| Title |
Adaptive Content Biases in Learning about Animals across the Life Course
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Human Nature, April 2014
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s12110-014-9196-1 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
James Broesch, H. Clark Barrett, Joseph Henrich |
| Abstract |
Prior work has demonstrated that young children in the US and the Ecuadorian Amazon preferentially remember information about the dangerousness of an animal over both its name and its diet. Here we explore if this bias is present among older children and adults in Fiji through the use of an experimental learning task. We find that a content bias favoring the preferential retention of danger and toxicity information continues to operate in older children, but that the magnitude of the bias diminishes with age and is absent in adults. We also find evidence that fitness costs likely impact the types of mistakes that participants make in their attributions of dangerousness and poisonousness. These results suggest that natural selection has shaped the way in which we learn and make inferences about unfamiliar animal species over ontogeny, and that future research is needed on how content biases may vary across the life course. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 1 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Scientists | 1 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 60 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Unknown | 60 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 12 | 20% |
| Student > Master | 7 | 12% |
| Researcher | 7 | 12% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 5 | 8% |
| Student > Bachelor | 4 | 7% |
| Other | 11 | 18% |
| Unknown | 14 | 23% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 16 | 27% |
| Social Sciences | 13 | 22% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 6 | 10% |
| Arts and Humanities | 2 | 3% |
| Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 2 | 3% |
| Other | 8 | 13% |
| Unknown | 13 | 22% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 26 August 2016.
All research outputs
#14,778,410
of 22,751,628 outputs
Outputs from Human Nature
#432
of 511 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#126,959
of 225,522 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Human Nature
#5
of 6 outputs
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