Cognitive anthropology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Cognitive Anthropology is an approach within social or cultural anthropology in which scholars seek to explain patterns of cultural innovation and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the behavioural sciences (especially experimental psychology and evolutionary biology) often through close collaboration with historians, ethnographers, archaeologists, linguists, musicologists and other specialists engaged in the description and interpretation of cultural forms. Cognitive anthropology is concerned with what people know and how that often implicit knowledge changes the way people perceive and relate to the world around them.