Against the background of an unchanging sequence of representational development, we demonstrate that implicit processes of learning and cognition can change from one historical period to another. One generation of Zinacantec Maya children was studied in 1969 and 1970, the next generation in 1991 and 1993. In the intervening two decades, the community, located in Chiapas, Mexico, was involved in a transition from an economy based primarily on subsistence and agriculture to an economy based primarily on money and commerce. A naturalistic study of weaving apprenticeship and an experimental study of visual representation showed that the ecological transition was linked to greater emphasis on independent cultural learning, abstract representation, and innovation, and, correlatively, a movement away from scaffolded guidance, detail-oriented representation, and imitative representational strategies. These changes constituted automatic adaptations with an implicit nature. In addition, historical variability in implicit modes of cultural apprenticeship predicted shifts in implicit processes of child and adolescent cognition. In sum, socialization and development are not fixed but adapt, in a coordinated way, to changing ecological conditions.

No abstract

The authors report a diachronic investigation of cultural apprenticeship, creativity, and cognitive representation in a Zinacantec Maya community of Chiapas, Mexico. Focusing on the culturally central domain of weaving, they explore the implications of an ecocultural transition from agriculture to commerce for learning and development. Their studies cover 24 years and explore the implications of historical change in two generations of Zinacantec Maya children. The first wave was studied in 1969 and 1970. The next generation was studied in 1991 and 1993; it comprised mainly daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, and godchildren of the first generation. The results show that in the space of a single generation, weaving apprenticeship moved from a more interdependent to a more independent style of learning, woven textiles changed from a small stock of defined patterns to widely varied and innovative patterns, and cognitive representation of woven patterns became less detailed and more abstract.

Each culture defines the appropriate ways for people to use their bodies (Mauss 1934). In this paper we examine the uses of the body in a technical skill, that of Zinacantec Maya backstrap loom weaving. We hypothesize that native learners of weaving are different from non‐native learners in that they are endowed from birth on with the biology and cultural experience needed for weaving. Maya newborns have distinctive patterns of motor behavior and visual attention. These patterns, reinforced by cultural experience, are utilized when girls learn to weave, highlighting the interplay between culture and biology. Non‐native learners do not begin life with the same patterns of motor behavior or cultural experience and thus begin the acquisition of the body techniques involved in the complex skill of weaving with a deficit. Conclusions are based on an empirical, historical study of two generations of girls learning to weave in Nabenchauk, a Zinacantec Maya hamlet in Chiapas, Mexico.

We studied the implications of social change for cognitive development in a Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico, over 43 years. The same procedures were used to collect data in 1969-1970, 1991, and 2012-once in each generation. The goal was to understand the implications of weaving, schooling and participation in a commercial economy for the development of visual pattern representation. In 2012, our participants consisted of 133 boys and girls descended from participants in the prior two generations. Procedures consisted of placing colored sticks in a wooden frame to make striped patterns, some familiar (Zinacantec woven patterns) and some novel (created by the investigators). Following Greenfield (2009), we hypothesised that the development of commerce and the expansion of formal schooling would influence children's representations. Her theory postulates that these factors move human development towards cognitive abstraction and skill in dealing with novelty. Furthermore, the theory posits that whatever sociodemographic variable is changing most rapidly functions as the primary motor for developmental change. From 1969 to 1991, the rapid development of a commercial economy drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions. From 1991 to 2012, the rapid expansion of schooling drove visual representation in the hypothesised directions.