Cultural Canalisation and Social Cognition

Richard Menary (Macquarie University)

Building on the notion of “genetic canalization” from evolutionary biology, cultural canalisation is the capacity to develop a robust cognitive phenotype via culturally constructed developmental channels. A combination of cultural inheritance and social learning, flexible and adaptive brains, and multiple external developmental channels reliably produce robust cognitive phenotypes. Drawing on empirical work from niche construction, cultural evolution, developmental psychology and neuroscience, it is possible to construct an outline of the primary developmental mechanisms by which cultural canalisation takes place.   

It will be argued that cultural canalisation can explain the development of the cognitive phenotype in humans including social cognition.  

This presentation will focus on examining the primary developmental resources for cultural canalisation:

1. Cultural Intelligence: Adaptation for social learning and cultural inheritance

2. Learning Driven Plasticity: Flexible and adaptive brains that can acquire new cultural functions 

3. Specialised Learning Niches: A reliable developmental niche with high fidelity transmission mechanisms, specialised to the development of a phenotype - e.g. reading

4. Multiple Developmental Channels: These allow for redundancy, buffering against environmental change, and a robust phenotype