What explains the stability of animal culture?
Recently, Dan Sperber and I published a paper entitled "Imitation explains the propagation, not the stability of animal culture" in which we argued that contrary to what is generally assumed,
Alloparental care and wandering baby monkeys
Pierre Jacob recently discussed Sarah Hrdy's book Mothers and Others in which she argues that humans, like New World monkeys but unlike other apes, are cooperative breeders. As Pierre summarizes,
The Chameleon effect in Capuchin Monkeys
Imitation, as you probably know, has received considerable attention during the past 20 years or so because it was first argued that it was a uniquely human psychological mechanism that could partly
A role for dyslexia in language evolution?
In a new paper Gabrieli highlight the recent results of cognitive neuroscience research on dyslexia and its potential consequences for the treatment of dyslexic children through educative measures.
Is language a replicator?
In a recent review Mark Pagel argues that language is a culturally transmitted replicator (Pagel, 2009).
Pagel starts by offering a useful update on phylogenetic methods and then uses a comparison
Experimental evidence for the Broken Window Theory
In the late 80's, New York experienced a high rate of violence and crack was everywhere. In 1985 when George L. Kelling, coauthor of the article "Broken Windows", was hired as a consultant to the New
Into the dynamic of hot topics
"Have you heard about the subprime crisis?" A few days before I was first asked that question I did not even know what a subprime was, but just in a week or so subprimes had become a major topic for