Elizabeth Cashdan

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Anthropology

Spatial experience in childhood is a factor in the development of spatial abilities. In this study, we assessed whether American and Faroese participants’ (N = 246, Mage = 19.31 years, 151 females) early spatial experience and adult spatial outcomes differed by gender and culture, and if early experience was related to adult performance and behavio...

Navigational performance responds to navigational challenges, and both decline with age in Western populations as older people become less mobile. But mobility does not decline everywhere; Tsimané forager‐farmers in Bolivia remain highly mobile throughout adulthood, traveling frequently by foot and dugout canoe for subsistence and social visitation...

Gathering information is costly; when does it pay to reduce uncertainty by obtaining new information? This chapter considers how the costs and benefits of collecting information about supply and demand affect pricing patterns in tribal trading situations, and how customary prices may be a way of reducing risk in such transactions.

Are gender differences in spatial ability universal, or does this vary with environment? In comparing four small-scale societies (Hadza, Twe, Tsimane, Shuar) we find that gender differences in spatial ability are larger in the savanna and minimal in the tropical forest. We consider the role of mobility and landmark visibility in shaping this differ...

Navigational performance responds to navigational challenges, and both decline with age in Western populations as older people become less mobile. But mobility does not decline everywhere; Tsimané forager-horticulturalists in Bolivia remain highly mobile into their 70s and beyond, traveling on small footpaths to gardens and in pursuit of game and o...

Understanding how gendered economic roles structure space use is critical to evolutionary models of foraging behaviour, social organization and cognition. Here, we examine hunter-gatherer spatial behaviour on a very large scale, using GPS devices worn by Hadza foragers to record 2,078 person-days of movement. Theory in movement ecology suggests tha...

A fundamental cognitive function found across a wide range of species and necessary for survival is the ability to navigate complex environments. It has been suggested that mobility may play an important role in the development of spatial skills. Despite evolutionary arguments offering logical explanations for why sex/gender differences in spatial...

Cross-cultural sex differences in mobility and harm avoidance have been widely reported, often emphasizing fitness benefits of long-distance travel for males and high costs for females. Data emerging from adults in small-scale societies, however, are challenging the assumption that female mobility is restricted during reproduction. Such findings wa...

Parents in the West typically intervene more often to protect children from harm than is typical in small-scale, non-industrial societies, and this protection could have implications for constraining children’s independent spatial exploration. This study used both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods to assess these issues in a subs...

Nurses draw from their experiences and intuition to detect changes in patient condition, patterns of patient behaviors, and evidence of distress. In the nursing home setting, nurses care for residents with dementia and manage challenging behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), and may rely on informed intuition to assess and capab...

In many societies, males range farther than females, and this greater environmental experience may foster better spatial ability. Females are also reported to be more harm-avoidant, which may reduce spatial exploration. We evaluated these relationships among 6–18 year old Tsimané children, who live in a forager-horticulturalist society where both g...

Research has established that GPS use negatively affects environmental learning and navigation in laboratory studies. Furthermore, the ability to mentally rotate objects and imagine locations from other perspectives (both known as spatial transformations) is positively related to environmental learning. Using previously validated spatial transforma...

Research has established that GPS use negatively affects environmental learning and navigation in laboratory studies. Furthermore, the ability to mentally rotate objects and imagine locations from other perspectives (both known as spatial transformations) is positively related to environmental learning. Using previously validated spatial transforma...

When humans and animals navigate through environments, they form spatial memories important for supporting subsequent recall of locations relative to their own position and orientation, as well as to other object locations in the environment. The goal of the current study was to examine whether individual differences in initial exploration of a lar...

EFA and CFA as a first step for establishing construct validity for self report measures of navigation attitudes, as well as travel constraints and travel behaviors (mobility). We demonstrate that navigation ability is a separable dimension from wanderlust (enjoyment of navigation) and navigation anxiety (a hybrid of spatial anxiety and route follo...

It may be evolutionarily adaptive for parents to imagine a dangerous outcome when offspring have potential to be harmed. However, its possible that this only generalizes to harm avoidant individuals, a trait-level individual difference measured by a subset of the multidimensional personality questionnaire. Harm avoidance has previously been shown t...

The Morris water maze is a spatial abilities test adapted from the animal spatial cognition literature and has been studied in the context of sex differences in humans. This is because its standard design, which manipulates proximal (close) and distal (far) cues, applies to human navigation. However, virtual Morris water mazes test navigation skill...

Abstract. Mental rotation refers to the imagined transformation performed when making comparisons between objects that are presented at different orientations. It is one of the most frequently used measures of small-scale spatial abilities and typically shows a male advantage in response time and accuracy. One possible factor underlying sex differe...

The fertility and parental care hypothesis interprets sex differences in some spatial-cognitive tasks as an adaptive mechanism to suppress women’s travel. In particular, the hypothesis argues that estrogens constrain travel during key reproductive periods by depressing women’s spatial-cognitive ability. Limiting travel reduces exposure to the dange...

Venturing into novel terrain poses physical risks to a female and her offspring. Females have a greater tendency to avoid physical harm, while males tend to have larger range sizes and often outperform females in navigation-related tasks. Given this backdrop, we expected that females would explore a novel environment with more caution than males, a...

Males in many non-monogamous species have larger ranges than females do, a sex difference that has been well documented for decades and seems to be an aspect of male mating competition. Until recently, parallel data for humans have been mostly anecdotal and qualitative, but this is now changing as human behavioral ecologists turn their attention to...

Sex differences in range size and navigation are widely reported, with males traveling farther than females, being less spatially anxious, and in many studies navigating more effectively. One explanation holds that these differences are the result of sexual selection, with larger ranges conferring mating benefits on males, while another explanation...

Previous research using the Morris water maze (a virtual environment navigation task adapted from the animal spatial cognition literature) has established a reliable sex difference in the ability to return to a hidden target, notably in the use of distal (far) cues. Building on this large body of work, the current study focuses on the strategies th...

There are mixed findings with respect to individual or gender differences in virtual Morris water maze tasks, which may be attributed to variations in the scale of the space, the cues provided, and differences in spatial navigation experience and abilities. We explored the influence of environmental scale, cue-context, and individual differences on...

Abstract Sex differences in range size and navigation are widely reported, with males traveling farther than females, being less spatially anxious, and in many studies navigating more effectively. One explanation holds that these differences are the result of sexual selection, with larger ranges conferring mating benefits on males, while another ex...

Objectives: Human pathogen richness and prevalence vary widely across the globe, yet we know little about whether global patterns found in other taxa also predict diversity in this important group of organisms. This study (a) assesses the relative importance of temperature, precipitation, habitat diversity, and population density on the global dis...

Males occupy a larger range than females in many mammal populations including humans, and show an advantage in certain spatial-cognitive laboratory tasks. Evolutionary psychologists have explained these patterns by arguing that an increase in spatial ability facilitated navigation, which allowed range expansion in pursuit of additional mating and h...

It has been argued that people in areas with high pathogen loads will be more likely to avoid outsiders, to be biased in favor of in-groups, and to hold collectivist and conformist values. Cross-national studies have supported these predictions. In this paper we provide new pathogen codes for the 186 cultures of the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample a...

This paper describes sex differences in spatial competencies among the Hadza, a mobile hunter-gatherer population in Tanzania. It addresses the following questions: (1) Is the usual male advantage in Euclidean spatial abilities found in this population, where both women and men are highly mobile? (2) Do Hadza women have better object location memor...

The target article gives two explanations for the correlation between pathogens, family ties, and religiosity: one highlights the benefits of xenophobic attitudes for reducing pathogen exposure, the other highlights the benefits of ethnic loyalty for mitigating the costs when a person falls ill. Preliminary data from traditional societies provide s...

The papers in this volume present varying approaches to human aggression, each from an evolutionary perspective. The evolutionary studies of aggression collected here all pursue aspects of patterns of response to environmental circumstances and consider explicitly how those circumstances shape the costs and benefits of behaving aggressively. All th...

The target article claims that evolutionary theory predicts the emergence of sex differences in aggression in early childhood, and that there will be no sex difference in anger. It also finds an absence of sex differences in spousal abuse in Western societies. All three are puzzling from an evolutionary perspective and warrant further discussion.

A gynoid pattern of fat distribution, with small waist and large hips (low waist-to-hip ratio, or WHR) holds significant fitness benefits for women: women with a low WHR of about 0.7 are more fecund, are less prone to chronic disease, and (in most cultures) are considered more attractive. Why, then, do nearly all women have a WHR higher than this p...

This study used diaries of competitive interactions to explore the relationship between hormones and competitive aggression in women. Thirty women completed approximately 10 diary entries each. In each entry, the women described a recent competitive interaction they had engaged in and noted whether it was expressed aggressively or through other tac...

This article documents, and seeks to explain, the geographical patterning in ethnic group distributions. Some areas, chiefly equatorial regions and areas of high habitat diversity, are crowded with a large number of named groups. Elsewhere, people over a large area consider themselves members of a single group. Using three new codes for the Standar...

Analyzes the factors influencing ethnic affiliation and interethnic hostility. Relationship between intraethnic loyalty and risk of famine; Continuity of violence at different levels of groupings; Analysis of local and intercommunity conflict. journal article

Men are more physically aggressive and more risk-prone than women, but are not necessarily more competitive. New data show the gender difference in competitiveness to be one of kind rather than degree, with women and men competing in different ways and, to some extent, over different objectives, but not differing in overall strength of competitive...

This study found that power and status have different effects on nonverbal behavior. Participants lived together for a term in ten member groups (50 women, 29 men) and rated their housemates on characteristics related to power (toughness and leadership) and sociometric status (popularity and being well-known). Smiling, arm and leg position, and tot...

This paper uses an evolutionary perspective to explain features of food learning in human children. Data from Western parents indicate that (1) children are least picky about foods when they are between one and two years of age, (2) vegetables are frequently refused by children, and (3) children have a tendency to eat foods one at a time rather tha...

This study uses competition diaries to see whether women and men differ in (a) what they compete over, (b) whom they compete with, and (c) their competitive tactics, including use of aggression. In Study 1, university students kept diaries of their competitive interactions during the term. Sex differences, few overall, were as follows: (a) men's di...

There is evidence that in women high levels of testosterone are associated with more sexual partners and more permissive sexual attitudes. If a similar relationship holds true for men, the higher basal testosterone levels of divorced and unmarried men may be caused by this relationship rather than by testosterone's effect on dominance striving. rev...

What does a woman want? The traditional evolutionist's answer to Freud's famous query is that a woman's extensive investment in each child implies that she can maximize her fitness by restricting her sexual activity to one or at most a few high-quality males. Because acquiring resources for her ospring is of paramount importance, a woman will try t...

What does a woman want? The traditional evolutionist's answer to Freud's famous query is that a woman's extensive investment in each of her children implies that she can maximize her fitness by restricting her sexual activity to one, or at most, a few high-quality males. Because acquiring resources for her offspring is of paramount importance, a wo...

Androgens are often associated with assertive behavior; under what circumstances is this reflected in higher dominance rank? In this study of coresidential college women, androgens (total testosterone, free testosterone, and androstenedione) and estradiol were positively correlated with high self-regard in women (as measured by the degree to which...

It is proposed here that there is a sensitive period in the first two to three years of life during which humans acquire a basic knowledge of what foods are safe to eat. In support of this, it is shown that willingness to eat a wide variety of foods is greatest between the ages of one and two years, and then declines to low levels by age four. Thes...

It is proposed here that mate-attraction strategies among females and among males vary facultatively with expectations about paternal investment. The following four hypotheses are argued and tested: 1. Females who expect to find investing mates will be more likely than other females to emphasize their need for investment by suppressing their resour...

How does change in one part of a social system affect other parts? This is the central question that must be answered in order to understand the process through which culture changes. This paper is about a small piece of the problem. It investigates how changes in subsistence economy affect child behavior and the relations between parents and child...

This paper discusses the causes of trade and evaluates the roles played by habitat diversity, mobility, and competition. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical evidence from the Botletli River, Botswana, is used to evaluate some general arguments. The Botletli trade is shown to be based on locational advantages, due to the habitat diversity of the region...

Opening Paragraph The immigration of food-producing groups into areas occupied by hunters and gatherers must have been a common occurrence in prehistory. How were the hunter-gatherers affected by this? I describe here two groups of Kalahari Basarwa (‘Bushmen’), one living along the flood plain of the lower Botletli river, the other occupying the sa...

In this article I discuss the role of reciprocity in buffering fluctuations in resources, and consider why, and under what circumstances, people use one means of risk reduction rather than another. Drawing on the theory of risk and insurance, I suggest some factors that will affect this choice. The issue is then addressed more specifically through...

This analysis of G//ana territorial organization shows how land rights are acquired and how they affect patterns of land use. Both spatial and social boundaries are discussed. It is shown that the appearance of overlapping spatial boundaries is clarified through a focus on the land rights of individuals and a consideration of historical population...

Cost-benefit models derived from evolutionary ecology have led to the general expectation that territoriality will be found where resources are most abundant and predictable. Literature sources for four Bushman groups, however, indicate that the most territorial of these groups are found where resources are sparsest and most variable. This paper ha...

In 1991 the cultural anthropologist Don Brown bucked anthropology's tabula rasa tradition by identifying over 300 "human universals"—individual and sociocultural traits that are found in every known human society (Brown 1991; universals enumerated in Pinker 2003). The items he identified include both psy-chological traits (e.g., wariness around sna...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of New Mexico, 1979. Bibliography: leaves 201-205. Photocopy.