Mangarevan invention of binary steps for easier calculation

Quantum Cryptography—A Simplified Undergraduate Experiment and Simulation

Quantum cryptography is a topic of considerable interest. A simple and robust experiment and theory for a senior level undergraduate investigation of quantum key distribution are described. In the proposed experiment, key principles from the BB84 protocol, used in quantum cryptography, are emulated using an optical apparatus and computational scripts independently.

The history of number words in the world's languages-what have we learnt so far?

For over 100 years, researchers from various disciplines have been enthralled and occupied by the study of number words. This article discusses implications for the study of deep history and human evolution that arise from this body of work. Phylogenetic modelling shows that low-limit number words are preserved across thousands of years, a pattern consistently observed in several language families. Cross-linguistic frequencies of use and experimental studies also point to widespread homogeneity in the use of number words. Yet linguistic typology and field documentation reports caution against positing a privileged linguistic category for number words, showing a wealth of variation in how number words are encoded across the world. In contrast with low-limit numbers, the higher numbers are characterized by a rapid and morphologically consistent pattern of expansion, and behave like grammatical phrasal units, following language-internal rules. Taken together, the evidence suggests that numbers are at the cross-roads of language history. For languages that do have productive and consistent number systems, numerals one to five are among the most reliable available linguistic fossils of deep history, defying change yet still bearing the marks of the past, while higher numbers emerge as innovative tools looking to the future, derived using language-internal patterns and created to meet the needs of modern speakers. This article is part of the theme issue 'Reconstructing prehistoric languages'.

Numeral Systems Across Languages Support Efficient Communication: From Approximate Numerosity to Recursion

Languages differ qualitatively in their numeral systems. At one extreme, some languages have a small set of number terms, which denote approximate or inexact numerosities; at the other extreme, many languages have forms for exact numerosities over a very large range, through a recursively defined counting system. Why do numeral systems vary as they do? Here, we use computational analyses to explore the numeral systems of 30 languages that span this spectrum. We find that these numeral systems all reflect a functional need for efficient communication, mirroring existing arguments in other semantic domains such as color, kinship, and space. Our findings suggest that cross-language variation in numeral systems may be understood in terms of a shared functional need to communicate precisely while using minimal cognitive resources.

Editors' Review and Introduction: The Cultural Evolution of Cognition

This topic addresses a question of key interest to cognitive science, namely which factors may have triggered, constrained, or shaped the course of cognitive evolution. It highlights the relevance of culture as a driving force in this process, with a special focus on social learning and language, conceptual tools, and material culture. In so doing, the topic combines two goals: to provide an overview of current empirical and theoretical work leading this field, tailored for a wider cognitive science audience, and to investigate the potential for integrating multiple perspectives across several timescales and levels of analysis, from the microlevel of individual behavior to the macrolevel of cultural change and language diversification. One key purpose is to assess the extent to which the different research approaches can cross-fertilize each other, thereby also contributing to the advancement of cognitive science more broadly.

Resource-rationality beyond individual minds: the case of interactive language use

Resource-rational approaches offer much promise for understanding human cognition, especially if they can reach beyond the confines of individual minds. Language allows people to transcend individual resource limitations by augmenting computation and enabling distributed cognition. Interactive language use, an environment where social rational agents routinely deal with resource constraints together, offers a natural laboratory to test resource-rationality in the wild.

What Early Sapiens Cognition Can Teach Us: Untangling Cultural Influences on Human Cognition Across Time

Evidence of cultural influences on cognition is accumulating, but untangling these cultural influences from one another or from non-cultural influences has remained a challenging task. As between-group differences are neither a sufficient nor a necessary indicator of cultural impact, cross-cultural comparisons in isolation are unable to furnish any cogent conclusions. This shortfall can be compensated by taking a diachronic perspective that focuses on the role of culture for the emergence and evolution of our cognitive abilities. Three strategies for reconstructing early human cognition are presented: the chaîne opératoire approach and its extension to brain-imaging studies, large-scale extrapolations, and phylogenetic comparative methods. While these strategies are reliant on our understanding of present-day cognition, they conversely also have the potential to advance this understanding in fundamental ways.

Using Experimental Research Designs to Explore the Scope of Cumulative Culture in Humans and Other Animals

In humans, cultural evolutionary processes are capable of shaping our cognition, because the conceptual tools we learn from others enable mental feats which otherwise would be beyond our capabilities. This is possible because human culture supports the intergenerational accumulation of skills and knowledge, such that later generations can benefit from the experience and exploration efforts of their predecessors. However, it remains unclear how exactly human social transmission supports the accumulation of advantageous traits, and why we see little evidence of this in the natural behavior of other species. Thus, it is difficult to know whether the cognitive abilities of other animals might be similarly scaffolded by processes of cultural evolution. In this article, I discuss how experimental studies of cultural evolution have contributed to our understanding of human cumulative culture, as well as some of the limitations of these approaches. I also discuss how similar research designs can be used to evaluate the potential for cumulative culture in other species. Such research may be able to clarify what distinguishes human cumulative culture from related phenomena in nonhumans, shedding light on the issue of whether other species also have the potential to develop cognitive capacities that are outcomes of cultural evolution.

Culture drives cognitive evolution by supporting the transmission and intergenerational accumulation of skills and knowledge, based on social learning and teaching: Later generations benefit from what their predecessors acquired. Taking a metaperspective on those experimental studies that explore the mechanisms underlying cultural transmission, Caldwell discusses their potential for generating valuable insights, their possible limitations, and their generalizability to other species.

Is There Really an Evolved Capacity for Number?

Humans and other species have biologically endowed abilities for discriminating quantities. A widely accepted view sees such abilities as an evolved capacity specific for number and arithmetic. This view, however, is based on an implicit teleological rationale, builds on inaccurate conceptions of biological evolution, downplays human data from non-industrialized cultures, overinterprets results from trained animals, and is enabled by loose terminology that facilitates teleological argumentation. A distinction between quantical (e.g., quantity discrimination) and numerical (exact, symbolic) cognition is needed: quantical cognition provides biologically evolved preconditions for numerical cognition but it does not scale up to number and arithmetic, which require cultural mediation. The argument has implications for debates about the origins of other special capacities - geometry, music, art, and language.

Current Perspectives on Cognitive Diversity

To what extent is cognition influenced by a person’s cultural background? This question has remained controversial in large fields of the cognitive sciences, including cognitive psychology, and is also underexplored in anthropology. In this perspective article, findings from a recent wave of cross-cultural studies will be outlined with respect to three aspects of cognition: perception and categorization, number representation and counting, and explanatory frameworks and beliefs. Identifying similarities and differences between these domains allows for general conclusions regarding cognitive diversity and helps to highlight the importance of culturally shaped content for a comprehensive understanding of cognition.