MAC Lab News

"Playful Innovators: New Study Reveals Children’s Key Role in Shaping Human Culture" Trinity Communications highlighted Dr. Dorsa Amir and Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy's newest publication, "Children as agents of cultural adaptation," in a recent press release. In this paper, the authors explore how children are active producers of culture, and how they generate knowledge and norms independent of adults. Dr. Amir shares with the reporter that children's peer cultures (knowledge produc

Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy and Dr. Dorsa Amir write about children's role in creating and transmitting knowledge (known as peer culture) in this paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. This target article, combined with open peer commentary from over 50 fellow researchers, has now been released. Read here! Dr. Lew-Levy and Dr. Amir respond to peer commentary by discussing the integration of these interdisciplinary contributions and by situating peer cultures within the bro

Dr. Amir was recently interviewed by Kim Mills for the American Psychology Association's Speaking of Psychology podcast to share her thoughts on how children both learn about and create culture. In this episode, she discusses the history of culture in the field of psychology, fieldwork with the Shuar community, research on cross-cultural differences in cooperation with children, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, and how these research observations can be helpful to par