Project acronym LEK
Project The adaptive nature of culture. A cross-cultural analysis of the returns of Local Environmental Knowledge in three indigenous societies
Researcher (PI) Victoria Reyes García
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary Researchers debate the role of culture in shaping human adaptive strategy. Some researchers suggest that the behavioural adaptations that explain the success of our species are partially cultural, i.e., cumulative and transmitted by social learning.
Others find that cultural knowledge has often resulted in maladaptive practices, loss of technologies, and societies collapse.
Despite the importance of the debate, we lack empirical, comparative, research on the mechanisms through which culture might shape human adaptation. I will collect real world data to test a pathway through which cultural knowledge might
enhance human adaptive strategy: the individual returns to culturally evolved and environment-specific knowledge. I will direct two post-docs and four PhD students who will collect six sets of comparable panel data in three foraging societies:
the Tsimane (Amazon), the Baka (Congo Basin), and the Penan (Borneo). I will use a culturally-specific but cross-culturally comparative method to assess individual local knowledge related to 1) wild edibles; 2) medicine; 3) agriculture; and 4) weather forecast. I will analyze data using instrumental variables to get rigorous estimates of the returns to knowledge on
a) own and offsprings health and b) nutritional status, and c) farming and d) foraging productivity. Data would allow me to make generalizations on 1) the returns to local environmental knowledge and 2) the conditions under which locally developed
knowledge is adaptive or ceases to be so. The ground-breaking nature of this study lies in its explicit attempt to use empirical data and a cross-cultural framework to provide a first test of the adaptive nature of culturally transmitted information, and to do so by linking cultural knowledge to individual outcomes.
Summary
Researchers debate the role of culture in shaping human adaptive strategy. Some researchers suggest that the behavioural adaptations that explain the success of our species are partially cultural, i.e., cumulative and transmitted by social learning.
Others find that cultural knowledge has often resulted in maladaptive practices, loss of technologies, and societies collapse.
Despite the importance of the debate, we lack empirical, comparative, research on the mechanisms through which culture might shape human adaptation. I will collect real world data to test a pathway through which cultural knowledge might
enhance human adaptive strategy: the individual returns to culturally evolved and environment-specific knowledge. I will direct two post-docs and four PhD students who will collect six sets of comparable panel data in three foraging societies:
the Tsimane (Amazon), the Baka (Congo Basin), and the Penan (Borneo). I will use a culturally-specific but cross-culturally comparative method to assess individual local knowledge related to 1) wild edibles; 2) medicine; 3) agriculture; and 4) weather forecast. I will analyze data using instrumental variables to get rigorous estimates of the returns to knowledge on
a) own and offsprings health and b) nutritional status, and c) farming and d) foraging productivity. Data would allow me to make generalizations on 1) the returns to local environmental knowledge and 2) the conditions under which locally developed
knowledge is adaptive or ceases to be so. The ground-breaking nature of this study lies in its explicit attempt to use empirical data and a cross-cultural framework to provide a first test of the adaptive nature of culturally transmitted information, and to do so by linking cultural knowledge to individual outcomes.
Max ERC Funding
1 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31
Project acronym MIA
Project Multisensory Integration and Attention
Researcher (PI) Salvador Soto-Faraco
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSIDAD POMPEU FABRA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary The world around us is immensely rich in sensory information, which we perceive through a varied range of different sensory systems (enabling us to feel, hear, see…). Yet, our perceptual experience is not a sensory piecemeal, but a unitary phenomenon brought about by Multisensory Integration mechanisms. MSI is in charge of binding sensory input to create faithful and coherent representations of the environment, an ability that confers important advantages in terms of optimizing behavioural outcomes. For example, people often find it easier to speak with someone when they can see their partner’s face, as lip and facial movements compensate for acoustic noise. The novelty of the project is that it focuses on internal processes, and in particular attention, to be of utmost importance during MSI. Attention enables efficient allocation of limited cognitive and neural resources, and therefore it plays a paramount role in perception, cognition and action. The aim is to understand the interplay between attention and the mechanisms of multisensory integration. Unravelling this interplay presents important challenges but, in return, promises to provide very important insights into how perception is accomplished by the human
mind and brain. In particular, the driving hypothesis underlying the present proposal is that objects of perception are multi-sensory defined events, and that attention plays a key role in building up and maintaining these perceptual representations. The strategy is to address this dynamic interplay between MSI and Attention by addressing a set of key specific research questions by means of converging methodological approaches. I propose to undertake this task with the help of a multidisciplinary team of researchers of different backgrounds, and a set of research methods including a behavioural approach (psychophysics in healthy adult humans, developmental studies and neuropsychology) combined with selective use of brain imaging stimulation.
Summary
The world around us is immensely rich in sensory information, which we perceive through a varied range of different sensory systems (enabling us to feel, hear, see…). Yet, our perceptual experience is not a sensory piecemeal, but a unitary phenomenon brought about by Multisensory Integration mechanisms. MSI is in charge of binding sensory input to create faithful and coherent representations of the environment, an ability that confers important advantages in terms of optimizing behavioural outcomes. For example, people often find it easier to speak with someone when they can see their partner’s face, as lip and facial movements compensate for acoustic noise. The novelty of the project is that it focuses on internal processes, and in particular attention, to be of utmost importance during MSI. Attention enables efficient allocation of limited cognitive and neural resources, and therefore it plays a paramount role in perception, cognition and action. The aim is to understand the interplay between attention and the mechanisms of multisensory integration. Unravelling this interplay presents important challenges but, in return, promises to provide very important insights into how perception is accomplished by the human
mind and brain. In particular, the driving hypothesis underlying the present proposal is that objects of perception are multi-sensory defined events, and that attention plays a key role in building up and maintaining these perceptual representations. The strategy is to address this dynamic interplay between MSI and Attention by addressing a set of key specific research questions by means of converging methodological approaches. I propose to undertake this task with the help of a multidisciplinary team of researchers of different backgrounds, and a set of research methods including a behavioural approach (psychophysics in healthy adult humans, developmental studies and neuropsychology) combined with selective use of brain imaging stimulation.
Max ERC Funding
1 450 672 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-04-01, End date: 2016-09-30
