United Kingdom

Enquist et al. (2023) suggested that human cumulative cultural evolution was enabled by enhanced abilities to process and remember sequential information, leading to cultural and cognitive achievements unprecedented in other animals. This hypothesis mainly rests on results of sequence discrimination learning tasks, showing that unlike for humans, learning to discriminate between sequences is difficult for non-human animals, requiring them hundreds, often thousands of trials. It is unclear whether animals’ difficulty in these tasks reflect difficulties with remembering sequences per se or is mainly due to the arbitrary ordering of the sequence items, thus underestimating their sequencing abilities. To disentangle these effects, we investigate sequence discrimination learning with a physical task in which we contrast an “arbitrary” condition with one in which we use causal relations between stimuli to indicate which sequence yields a reward, aiming to facilitate encoding of sequential information. We present results from zoo-housed primates (23 squirrel and 24 capuchin monkeys, 13 chimpanzees), 77 human adults and 239 children (3-11 years) in an “AB vs BA, BB, AA” task, providing the first sequence discrimination study with chimpanzees and children, demonstrating that a lack of meaningful relations between sequence stimuli impedes learning in humans and potentially also great apes.

CES Transformation Fund Capstone Conference 2024

Sequence discrimination learning is facilitated by causal-logical framing in humans and chimpanzees

poster

Welcome to the Capstone Conference of the [CES Transformation Fund](https://ces-transformationfund.org/) which was a hybrid conference held at Durham University (UK). The conference celebrated the achievements of 22 awardees of the grant scheme. Together they are helping to build a richer and more diverse cultural evolution field, whilst catalysing the application of cultural evolution research to global human futures.

Over the 2 days, each funded [Research Project, Applied Working Group, and Seedcorn Project](https://ces-transformationfund.org/our-projects/) presented their research. A professional live scribe from [Nifty Fox Creative](https://www.niftyfoxcreative.com/) created and showcased public communication illustrations for each presentation. On Thursday afternoon, there was a workshop on generating societal impact from research, and in the evening there was a ‘show and tell’ session with drinks reception (plus a dinner for awardees and invited others), while Friday wrapped up with a discussion of future directions for the cultural evolution field.
 

Organised by the CES Transformation Fund [Team](https://ces-transformationfund.org/people/):

* Rachel Kendal (Project Leader and PI)
* Lorna Winship (Grant Manager)
* Sarah Wright (Assistant Manager)
* Dr. Eva Reindl (Postdoctoral Researcher)

The grant scheme and capstone conference is generously funded by the [John Templeton Foundation](https://www.templeton.org/).


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To access the site please register [**here**](https://ces2024.webspace.durham.ac.uk/registration-information/). 

The Capstone Conference of the CES Transformation Fund celebrates the achievements of 22 awardees of the grant scheme. Together they are helping to build a richer and more diverse cultural evolution field, whilst catalysing the application of cultural evolution research to global human futures.

In medieval Europe, Gregorian chant was everywhere. Its unaccompanied melodies were sung daily in huge cathedrals, parish churches, remote monasteries; it was an omnipresent musical expression of medieval religious life. It was also “globalized” across Europe, after Charlemagne demanded standardization of worship in his new empire after 800 AD. As a sacred tradition, it was strictly conserved. Yet, the melodies that came down to us from medieval manuscripts are rarely exact copies. Throughout the centuries, chant was surreptitiously changing, and by the mid-16th century, the Church decided that Gregorian chant should be strictly standardized — again.

Our project experiments with applying phylogenetic methods from bioinformatics in order to characterize this process of diversification. We aim to determine whether the variability seen in Gregorian melodies is systematic, or result merely of transmission noise (with memorization and manuscript copying both susceptible to mistakes). We show that the bioinformatics approach is indeed applicable, directly on the raw melodies. On our pilot Christmas data, the inferred phylogeny conforms very closely to musicological expectation, it shows that Gregorian melodic dialects indeed do exist, and in an example of what computational scholarship can bring to the humanities, led to re-evaluating existing knowledge about one of the sources.

Live - Genome of Melody: Studying the evolution of Gregorian chant with bioinformatics

A distinguishing feature of humans is our ability to intentionally create rules that support social order, and modify existing rules when social or ecological conditions change. Cultural evolution leads to much more rapid change in the social and ecological environment that humans occupy compared to genetic evolution, suggesting that the need to change and adapt norms would have been a constant pressure on human societies. The main theory in the cultural evolution framework for how group-beneficial change in norms can happen is cultural group selection, whereby competition between groups that have different norms and institutions leads preferentially to the spread of norms and institutions that increase the success of the cultural group. But cultural group selection cannot explain rapid changes in norms within groups, as it can operate only on existing variation among groups. We posit that over millennia cultural group selection acted not just on norms, but crucially also on normative infrastructure – the meta-norms that structure a group’s processes for classifying and enforcing norms, favoring infrastructures with combinations of stability and innovativity that aid the success of the cultural group. By regulating the process by which violations are reasoned about, ambiguities are resolved, situations lacking precedence are evaluated, and enforcement behaviors are calibrated, normative infrastructure can shape how existing norms are interpreted and re-imagined, and how new norms get created to deal with novel circumstances. We conducted vignette experiments, surveys, and semi-structured interviews to elicit the normative infrastructure of the Turkana, a pastoral society in Kenya in which social order is maintained informally. Here we present results from the vignette studies showing how Turkana normative infrastructure resembles or differs from legal order, a broad class of solutions that permit rapid innovation without loss in stability.

Recording -  Normative infrastructure as a platform for reinventing social institutions

Most behavioral science research is still conceived, planned, conducted, and disseminated in the Global North, leaving unknown its relevance and generalizability to Global South settings. We investigated whether behavioral science researchers living and working in East Africa understand the credibility of behavioral science research differently than do researchers in the Global North. We used a structured protocol called IDEA to conduct four rounds of forecasts of 20 papers each with between 35-50 researchers from around Nairobi. We compared these forecasts from East African researchers to similar ones obtained from Global North researchers on the same 80 papers. Unexpectedly, our East African forecasters judged the papers as more credible than did the Global North forecasters. Our forecasters also reported that the protocol was useful for learning how to critically examine published research. Our results raise questions about the research ecosystem that encourages such optimism about the credibility and applicability of published research, and suggests that the IDEA protocol could be a useful tool for teaching critical examination and skepticism.

Live - Forecasting the Generalizability of Behavioral Science Claims to East Africa

Live - Phylogenies of Literature

Globalisation processes have created new economic and educational structures, influencing cultural landscapes globally. These processes also influence the structures and dynamics of families, which play a crucial role in the socialisation of individuals into their cultures. 
Our research explores how these globalisation processes impact cultural change within Mauritian families by exploring the effects of 1) economic and educational development, and 2) outside cultural influences on family structure. We look at these changes in the multicultural transitioning society of Mauritius. As the island is undergoing fast-paced development and cultural change, this allows us to study processes underlying cultural evolution in this population as they are ongoing.
We present data from 14 semi-structured interviews and a quantitative survey. Interview themes explore the dominant family structures, role distribution in households, norm transmission, and how norms may be gendered. We examine the effects of education, economic status, and media exposure from other cultures on household structure, beliefs about fairness about household division of house labour, and social attitudes. 
This research helps explain how kinship structures are changing alongside other forms of development, contributing to our understanding of human socialisation processes and cultural change.

Live - Globalisation of Kinship Norms in Mauritius

Background
Parachute research occurs when external researchers, usually from high-income countries (HICs), conduct research in a host nation, primarily in low-to-middle-income countries (LMICs), then publish the results with little or no acknowledgement of local researchers, staff, or the supporting infrastructure. Although widely condemned this practice has been documented across a range of research areas and settings. A recent consensus statement proposed that publications involving HIC and LMIC collaborations should include a reflexivity statement indicating how equity was promoted in their partnership. Several journals including BMJ Global Health and PLOS journals have since started requesting reflexivity statements from authors. So far, no research has been conducted to assess the statements published to date or examine the perspectives of stakeholders on how best to apply and use them. 
Methods
We therefore conducted a document analysis of 24 published statements and 13 semi-structured interviews with journal editors and researchers to understand their views. 
Results
Stakeholders felt reflexivity statements to be a good thing, but that they needed further promotion and senior buy in. Statements should also ideally be completed earlier in the research process.  Barriers included inadequate journal capacity, a lack of strategy for monitoring, and challenges assigning authorship. There is a need to establish consensus on the definition of LMIC and early career researchers. Guidance should also challenge assumptions that LMIC are disadvantaged by considering unequal partnerships withing HICs or LMICs. The findings from this study will assist in refining the statements to promote wider uptake within the global health research ecosystem. 

Recording - Implementation of structured reflexivity statements to promote equity in global health research

Indigenous mourning rituals face ongoing threats from globalizing forces, and despite ongoing cultural evolutionary research on the prosocial effects of religion, limited attention has been paid to how mourning rituals foster individual and community wellbeing and resilience. In light of these issues, our project investigated how rituals are practiced and transmitted among the Luhya community of western Kenya, and how these mourning rituals can help enhance individual and community wellbeing and cooperation. We specifically aimed to answer three interrelated questions: (1) What is the therapeutic value of Indigenous mourning rituals? (2) Do mourning rituals promote cooperation? and (3) How does participation in mourning rituals contribute to cultural transmission? These questions were answered using qualitative and quantitative methods including focus groups, quantitative interviews, behavioral observations, and psychometric tests. We did focus group discussions with 45 community elders, 30 bereaved adults and 30 bereaved adolescents; interviewed 8 religious leaders; did 20 observations and 40 adolescent free listing and 280 psychometric assessments with bereaved members of the community. Our research findings identified about 25 mourning rituals which were tested against community cooperation using the prosociality scale. The study established a weak positive correlation between rituals participation and prosociality which implies that rituals enhance community cooperation.

Recording - Luhya traditional mouring rituals

Background and Objectives: Traditional rituals continue to face resistance stemming from missionization, the legacy of colonization, globalization, modernization, and Western-centric education. The suppression of these important cultural tools continues to advance ‘imported’ interventions for local communities, disregarding local indigenous knowledge. This study sought to examine the relevance of traditional mourning rituals in community morality and well-being. Anchored in cultural evolution theory, the study employed  quantitative ethnographic research design. Methodology: Data were collected from 45 community elders, 30 bereaved adults, 30 bereaved adolescents, and 8 religious leaders through focus group discussions and interviews from the Luhya community of Western Kenya. Further quantitative data was collected using psychometric survey with Prosociality scale and subjective well being scale. Results: The study established 25 mourning rituals practiced by the Luhya people, each serving an evolutionary function for community survival and wellbeing. Conclusions and implications: The study recommends integrating local cultural knowledge to address community challenges among indigenous communities globally and reducing overreliance on imported solutions from other regions.

**Social media handles** @ASATSAS [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-asatsa-phd-b119837a/)

Sequence discrimination learning is facilitated by causal-logical framing in humans and chimpanzees

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Live - Genome of Melody: Studying the evolution of Gregorian chant with bioinformatics

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