conference
culture and the mind: ARTEFACTS & MATERIAL CULTURE
15-17 APRIL 2011
About the Conference
This
interdisciplinary conference is the third of three conferences associated
with the AHRC
Culture and the Mind project. The conference brings together a range
of leading scholars working on cross cultural aspects of and approaches
to understanding the psychological foundations of our interactions with
artefacts and material culture, through artefact naming and categorization,
reasoning about artefacts, norms involving artefacts including ownership
norms, cultural transmission of artefact related skills and knowledge,
the development of the cognitive foundations of artefacts, and also the
use of artefacts by nonhuman animals.
Speakers
Nurit Bird-David (Anthropology, University of Haifa)
Setting or mind-setting?: a study of a South Indian hunter-gatherer camp Abstract
Gergely Csibra (Psychology, Central European University)
Cognitive resources for learning about artefacts in human infants Abstract
Emma Flynn (Psychology, Durham University)
Investigating social learning and cultural transmission in young children Abstract
Ori Friedman (Psychology, University of Waterloo)
Principle-based Reasoning about Ownership in Young Children Abstract
Susan Gelman (Psychology, University of Michigan)
The non-obvious basis of ownership: tracing the history and value of owned objects Abstract
Robert Layton (Anthropology, Durham University)
Continuity and innovation in the transmission of traditional Chinese culture Abstract
Barbara Malt (Psychology, Lehigh University)
Naming artifacts: patterns and processes Abstract
Aimee Plourde (Philosophy, University of Sheffield)
Artefacts’ as signals of strength in political competition; a case study of landscape monuments from the Late Bronze Age Anatolian Plateau Abstract
Jamie Tehrani (Anthropology, Durham University)
Phylogenetic approaches to the transmission of material culture: current trends and future directions Abstract
The conference will take place at the Humanities Research Institute (34 Gell Street, Sheffield S3 7QW) at the University of Sheffield (see map — opens in a new window).
This conference is jointly sponsored by the UK Arts & Humanties Research Council, the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies (directed by Stephen Laurence), and the Rutgers University Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition (directed by Prof. Stephen Stich).
