Elena Miu

Very nice modeling work by a great team: @drelenamiu.bsky.social @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social 👇

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

Really great new paper using agent-based modelling to show how an exploratory childhood can lead to innovation in the population at large.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

We found that childhood exploration helps individual problem solving, but cumulative cultural evolution drowns out the individual effect

We set out to understand if childhood exploration drives problem solving and innovation in cumulative cultural evolution

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Simulation-based inference with deep learning suggests speed climbers combine innovation and copying to improve performance Abstract. In the Olympic sport of speed climbing, athletes compete to reach the top of a 15 m wall as quickly as possible. Since the standardization of the

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

Picture of front cover of Theme Issue entitled "Transforming cultural evolution research and its application to global futures." The image on the front cover is of a Yao honey hunter in Mozambique holding retrieved honeycomb.

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
@durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

And of course @carlsbergfondet.dk for the financial support.

Huge thanks to @drelenamiu.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @ndersen.bsky.social for organizing an excellent & true _work_-shop @aiasdk.bsky.social. I go back with a long reading list, tons of notes & food for thought re: extended childhood, innovation & evolution 🙏

Huge thanks to our organising team @felixthehauskat.bsky.social, @sheinalew.bsky.social, @ndersen.bsky.social, @mathildevm.bsky.social, Luseadra McKerracher, and everyone who joined us from near and (very) far.

Super proud to have hosted at @aiasdk.bsky.social an excellent group of researchers to think through all things play, childhood, and innovation. I'll be buzzing about this for a while!

Young chimps play weird with tools and other objects & this can lead to innovation! Moss sponging, doll play, leaf clipping to ask for carrying. If copied and retained, rare kid innovations can contribute to cultural complexity 🧪🔬🐵
My fav article I've ever worked on: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How do humans keep inventing tools and technologies that no single person could create alone?

Our new preprint, led by
@anilyaman.bsky.social & @ts-brain.bsky.social
shows that semantic knowledge guides innovation and drives cultural evolution. 🧠📘 arxiv.org/abs/2510.12837

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Recreational Fear Across Childhood. A Cross-Sectional Study of Scary Activities that Children Enjoy - Child Psychiatry & Human Development This study investigated the prevalence of children’s engagement in recreational fear activities — i.e., playful engagement with scary stimuli where both fear and enjoyment are experienced. A detailed ...

🚨 Kids LOVE fear?!🚨
Our new study led by Mihaela Taranu from the Recreational Fear Lab uncovers something surprising:
Children across all ages actively seek out scary experiences - for fun!
📄 doi.org/10.1007/s105...
[1/🧵]

Description of agreement with fertility values. (a) Summary of agreement rates with the value statements for all women, and total completed fertility for post-reproductive women who agreed/disagreed. (b) Posterior predicted probability of agreement with each of the 7 value statements, as a function of the responder’s education.

A study of 22 rural communities in Poland looks at how female friendships influence women’s decisions about how many children to have. Educated women with more emotionally supportive friends outside their kin networks have fewer children. In PNAS Nexus: academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

ASU expert in cultural evolution elected to National Academy of Sciences | ASU News A leading authority on cultural evolution, Robert Boyd, a professor in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change and a research scientist with the Institute of Human Origi...

Join us in congratulating Robert Boyd, a SHESC professor and research scientist with the @asuiho.bsky.social, who has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences — one of the highest honors a researcher can receive! 🌟

news.asu.edu/20250505-uni...

I'm THRILLED that our book is out. This book, with other 60 contributors from across the globe (!!!) is a love letter to the science we want to do, and a how-to guide for how to do it. Please read it and share it!

Job announcement 🚨: paid fieldwork opportunity with Sanguatsiniq research project! Details in thread ⬇️ Please share!

Now with a more user friendly version here:
www.aesthetics.mpg.de/forschung/fo...

So much fun, thanks @masonyoungblood.bsky.social for putting it all together!

Finally, we propose emotional support as a key moderator of norm change in the domain of fertility, with implications for cultural change more broadly

We identify changes in friendship composition and in the types of support that flow across these relationships, and link these changes to key reproductive attitudes and values – this shift seems to be driven by educated women who exchange more emotional support with (nonkin) friends

We focus on close personal networks to understand mechanistically the spread of reproductive cultural norms - we use causal inference techniques and (many!) hierarchical Bayesian models to understand how personal support networks change in communities experiencing social and economic shifts

Female friendship and the cultural transmission of low-fertility values: Evidence from rural Poland Abstract. Understanding how demographic and cultural change interact is essential for understanding the trajectory of historical and contemporary societies

New paper out with @heidicolleran.bsky.social in @pnasnexus.org
academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...

This paper is now published. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Postnatal dependency as the foundation of social learning in humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Humans have developed a sophisticated system of cultural transmission that allows for complex, non-genetically specified behaviours to be passed on from one generation to the next. This system relies ...

“the prolonged period of post-natal dependency experienced by infants contributes to development of social learning. Because of motor limitations, infants learn to interact with & act through caregivers, establishing social learning skills that continue to develop as children become less dependent”

Quote: " In sum, leader-directed teaching of opaque cooperative norms would be a mutually beneficial strategy, where the costs incurred by influential teachers are, at least partly, outweighed by the long-term benefits of cultivating cooperation within the group."

Mosaic plot illustrating the relationship between evidence for teaching and non-teaching social learning, based on a binary researcher-coded measure of teaching. "Although instrumental cultural transmission frequently occurs through both teaching and non-teaching social learning, opaque cultural information is predominantly transmitted through teaching, with relatively fewer instances of non-teaching social learning."

With @sheinalew.bsky.social: Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, in @naturecomms.bsky.social

#evolution #culture 🧪 #LeadSciSky #CultEvo

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm glad to be reminded of my favourite lab name!

New pre-print out with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social on how childhood exploration drives population-level innovation in cultural evolution www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...