff, 1990). Here the notion of apprenticeship has been generalized from the relationship of master and novice in professional situations to master-novice relationships in the home. Apprenticeship processes include observation and guided participation (Rogoff, 1990; Fiske, 1997); and they integrate verbal interaction with these processes (Childs & Greenfield, 1980). Past studies of informal education have focused on guided participation and scaffolding in the teaching of tasks such as getting dressed (Rogoff, 1989; Mistry, Goncu, & Mosier, 1993), going to the store (Guberman, 1996), selling candy (Saxe, 1990), and subsistence weaving (Childs & Greenfield, 1980). Transmission from master to apprentice in tailoring apprenticeship (Lave, 1977) and in bartending classes (Beach, 1992) has also been studied. No study has yet considered how processes of apprenticeship change with historical changes in the ecological adaptation of the broader society.

Greenfield and Lave (1982) presented the theory that was tested in the present historical study. This theory posits two cultural models of informal education, each adapted to a different sociocultural environment. The first model is a culturally conservative one: Apprenticeship is highly guided by the master and opportunities for error are therefore limited. This model is strengthened when the cost of error is very high (Greenfield, 1984; Rogoff, 1990). Because the master's guidance limits learner experimentation, opportunities to innovate are also limited, and the apprentice therefore acquires an array of skills with relatively little change from the master's set of competencies.

The second model is adapted to cultural innovation rather than cultural conservation (Greenfield & Lave, 1982). Instead of guidance by a master, the emphasis is on trial-and-error learning by the novice. The frequency of error of course increases. Trial-and-error learning intrinsically involves experimentation; innovation is a natural consequence of the process of experimentation. This model is strengthened when the cost of error is relatively low (Greenfield, 1984; Rogoff, 1990). Cross-cultural comparisons provided evidence for the model (Greenfield & Lave, 1982), but there were no controlled studies that explicitly tested it.

Historical comparison of two generations of the same families in the same community before and after the community moves from the conservative traditionalism characteristic of subsistence agriculture to the innovation and change characteristic of commercial entrepreneurship provided a natural experiment to test Greenfield and Lave's theory. This is the origin of Study 1.

Guberman and Greenfield (1991) developed a model of the relationship between informal education and cognitive processes. Most relevant to the present study, they concluded that multiple exemplars of a concept or problem lead to more abstract problem representations; abstract problem representations are, in turn, more transferable to new problems, which individuals are more likely to encounter in a changing, compared to a static, social and economic context. Multiple pattern exemplars were part of everyday life in 1991, whereas the range was much more restricted in 1969/70. Hence, we predicted that, between 1969/70 and 1991, strategies for pattern representation would become more abstract and that the ability to represent culturally novel patterns would increase.

At the same time, prior work had suggested that movement from subsistence to a money economy would affect representational processes. Working with candy sellers in Brazil, Saxe (1988) has shown how the representation of money reflects the tasks in which it is used. Through cross-sectional research in New Guinea, Saxe (1985) also documented that variation in the cultural role of money impacted the cognitive representation of number. Our study extends the findings that money affects representational processes to a new domain, the representation of visual processes. In comparison to a barter economy, where exchanges are very specific, money, which can be exchanged for anything, is a very abstract medium of exchange. Hence, in our historical study, we expected a primary motor for the increase in abstraction to be involvement in the money economy through commercial participation as seller and consumer.

In Brazil, Nunes, Schliemann, and Carraher (1993) have explored the connection between a wide variety of occupations and ways of doing mathematics. They found that the activities required by occupations such as carpentry and fishing develop mathematical representations well suited to the required tasks and problems encountered by a person in that particular line of work (cf. also Hatano, 1977; 1983; Stigler, 1984). This notion, first elaborated by Price-Williams, Gordon, and Ramirez (1967) in a study of potters in Mexico, was the foundation for our first study of pattern representation (Greenfield & Childs, 1977). Our idea was that the process of weaving a pattern would make weavers more analytic and detailed in their representational strategies because of the nature of pattern construction in the weaving process itself.

In general, the idea is that, like other activities, weaving requires and develops its own cognitive concepts in practice. However, Greenfield and Childs (1978) found that not only weaving but also schooling made adolescents more analytic in their strategies for representing the woven patterns. In a closely related pattern of results, Rogoff and Gauvain (1984) found that, for pattern construction tasks, both weaving and schooling had a positive impact on the ability to continue patterns that were familiar from Navaho weaving. Weaving experience had the strongest relationship to pattern continuation performance when the medium was weaving itself (that is, a striped pattern was begun by the researchers on a small loom). On the other hand, schooling had the strongest relationship to pattern continuation performance when the medium was an unfamiliar one (that is, a striped pattern was begun by the researchers with colored pipecleaners). In their study of topological concepts in straw weavers in rural communities in northeastern Brazil, Saxe and Gearhart (1990) also found that weaving and schooling had effects on different representational media. Weavers performed poorly on tasks that required verbal explanations of how to weave patterns. However, expert weavers presented topological information more often in demonstrations of weaving than in verbal descriptions.

Schooling is one kind of cultural activity that has its particular cognitive impacts (Rogoff, 1980; Scribner & Cole, 1981). In our historical study of pattern representation, we examine the influence of both schooling and the out-of-school educational process of learning to weave, as well as the influence of participation in a commercial money-oriented economy.

From Tradition to Innovation and Individuation in the Creation of Artifacts

Our study of the effects of cultural change on developmental processes has several interrelated parts. First, as context for the two formal studies, we present information on the changes in the woven artifacts. We predicted that the shift toward entrepreneurship would engender greater innovation in Zinacantec culture and that one arena for this innovation would be a movement from a closed stock of a few woven patterns to an open stock involving constant pattern innovation. Ethnographic observation indicated that, in 1969 and 1970, woven artifacts, like other parts of the culture, were stable and unchanging, limited by tradition. Woven patterns were limited to two red-and-white striped configurations, one multi color stripe, and one gray and white houndstooth pattern. Figure 1 shows an example of one of these patterns:

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Insert Figure 1 about here.

In 1970, all males dressed alike, e.g., these two boys are wearing ponchos in the only available pattern. Inspection of photographs from the period and historical collections of Zinacantec woven textiles confirm the standardized striped pattern with almost no additional decoration on it. By 1991, in sharp contrast, each poncho had many varied and innovative elements of design. Figure 2 shows three examples, each with different brocaded and embroidered designs.

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Insert Figures 2 a, b, and c about here.

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Unlike the 1970 weavers, our ethnographic data indicate that weavers of the 1990s were, as predicted, engaging in a constant process of pattern innovation. Although the configuration of the background patterns (red and white stripes) had remained constant, there was tremendous variety in the brocade woven borders and embroidered decoration (exemplified in Figures 2a, b, and c). Indeed, no two pieces of clothing or other woven items were exactly alike. We saw both new motifs and new recombinations of old motifs.

The new variety of patterns was closely related to economic development in the intervening decades and the rise of commerce: 1. The manufacture of acrylic thread, an offshoot of the development of Mexico's petroleum industry, made a variety of colored threads available and cheap. 2. The development of locally-controlled transport made it possible to buy thread in bulk at wholesale prices and set up home-based thread businesses; previously it was necessary to make a relatively difficult trip to purchase thread, and there were no local families in the thread business. 3. A certain degree of pattern innovation was applied to creating textile items for tourists to buy; previously there had been no woven items designed specifically for tourists. 4. Zinacantecs, particularly teenage girls, were weaving on order for money for other members of the community. 5. The appearance of television and the development of local transport in the intervening decades made a much wider variety of textile (and other) patterns from outside the community visually available to many more people at a younger age.

Overview

Study 1, a naturalistic video study, addresses the socialization and apprenticeship processes that was contemporaneouw with the widespread proliferation of woven patterns exemplified in Figure 2. The central prediction of Study 1 was that, from 1970 to the 1990s, weaving instruction would move from a more closely guided, interdependent style (emphasized in Vygotskian theory) to a more independent, trial-and-error style (emphasized in Piagetian theory).

Study 2, an experimental study, addresses the processes of cognitive representation that are interrelated with the variety of woven patterns. We examine the consequences of commercial involvement, weaving, and schooling, as these affect historical change in the development of pattern representation. One major prediction was that, like woven patterns themselves, an experimental test of the development of pattern representation would reveal greater facility with "innovation" and novelty in the later historical period. A second major prediction was that the style of representation would become more "abstract" in the later historical period. The last major prediction was that an analytic approach to pattern representation would also increase from one historical period to the next. The cumulative message of these predictions is that, even within a given cultural group, socialization and development do not remain constant.

Methodological Issues

The most important feature of our methodology in these two studies is replication of our procedures in two generations of participants. Comparison of these two generations allows us to assess the effect of historical changes in a controlled manner: Age, family background, and community background are held constant in this design, while historical epoch, and attendant socio-economic context, varies. This is a new research design in developmental psychology, and it raises new issues.

In trying to delineate connections between history and individual development, it is important to consider how, methodologically, to connect macro-conditions on the societal level to the micro level of individual development and behavior. A unique aspect of our methodology is the triangulation between contemporaneous variability in ecocultural conditions and historical change, in order to get at the mechanisms underlying historical change. First we establish a particular historical change in development or socialization. We then hypothesize what changes in the macro-context, specifically in the economy, would lead to the observed changes in socialization and, therefore, development. Next we utilize the fact that historically-mediated change in ecocultural adaptation has been uneven and that there is therefore contemporaneous variability in the degree of macro-contextual change. If a particular ecocultural factor provides the underlying mechanism for observed changes in socialization, and thus development, then that factor should also be able to explain variability in the contemporary context.

We use both quantitative and qualitative analyses to demonstrate the relationship between macro-conditions of a society undergoing ecocultural changes and the micro level of individual development and socializing strategies. We have selected structural equation modeling to connect historical epoch with a mediating variable (commercial involvement) that transforms societal change into individual and family changes in socialization practices and children’s learning and development. We have used qualitative analysis of videotaped weaving sessions and interview data to understand how the sociocultural and apprenticeship variables (commercial involvement, generation of teacher, and learner initiation) assessed in our structural equation model fit together in an interactive apprenticeship process and to follow a particular family's change in weaving apprenticeship from one generation to the next. For our study of changes in cognitive representation, we meld qualitative identification of strategies with structural equation modeling and other quantitative techniques in order to analyze their frequency at different historical periods and under different conditions.

In terms of both procedure and analysis, our studies involve an integration of methods from both psychology and anthropology. Such an integration is an important part of the emerging field of cultural psychology (Greenfield, 1997; Shweder, 1990). The use of an experiment, the quantitative microanalysis of standardized video records, the notion of controlled comparison, the scalar approach to ecological factors, and the multivariate statistical analyses have their origins in the methodological armoire of psychology. In contrast, the long-term, intensive study of a small-scale society, the use of a non-European language in the research, the focus on indigenous skills and artifacts, and the importance of qualitative analysis have their origins in the discipline of anthropology. The studies are therefore interdisciplinary in conception. As a consequence, the reader must bear in mind that, given these differing methodological traditions, what counts as data in the two disciplines is not necessarily the same (Greenfield, 1993).

Study 1: From Interdependence to Independence in Weaving Apprenticeship

Indeed, Greenfield and Childs' 1970 data concerning weaving apprenticeship in Nabenchauk, a Zinacantec Maya hamlet, conformed to the culturally conservative model. In the first video study of informal education in a naturalistic context, Childs and Greenfield (1980) looked at the interactional processes involved in the transmission of weaving skill from one generation to the next in Zinacantan. In 1970, weaving instruction in Zinacantan was characterized by a relatively error-free scaffolding process (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976), based on observation of models, obedience to developmentally sensitive commands, and use of help when needed (Childs & Greenfield, 1980; Greenfield, 1984). This mode of informal instruction was well adapted to the superordinate Zinacantec goal of preserving the baz’i or "true" (i.e., traditional Zinacantec) way of life (Greenfield & Lave, 1982). Part of the Zinacantec way of life was a closed stock of about four woven patterns; learning to weave was synonymous with learning to weave just this set of patterns. The absence of trial-and-error discovery was well suited to maintaining the traditional patterns with relatively little variation from one exemplar to another.

Predicted change. We predicted a movement from Model 1 (highly scaffolded) apprenticeship to Model 2 (more independent learning) as a result of the development of entrepreneurship as Zinacantec society accelerated its movement from corn-based subsistence to money-based commerce. A corollary to this prediction related to the mechanism of change: We predicted that change would be mediated by and, therefore, proportional to involvement in the commercial economy, specifically, mother and daughter involvement in textile-related commerce.

At the same time, we also predicted a movement from a small closed stock of patterns to a large open-ended stock, reflecting innovation in pattern design and creation. Pattern innovation would lead to a wide, potentially infinite, variety of textile patterns. This variety would be more adaptive in a commercial economy where textiles are marketed to a broad clientele. However, we saw an even more direct theoretical connection between these two predictions: a more independent, discovery-style of learning would be better adapted to the creation of novel patterns than to the maintenance of traditional forms

Hypothetico-deductive nature of the research. These predictions concerning the impact of historical change on socialization and development, like the predictions that follow, were entirely theory-driven; at the time of formulating them, the researchers (Greenfield and Childs) had not been back to Nabenchauk or to Chiapas since the first wave of data collection in 1970.

In the 1991 and 1993 data, we expected to see more trial-and-error learning, with the learner spending more time weaving by herself, and having to initiate help, rather than the teacher intervening on her own initiative. We saw this more independent method of cultural apprenticeship as better adapted to design innovation in the arena of weaving.

The participants were 72 Zinacantec girls, ranging in age from 3 to 19 years (mean = 11.8, median = 12) and representing two historically distinct generations of the same families in Nabenchauk. The first generation was studied in 1970; the second generation, in almost all cases their daughters and nieces, was studied in 1991 and 1993. The girls in each generational cohort had varying experience in learning to weave. For some girls, the videotaped session in our protocol was their very first weaving session. Others had woven before, creating various items that ranged in difficulty from very low (e.g., a tortilla cover) to very high (e.g., a poncho).

For our quantitative analysis, we first selected those participants who had little prior experience in weaving. That is, the learners in our analysis either had not woven previously or who had woven only one or two of the easier items. This selection produced a group of 41 participants. We then decided not to include one learner in this group who had no helper and had not initiated any help during her weaving session, producing a final group of 40 participants. The final group of less-experienced participants whose data were in our analysis ranged in age from 3 to 16 (mean = 9.78, median = 9).

Participants were recruited in two ways: by a Zinacantec research assistant, Xun Pavlu, who visited people he knew in the community and asked them to participate, and by word-of-mouth as people in the community began to know the researchers and feel comfortable with them. Family tree cards made by the third author in 1969 and 1970 enabled us to track down the descendents of the earlier participants when we returned to the field site in 1991. Almost all were still living in the community, and all the direct descendents of the 1970 weavers who were old enough to weave agreed to participate. Most of the data were collected in 1991. In a few cases, direct descendants of our original 1970 weavers who were thought to be too young to weave in 1991 were videotaped when they were two years older, in 1993.

For both cohorts of participants, weaving videotapes were made, by appointment, in the courtyard (or occasionally in the house, if it rained). Our assistant Xun Pavlu accompanied us to virtually every taping session and introduced us to the families. Both cohorts were told that we wanted to see girls learning to weave. It was also made clear to both cohorts of mothers (or other potential teachers who might be present) that it was fine to engage in teaching behavior as needed or desired. In both cohorts it was made clear that there would be interest in our country in what they were doing for us.

In 1970, the equipment was the first Sony portable black-and-white reel-to-reel video recorder, with an external microphone set up under the loom. In 1991 and 1993, we used a Sony Hi-8 color cassette video recorder, with radio lavalier microphones worn by the weaving learner and her teacher or helper, if there was one. The 1970 tapes included various components of the weaving process, but three were analyzed: making the hitak (attaching the endstick), the first cycle of weaving (placing the first two weft or crosswise threads in the warp), and a later cycle of weaving (Childs & Greenfield, 1980). In our 1970 study, we found that there was less teacher intervention on the later cycle, which was easier than the first; this finding provided one of several pieces of evidence for scaffolded guidance that was sensitive to the skill level of the learner (Childs & Greenfield, 1980; Greenfield, 1984). For our second cohort of participants, filmed in the 1990s, we systematically focused our taping on these particular parts of the weaving process. The total length of the tapes and therefore the usual observation period was one half-hour in 1970 and one hour in 1991. However, the same three segments were analyzed in both cases. The language of the tapes (and of the researchers' interaction with participants) was Tzotzil, a Maya language of highland Chiapas.

In the 1970 cohort there was a lot of emphasis placed on accustoming the participants to our camera; at that time there was no television (nor, of course, video) in the community. In the cohort of the 1990s there was less emphasis on the equipment per se (both television and video had been introduced into the community), but there was more emphasis on explaining and getting consent as to where the video would be shown. Because television had entered the community, we reassured our participants that no one in the village could watch the tape because it was a different format from the one they used. This was necessary because of the Zinacantec dislike of having pictures taken, out of fear of the camera as an evil eye that can steal a soul and fear of exploitation; that is, they resent foreigners earning money from photographing or filming them, if they are not paid. For both cohorts, we showed the participants parts of their tapes and took a polaroid photograph of them, which we gave as a gift; it was thought that this would be interpreted as our leaving a piece of their soul behind for them, rather than taking it away with us. Both cohorts of weaving learners were also paid for their participation.

In addition to the videotape, there were several sources of fairly elaborate demographic and other data. We asked questions before the weaving session began, did follow-up interviews (for the 1990s participants only), and had access to the Stanford Medical School survey of the community that was done in the summer of 1991. This survey was able to be used for demographic information on the 1990s sample and to supplement missing information on the 1970 participants concerning age and schooling.

Videotapes from both cohorts were extensively coded by the third author. Dependent variables of interest in this paper include four measures of learner independence during the weaving process: learner independence while preparing to weave (attaching the endstick), learner independence while weaving, prevention and correction of errors by the learner, and learner initiation of help:

In order to test our hypothesis that the movement toward more independent learning was mediated by involvement in textile-based commerce, we used our multiple data sources to create a textile-commerce scale. Mother-daughter textile commerce scores are the proportion of various binary items: e.g., whether or not either mother or daughter sold her weavings, whether or not daughter wound balls of thread for money, or whether the mother or daughter worked in a retail family thread enterprise. A complete listing of the items is to be found in the left-hand column of Table 1.

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Insert Table 1 about here.

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Quantitative Results

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Insert Figure 3 about here.

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The means and standard deviations of all of the variables used in the model are shown in Table 2.

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Insert Table 2 about here.

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This model confirms our hypothesis that there has been an historical increase in the independence of the apprenticeship process and that this historical shift has been mediated by commercial activity. In the model shown in Figure 3, historical period refers to whether a participant was a member of the earlier generation, studied as children in 1970, or the generation of their daughters, studied as children in the 1990s. The model shows that, from one historical period to the next, participation in textile-related commerce increased. An increase in textile related commerce, in turn, predicted a shift in learner autonomy on several measures of independence. First, involvement in textile commerce is directly related to learner (as opposed to teacher) initiation of help. Second, involvement in textile commerce is causally connected to a factor of independence that includes several variables: learner independently attaching the endstick, learner independently weaving, and learner prevention and correction of errors. In other words, learners with greater familial involvement in textile commerce were less likely to be helped by a teacher or helper as they learned to weave and more likely to prevent and correct their own errors (in contrast to having the teacher intervene to prevent or correct an error. In sum, the historical changes in commercial activity led to a more independent, trial-and-error process of apprenticeship. Age of the learner also has an effect on independence in weaving; older girls, though they are not necessarily more experienced as weavers, have more independence as they learn to weave. Interestingly, age and involvement in textile commerce are not correlated. Each has an independent effect on the independence of weaving apprenticeship.

We examined several other models using the same dependent measures of independence. Because classroom teaching stresses pupils’ initiative and speaking up, we thought that schooling might increase girls’ independence and their initiation of help. However, our schooling variable was rejected by the Wald test and dropped from the model. We thought that weaving experience also might have played a role in girls’ increasing independence. However, the link from experience to independence was not significant and was also dropped from the model by the Wald test.

This analysis of historical changes in the behavioral aspects of weaving apprenticeship was confirmed by the actors' own interpretations of how they had started to weave. A chi-square test in the sample as a whole showed a significant generational shift from recalling an external social impetus to begin weaving to recalling an internal stimulus. Whereas most mothers (71%) recalled their mothers starting them on backstrap-loom weaving with an imperative ("Weave!"), most girls (62%) recalled starting to weave through their own volition ("I weave."). This shift was significant at the p = .002 level (Chi-square = 9.42), according to a two-tailed test.

A video case study (Greenfield, in press) uses qualitiative data to illustrate our quantitative model of historical change in weaving apprenticeship. This case study involves comparing the apprenticeship process of a nine-year-old weaving learner in 1970 with the weaving apprenticeship process of her nine-year old daughter in 1991. The learner is Katal 1 (numerals identify families in our database). In the videotape of Katal’s learning session we first see Katal there by herself. Very soon after the tape starts, her mother enters to help on her own initiative, without being summoned by her daughter. As exemplified by the video frame shown in Figure 4, her mother is very much there, continuously helping or doing part of the weaving for her daughter.

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Insert Figure 4 about here.

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The scene in Figure 4 is in sharp contrast to what we found in 1991 when Katal’s daughter, also age 9, was learning to weave. In a clip of her daughter Loxa learning to weave 21 years later, we see a style of teaching geared more toward independent learning (Figure 5).

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Insert Figure 5 about here.

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In the one-hour tape of her weaving apprenticeship, her mother is not there at all to help her. Instead, the mother has assigned Xunka, an older sister, to function as the weaving teacher. In terms of the mediation of textile-based commerce in our structural equation model, it is interesting that, during the video session, the mother was actually engaged in embroidering a blouse that was going to be sold on order.

Although Loxa's sister is the teacher, she is paying little attention (see Figure 5), and Loxa, the learner, has to call her more than once, taking the initiative to get her attention. Most of the time, as in Figure 5, Loxa is weaving independently, with her teacher at some distance. (This distance of the teacher is in sharp contrast to what we saw when her mother learned to weave, as illustrated in Figure 4.) This teacher is not hovering over the learner, ready to prevent errors before they happen; it is therefore not surprising that the role of the teacher in preventing errors is nonexistent in this video, while the role of the learner in preventing her own errors is much greater than what we saw when her mother learned to weave. In 1991, Loxa's teacher limits her role to correcting errors after they have happened, leading to an increase in trial-and-error learning, compared with her mother's apprenticeship twenty-one years earlier. Indeed, the trial-and-error process goes so far that Loxa's weaving is taken out by her older sister, Xunka, after the researchers turn of their camera because the weaving turns out to be such a mess!

This is the camera's perspective on change, a view from the outside. We were also interested in the inside view, from the participant's own perspective. Katal's 1991 interview confirmed our quantitative analysis. She told us that Loxa, like all of her daughters, had begun to weave on their own initiative; indeed, she had started when her mother was on a day trip to the neighboring city of San Cristobal de las Casas. When the mother, Katal, was asked whether that was how she had started weaving when she was little, she said no, that her mother had said to her "Weave!" Thus, Katal's perception was that the initiative to begin learning to weave had been transferred in one generation from teacher to learner.

Through both video and interview data, this historical case study illustrates the findings of a movement from a more interdependent to a more independent style of apprenticeship. This historical case study is well controlled; age, family, community, and language are held constant; time is the only variable.

Summary. Our quantitative and qualitative results indicate that, as some members of the culture shifted toward a commercial way of life, apprenticeship methods for weaving also shifted, demonstrated by girls’ increasing independent learning. Both of these shifts represent a move toward greater individuation at the family level, which may lead to innovation on the individual level of cognition. The question of an historical shift towards innovation and novelty on the level of cognitive representation are major foci of our second study.

Study 2: Historical Change in Cognitive Representation

We begin with the original study (1969/70), presenting its results as background for the historical comparison of the pattern representation processes that is the focus of the present article. These results form the baseline from which we predicted an historical movement in representational strategies from detail to abstraction, from the familiar to the novel, and an increase in an analytic approach to representing culturally central textile artifacts.

Greenfield and Childs (1977) studied the effects of weaving, formal schooling, and age on the development of pattern representation in Zinacantan. Wooden sticks placed in a frame were used to represent striped woven patterns (Figure 6).

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Insert Figure 6 about here.

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As can be seen in Figure 6, sticks were available in different colors and widths, thin, medium, and broad. The woven patterns were always visible as models in the experimental situation. Subjects were also asked to continue striped patterns begun by the experimenter. Figure 7 shows the culturally novel patterns that were used as pattern continuation models.

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Insert Figure 7 about here.

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Developmental patterns. Consistent with Werner's (1948) developmental theory, seemingly universal developmental trends were identified pattern representation. As they grew from age three to adolescence, Zinacantec children's representations became increasingly differentiated and hierarchically complex (Greenfield & Childs, 1977). Children went from random placement of sticks at age 4 and 5 to binary differentiation of pattern parts in the eight to ten-year-old group (e.g., a simple alternation of two colors), to hierarchically organized patterns involving complex subunits in the teenage group (e.g., a correct continuation of Pattern 8, Figure 7, required combining two complex subunits; one subunit comprised two red and one green sticks, while the other complex subunit comprised two red and one yellow sticks).

Gender and schooling. Against this developmental background, the effects of gender (because of its link to different experiences of informal education) and schooling were explored. Across ages, boys performed better at continuing culturally novel patterns modeled by the experimenter (and shown in Figure 7). This finding was attributed to the fact that boys had a "lifestyle that included more travel, participation in a market economy, and exposure to a wider range of fabric patterns" (Guberman & Greenfield, 1991, p. 239). Similarly, Rogoff and Gauvain (1984) suggested that the lack of transfer from skill in weaving patterns to the representation of novel patterns in the expert weavers (adolescent girls) occurred because of their exposure to but a few simple woven patterns. The possible connection between exposure to a wider range of fabric patterns, commercial involvement, and skill in representing culturally novel patterns was explored further in the historical study.

One pattern in particular held special interest because there was more than one possible "correct" continuation. We termed it the "growing pattern," and it is shown in Figure 8, along with three possible strategies for "correctly" continuing the pattern. To continue the pattern by

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Insert Figure 8 about here.

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making it grow (the progression strategy in Figure 8), involves "going beyond the information given" (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956) to create something slightly novel. The only participants in Nabenchauk who responded to the pattern with the progression strategy, that is, by continuing its growth, were boys with school experience (Greenfield & Childs, 1977). The mirror image strategy was favored by the only expert weavers (teenage girls) who successfully completed this pattern. This representation seemed to be an extrapolation from woven fabrics, in which thin striped borders were placed symmetrically at both edges of a piece of cloth (Greenfield & Childs, 1977).

Predicted change in representation of the "growing pattern". As a result of the greater value placed on innovation in an entrepreneurial environment, we predicted that some unschooled Zinacantecs would transcend the stimulus of the "growing pattern" and "innovate" by using the progression strategy. They would begin to "go beyond the information given" (Bruner, Goodnow, & Austin, 1956). This was one of the predictions of the historical follow-up study, reported here. In addition, we expected more use of the growing pattern in general, because of the influence of the entrepreneurial environment on schooled as well as unschooled participants.

Interaction of predicted change in variety of textile patterns and cognitive change in pattern representation. We also predicted that, because of a new acceptance of innovation in the second historical time period, the variety of woven patterns would increase. If exposure to a variety of patterns was also a factor in the application or transfer of pattern representation skills to novel patterns, as Rogoff and Gauvain (1984) and Guberman and Greenfield (1991) had hypothesized, then one would expect a correlated historical increase in skillful representation of novel patterns. Because of the greater exposure of boys at the earlier period to novel patterns (through their travels out of the community), one might also expect this historical rise in the representation of novel patterns to be concentrated in female participants, who, at the later period, would, according to our hypothesis, be creating as well as viewing pattern novelty. This line of thinking would lead to a prediction of an overall historical rise in skillful representation of novel patterns, plus a statistically-significant interaction between gender and historical time period.

Representation of Zinacantec woven patterns. The most interesting aspect of our results from 1969 and 1970 (and most important for our historical comparison) related to how the sticks were used to represent traditional Zinacantec striped woven patterns. At adolescence, both schooling and weaving made participants more analytical in their representations of woven patterns. The two model patterns, omnipresent in Zinacantec textiles, are shown in Figure 9.

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Insert Figure 9 about here.

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Figure 10 shows a representational strategy that was commonly used by teenage girls (all of whom were both unschooled and expert weavers) and schooled adolescent boys (none of whom knew how to weave). As can be seen in Figure 10, this strategy involves maintaining the basic configuration of stripes in both the poncho and shawl, grouping thin sticks to create broad stripes, just as thin threads are grouped in a weaving to make a broad stripe; we therefore called it the analytic detailed or analytic thread-by-thread strategy (see Figure 10).

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Insert Figure 10 about here.

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Teen-age boys who did not go to school were less likely to provide an analytic representation of the patterns and more likely to differentiate the patterns in a global fashion (e.g., making the shawl pattern a simple alternation of two narrow red and two narrow white sticks).

Particularly relevant to our predicted historical changes was a group of female college students from the United States who were tested as a cross-cultural comparison group. Their most common representation is shown in Figure 11.

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Insert Figure 11 about here.

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Like the Zinacantec teen-age weavers and school-experienced boys, the representations in Figure 11 reflected an accurate analysis of the configuration of stripes in each woven pattern. However, the representations of these participants differed in an important respect. Instead of grouping thin sticks to construct broad stripes, they used single broad sticks to represent the broad stripes. We termed this an abstract, analytical strategy.

Predicted change. Twenty-one years later in Zinacantan, we expected this strategy to appear for the first time, as a result of higher levels of formal education and greater participation in the abstract exchanges of a money economy; both of these factors characterized our group of U.S. college students studied in 1969. Abstraction could also come about as a result of exposure to multiple patterns, especially through television, recently introduced into the community.

Subsistence involves exchanges and contributions of very specific items. In contrast, a cash economy involves the abstraction of money, which is a totally generalized medium of exchange. We therefore predicted that the same historical movement away from agricultural subsistence toward money-based commerce would also lead to a movement away from specific detail and toward abstract strategies for cognitive representation. While our hypothesis was general, it was tested in the specific context of the woven patterns. Our modality for testing this prediction was to repeat the pattern representation experiment of 1969 and 1970 with the next generation. In this context, our prediction was that the 1991 participants would use more broad sticks to represent broad stripes, moving away from the use of groups of narrow sticks to represent broad stripes, analogous to the way individual threads are grouped in a woven pattern to construct broad stripes (e.g., compare Figures 10 and 11).

Participants were 202 Zinacantec children and young adults, ranging in age from 3.5 - 22 with a mean age of 11.54 years. The first generation was tested in 1969 and 1970; the second generation was tested in 1991. As with the study of weaving apprenticeship, participants at both historical periods were recruited by the same Zinacantec assistant, Xun Pavlu. All of the weaving learners from the second historical period also participated in this study of cognitive representation. Some of the 1970 weaving learners participated in this study; others did not. Unlike weaving, which is typically a female occupation, participants in this experiment included both boys and girls (97 boys and 105 girls).

Materials included a wooden frame (inside dimensions of 9 by 16 inches) and sticks (Figure 6); the same frame and sticks were used in 1969, 1970, and 1991. (The frame served to eliminate the culture-sensitive skill of orienting designs in space (Deregowski, 1968); there was only one way to orient the sticks.) The sticks were available in three widths: narrow (1/4 inch), medium (1 1/4 inch), and broad (2 1/4 inch). These different widths were used to test the hypothesis of an historical increase in an abstract approach to representation from 1969/70 to 1991. Sticks were available in different colors. A complete description of the array is found in Greenfield and Childs (1977); in this article, we mention what colors were used in each item when we describe the procedure, below. In addition, participants were provided examples of Zinacantec woven items, the male poncho and the female shawl, each showing a different pattern. Poncho and shawl patterns from 1969 and 1970 have been shown in Figure 9.

Between 1970 and 1991, the configuration of striped patterns for the male poncho and female shawl had remained constant. However, the width of the red and white stripes had changed; red stripes had become wider, whereas white stripes had become narrower. This change resulted in "redder" garments; note the greater preponderance of white in Figure 1 (1970 ponchos) compared with Figure 2 (1991 ponchos). For this reason, we gave our 1991 participants two sets of woven models, one from the earlier period (to replicate the stimulus that had been used in 1969 and 1970) and one from the later period (to replicate the familiarity of the stimulus at both periods). In order to make the participants feel equally comfortable at both periods, the contemporary garments, starting with the participants' own poncho or shawl were used as the initial stimuli in the procedure for both the 1969-1970 participants and the 1991 participants. The old garments were presented for representation after all of the original procedure had been administered to the 1991 participants.

To check for order effects, there was a subset of 16 participants who were given only the old garments as stimuli. We could then compare their representations to participants who were given this representational task at the end of the procedure.

Participants came to the home of a Zinacantec family to be tested on all procedures. Childs and Greenfield were the experimenters for all of the 1969 and 1970 participants and for most of the 1991 participants. For a smaller number of participants, Greenfield was assisted by someone else, either from the U.S. or from Nabenchauk.

First the experimenter demonstrated how to place the sticks in the frame and had the participant try to do it. Each participant began by representing two patterns, the contemporary pattern for the male poncho and the contemporary pattern for the female shawl. The contemporary poncho pattern for 1969 and 1970 is shown in Figures 1 and 9 (bottom); the contemporary poncho pattern for 1991 is shown in Figures 2a, b, and c. The contemporary shawl pattern for 1969 and 1970 is shown in Figure 9 (bottom); it is also being worn by the experimenter in Figure 6; the contemporary shawl pattern for 1991 is shown in Figure 12.

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Insert Figure 12 about here.

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For these items, the red, white, pink, and orange sticks were available. Pink and orange were added to the red and white of the actual woven garments because, in Tzotzil, a single lexical term covers red and orange, while another single term covers white and pink. We were interested in lexically influenced color substitutions (Greenfield & Childs, 1977); however, this issue will not be taken up in the present paper.

Following the representation of the woven patterns (Patterns 1 and 2), the participant was asked to continue a series of seven patterns begun by the experimenter. Patterns 3 and 4 were red and white striped patterns similar to a Zinacantec poncho pattern. The culturally novel patterns, 5-8, have been shown in Figure 7. Pattern 9, the "growing" pattern, has been shown in Figure 8. In 1969 and 1970, the pattern representation procedure ended here. In 1991, Pattern 9 was followed by a task in which they represented an old poncho and shawl that we showed to participants. In 1991, because of the historical movement to pattern innovation in textile production, we also added a "creative" item, where we asked them to make "something beautiful." However, the analysis of this item will not be presented in this paper.

In order to test our hypothesis that the movement from specific detail to abstract representation was mediated by involvement in commerce, we created a commerce scale using our multiple data sources, including interviews and census data. Family commerce scores are the proportion of various binary items: e.g., purchase of a TV, working in a local shop, and selling peaches. Almost all items could apply equally to boys or girls. A complete listing of the items is to be found in the right-hand column of Table 1. No items from the textile commerce scale appeared in the nontextile commerce scale.

As mentioned above, our prediction here was that there would be a shift in strategy for representing the woven patterns from a detailed, "thread-by-thread" approach to a more abstract approach. This hypothesis was explored in two ways. First, we looked among the oldest participants, the teenagers, for the abstract analytic strategy utilized by the U.S. college students (Figure 11). As we had predicted, this style, totally absent in Nabenchauk in 1969 and 1970, was utilized by the next generation of teenage participants in 1991. For example, among teenage participants, all of the analytic representations of the shawl in 1969 and 1970 were detailed (Figure 10); in 1991, seven abstract analytic representations of the old shawl appeared (Figure 11); this shift in representational strategy from detail-oriented to abstract analysis was significant, according to a one-tailed chi-square test (chi square = 3.96, df = 1, p = .047). A similar historical change was found for the contemporary shawl (chi square = 3.97, df = 1, p = .046). As predicted, the historical change was closely tied to commercial involvement: Every one of the abstract analytic representations of the contemporary shawl in 1991 was produced by a participant who was above the mean in commercial involvement, as measured by the nontextile commerce scale. This relationship between familial commercial involvement and an abstract analytic approach to the shawl was statistically significant according to a chi-square test (chi square = 3.97, df = 1, p = .046).

The structural equation model (Figure 13) confirmed our hypothesis that involvement with commerce affects cognitive representation style. The model shows a pathway from the distal variable of historical period to the proximal cognitive variable of representational style.

The latent variable of abstract representation was based on the number of medium and thick sticks used to represent stripes in the old poncho and shawl. This model shows that, from one historical period to the next, participation in nontextile commerce increased, just as textile-related commerce increased in the last model. An increase in commerce, in turn, entailed a shift toward a more abstract mode of representation. The fit of this model to the data is CFI .991.

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Insert Figure 13 about here

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The means and standard deviations of all of the variables in the model are shown in Table 3.

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Insert Table 3 about here.

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Although we tend to associate both formal schooling and age with the development of abstraction, the Wald test indicated that neither of these variables contributed to mediating the historical increase in abstract visual representation.

Our results indicate that ecocultural patterns affect the cognitive representation of cultural artifacts. That is, those Zinacantec children whose families were more involved in commercial activity tended to show a more abstract style of representation of the woven patterns they were presented.

In 1969 and 1970 we had found that an analytic approach to representing the woven patterns (shown in Figure 10) made its developmental appearance in the teenage years and was concentrated among weavers (females) and schooled participants (males). In principle, analytic representations could be either abstract or detailed; the criterion was that they maintain the configuration of stripes in the woven textiles (compare Figures 10 and 11). Our prediction was that the confluence of schooling and weaving possible in 1991 (because of the historical development of schooling for girls) would produce the highest rate of the analytic strategy (detailed plus abstract) yet observed The prediction was partially confirmed. A chi-square test found a significant increase in the rate of analytic strategies (detailed and abstract combined, Figures 10 and 11) from the first to the second historical period (chi-square = 5.18, df = 1, p = .022) . However, the increase was not concentrated in schooled weavers (i.e., schooled adolescent girls); indeed, schooling did not turn out to be a significant factor in the analytic approach to representing the woven patterns. But weaving was: weavers, schooled or not, were significantly more likely to represent the woven patterns in an analytic fashion than were nonweavers. Knowledge of the construction process seemed to make expert weavers more analytic in their style of representing the woven patterns in our experiment. That this was a specific effect of weaving and not of gender more generally is indicated by other results, to be reported, showing that female superiority was concentrated in the woven patterns. This overall historical increase in analyticity was the one effect not mediated by commercial involvement.

Our essential historical prediction was that, as part of the greater cultural value placed on novelty or innovation, there would be a shift in preferred strategy toward the progressive or "growing" strategy, in which the participant creates something a little novel, something that goes beyond the pattern that has been started by the experimenter (see Figure 8). In order to test this prediction, we utilized a subset of the participants, the 8-19 year olds. This was the group best able to deal with this level of complexity for developmental reasons, as our earlier study had shown (Greenfield & Childs, 1977).

The notion of an historical change in preferred strategy means that participants in both epochs are equally competent to deal with the complexity of the pattern (that is, to produce one of the three possible solutions shown in Figure 8); however, the prediction is that the distribution of strategies would change. This is the pattern of results that our statistical analysis found. First, a chi-square test showed that there was not a significant overall change in the proportion of subjects ages 8-19 years using one of the three strategies to continue the "growing pattern" correctly. In 1969 and 1970, 14.3% of all subjects ages 8-19 were able to complete the pattern; in 1991 the comparable percentage was 25%. A chi-square test showed that the distribution of strategies had changed quite dramatically (chi-square = 10.66; df = 2, p < .005). In 1969 and 1970, only 18.2% of the correct solutions had been the growing strategy (termed "progressive" in Figure 8); the majority had been the repetitive (or imitative) strategy (left side of Figure 8). In contrast, 64% of the correct solutions in 1991 went "beyond the information given" to make the pattern "grow." Hence, the prediction that there would be an overall historical increase in the use of a more innovative, less imitative cognitive strategy was confirmed by an historical increase in the use of the "growing" strategy.

The second part of this prediction was that there would for the first time be unschooled participants who would use the progressive or "growing" strategy. It did happen, but only in one case, an unschooled girl. As with the other historical changes in cognition and learning, we were able to link the use of the "growing" strategy with commercial involvement. A chi-square test showed a significant association of the progressive or "growing" strategy with familial (nontextile) commercial activity above the median level (chi-square = 4.74, df = 2, p = .029).

To test this prediction, we compared participants' ability to represent the culturally novel patterns, Patterns 5-9 (Figure 7). These were patterns whose configuration and/or color scheme were not found among Zinacantec woven patterns. Because the ability to represent patterns improves with age (Greenfield & Childs, 1977), we used age as a covariate in an ANCOVA analysis. We had predicted an overall historical change in getting novel patterns correct based on the development of entrepreneurial commerce. We counted as correct any configuration a subject made that had zero to three errors. In order to assess both the historical change and its mediation by the commerce factor in a single analysis, we used both historical period and commercial involvement as independent variables. Our hypotheses were strongly confirmed by this analysis: historical period, commercial involvement, and gender all had a significant impact on the number of novel patterns that were correct (F = 3.811, p < .05). There was a two-way interaction of historical period and commerce (F = 5.025, p < .05). Subjects in the first historical period with low commercial involvement scored lower (mean = 2.53) than subjects with more commercial involvement (mean = 2.71) and those with lower commercial activity in the second historical period also scored lower (mean = 2.89) than those with higher commercial activity (mean = 3.16). There was a main effect of historical period (F = 4.35, p <. 05); subjects in the later historical period scored higher (mean = 3.14) than those in the first historical period (mean = 2.57). Though there was no main effect of commercial activity, subjects with high commercial involvement were more correct (m= 3.11) than those with low commercial involvement (m= 2.58). There was also a main effect of gender (F = 7.012, p < .05) with boys scoring higher (mean = 3.09) than girls (2.78). Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no interaction of historical period and gender; both boys and girls were equally affected by historical change in general and commercial involvement in particular in their ability to represent culturally novel patterns. Boys score higher than girls, but historical period and commercial involvement are not factors.

Discussion

Cultural learning and cognitive representation are not constants in the developmental process. By holding community, family, and age constant while varying historical period, our studies have shown that cultural learning and cognitive representation undergo historical transformation under conditions of ecocultural change. In a society that has moved from agriculturally-based subsistence to money-based commerce, we have found a series of coordinated changes in the cultural apprenticeship of weaving and the cognitive representation of woven and novel patterns. Because the ecocultural changes have been uneven, we have been able to demonstrate that involvement in money-based commerce mediates these historical changes. Our structural equation models showed that familial involvement in commerce was the mediator of both increased independence in weaving apprenticeship and increased abstraction in representing woven patterns from 1969 and 1970 to the 1990s. Our explanation is that abstraction is a feature of money, which, in comparison to barter, is a completely generalized medium of exchange. Familial involvement in commerce was also linked to the historical increase in skilled representation of culturally novel patterns and "going beyond the information given" in continuing the "growing" pattern. Again, this makes sense in terms of the requirements of entrepreneurial commercial activity, which rewards the ability to innovate and solve novel problems. The increased skill in representing and creating novel patterns in an experimental context seemed to have ecological validity; it was also found in the real cultural world of woven patterns, where constant innovation was a feature of the 1990s, in contrast to the small, closed stock of patterns found in 1969 and 1970.

Our findings demonstrate that the Zinacantecs stressed scaffolded guidance in weaving apprenticeship when they were in a more stable, tradition-maintaining state. In contrast, the Zinacantecs stressed more independent, trial-and-error apprenticeship when they moved to a more dynamic, innovation-oriented state. It is also possible to link these two styles of apprenticeship to two developmental theories: Piaget (1965/1977) has emphasized independent, discovery-oriented learning; Vygotsky (1962, 1978) has, in contrast, emphasized scaffolded guidance in the learning process. What our study of cultural learning shows is that these theories of learning are more historically contingent than had previously been thought.

Our studies are examples of the "butterfly effect" in the domain of human cultural evolution. As one aspect of life - the economic - changes for a community, so do other aspects follow in suit. Macrochanges on the economic level produce coordinated changes in socialization and development on the level of family and individual. In turn, these changes on the individual and family level provide the changed human capital required by a new economic system. We find, in our study of weaving apprenticeship, that mothers do not necessarily raise their children as they were raised; instead, they raise them to adapt to the changed social conditions under which their children will function as adults. Similarly, our study of cognitive representation indicates that children's patterns of development do not necessarily replicate those of their parents; instead, the patterns of cognitive development of a new generation change to become better adapted to a changing world.

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Author Note

Portions of this paper were presented at the April, 1997 meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC, at the June, 1997 meetings of the Jean Piaget Society, Santa Monica, CA, and at the August, 1998 meetings of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Bellingham, WA.

The research on which this paper is based was supported by the Spencer Foundation, the UCLA Latin American Center, National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center, Minority International Research Training Program; Colegio de la Frontera Sur; UCLA Academic Senate. The first wave of data collection (1969-1970) was supported by the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, the Harvard Chiapas Project, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the Milton Fund of Harvard University.

Ashley Maynard was supported by graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (1995-1998) and the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life (CSEOL) at UCLA (1995-1997), and a dissertation year fellowship from the University of California Office of the President (1998-1999).

We would like to express appreciation to Leslie Devereaux, who helped in many different aspects of the fieldwork and to Lauren Greenfield for her photographs. Thanks also to research assistants Matthew Greenfield, Lauren Greenfield, and Hannah Carlson. We thank our friends and study participants in Nabenchauk and dedicate this paper to the memory of two treasured colleagues and friends, Sylvia Scribner and Nancy Modiano, and to our assistant, Xun Pavlu; all, in their own way, lent important support to our project.

Table 1. Items used in the Commerce Scales

Subject sells weaving Subject buy/sells agricultural products

Subject sells winding Subject sells peaches

Subject sells thread Subject sells flowers

Mother sells weaving Subject works in a shop

Mother sells thread Subject works in the cantina

Mother weaves for others on order Subject works for wages

Mother sews for others on order Mother works in a shop

Subject weaves for others on order Mother sells peaches

Subject sews for others on order Mother sells peaches

TV in household

VCR in household

Radio in household

Family owns a shop

Family runs the mill

Family owns a car

Table 2. Means and standard deviations of variables in the weaving model.

Historical Period

All Subjects 1969-70 (N=9) 1991-3 (N=31)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

Textile commerce .20 (.23) .03 (.06) .24 (.24)

Age 9.78 (2.69) 10.17 (1.92) 9.66 (2.89)

Girl initiation of help 11.95 (14.27) 8.11 (10.48) 13.06 (15.16)

Learner independent: weaving 55.19 (30.37) 49.06 (32.53) 56.97 (30.03)

Learner independent: end stick 56.08 (33.82) 41.43 (39.93) 60.33 (31.28)

Learner prevention/correction 78.69 (23.43) 77.89 (23.30) 78.92 (23.85)

Table 3. Means and standard deviations of variables in the pattern representation model. Historical Period

All Subjects 1969-70 (N= 90) 1991-93 (N = 112)

Mean (SD) Mean (SD) Mean (SD)

Commerce .12 (.16) .02 (.050) .20 (.17)

Contemporary poncho: 5.08 (5.01) 2.68 (4.65) 7.01 (4.44)

large/medium sticks

Contemporary shawl: 5.08 (4.96) 2.66 (4.66) 7.03 (4.30)

large/medium sticks

Figure Captions

Figure 1. Two brothers wearing the Zinacantec poncho, 1970. Photo courtesy of Sheldon Greenfield.

Figure 2a, b, c. Variety of woven and embroidered designs on Zinacantec ponchos, 1991. Figures 2a and 2c courtesy of Lauren Greenfield.

Figure 4. Video frame of Katal 1, age 9, learning to weave. Nabenchauk, 1970.

Figure 5. Video frame of Katal 1's daughter, Loxa 201, age 9, learning to weave. Nabenchauk, 1991.

Figure 6. Pattern representation materials and experimental situation. Photo courtesy of Sheldon Greenfield.

Figure 7. Models for continuation of culturally novel patterns. For Pattern 5, red, white, pink, and orange sticks were available. For Patterns 6 and 7, green, yellow, black, and blue sticks were available; again the interest was in lexically influenced color substitutions. For Pattern 8, red, green, and yellow sticks were available.

Figure 8. Model for growing pattern and three possible continuations. Thin red and white sticks were available to participants for this item.

Figure 9. Zinacantec poncho pattern (on left) and shawl pattern (on right) ca. 1969 and 1970.

Figure 10. Examples of detailed, thread-by-thread analytic representations of Zinacantec textiles.

Figure 11. Examples of abstract, analytic representations of Zinacantec textiles.

Figure 12. Close-up of the shawl pattern, 1991.