Response to: Rethinking human development and the shared intentionality hypothesis

I respond to Moll, Nichols, and Mackey’s review of my book Becoming Human. I agree with many of their points, but have my own point of view on some others

The role of roles in uniquely human cognition and sociality

Abstract To understand themselves as playing a social role, individuals must understand themselves to be contributing to a cooperative endeavor. Psychologically, the form of cooperation required is a specific type that only humans may possess, namely, one in which individuals form a joint or collective agency to pursue a common end. This begins ontogenetically not with the societal level but rather with more local collaboration between individuals. Participating in collaborative endeavors of this type leads young children, cognitively, to think in terms of different perspectives on a joint focus of attentio

The ultra-social animal

In evolutionary perspective, what is most remarkable about human sociality is its many and diverse forms of cooperation. Here, I provide an overview of some recent research, mostly from our laboratory, comparing human children with their nearest living relatives, the great apes, in various tests of collaboration, prosocial behavior, conformity, and group-mindedness (e.g., following and enforcing social norms). This is done in the context of a hypothetical evolutionary scenario comprising two ordered steps: a first step in which early humans began collaborating with others in unique ways in their everyday foraging and a second step in which modern humans began forming cultural groups. Humans' unique forms of sociality help to explain their unique forms of cognition and morality. © 2014. The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Social cognition and metacognition in great apes: A theory (advance online)

Twenty-five years ago, at the founding of this journal, there existed only a few conflicting findings about great apes’ social-cognitive skills (theory of mind). In the 2 ½ decades since, we have discovered that great apes understand the goals, intentions, perceptions, and knowledge of others, and they use this knowledge to their advantage in competitive interactions. Twenty-five years ago there existed basically no studies on great apes’ metacognitive skills. In the 2 ½ decades since, we have discovered that great apes monitor their uncertainty and base their decisions on that, or else decide to gather more information to make better decisions. The current paper reviews the past 25 years of research on great ape social cognition and metacognition and proposes a theory about how the two are evolutionarily related

What is it like to be a chimpanzee?

Chimpanzees and humans are close evolutionary relatives who behave in many of the same ways based on a similar type of agentive organization. To what degree do they experience the world in similar ways as well? Using contemporary research in evolutionarily biology and animal cognition, I explicitly compare the kinds of experience the two species of capable of having. I conclude that chimpanzees’ experience of the world, their experiential niche as I call it, is: (i) intentional in basically the same way as humans’; (ii) rational in the sense that it is self-critical and operates with logically structured causal and intentional inferences; but (iii) not normative at all in that it does not operate with “objective” evaluative standards. Scientific data do not answer philosophical questions, but they provide rich raw material for scientists and philosophers alike to reflect on and clarify fundamental psychological concepts

Who is afraid of constructivism? (¿Quién tiene miedo del constructivismo?)

Both generative and constructivist researchers agree that children are able to form abstractions and produce novel grammatically patterned utterances. Both approaches are able to explain such abilities, and hence their existence does not entail an innate Universal Grammar. However, generativists and constructivists differ in their views on the nature of early generalisations: while generative researchers assume that adult-like linguistic representations are present from the very beginning, constructivists argue that children begin with relatively specific, low level schemas and gradually extract more abstract patterns. There is considerable empirical evidence for the latter position. Moreover, constructivist theories provide a better explanation for principled behaviour -not just the observed patterns, but also the absence of certain constructions in children's early productions and various developmental asynchronies. Tanto los investigadores generativistas como constructivistas coinciden en que los niños son capaces de formar abstracciones y de producir emisiones novedosas gramaticalmente estructuradas. Ambos enfoques son capaces de explicar tales habilidades, y por eso su existencia no implica una Gramática Universal innata. Sin embargo, los investigadores generativistas y constructivistas difieren en su visión sobre la naturaleza de las generalizaciones tempranas: mientras que los investigadores generativistas asumen que las representaciones lingüísticas parecidas a las adultas están presentes desde edades tempranas, los constructivistas argumentan que los niños comienzan con esquemas de bajo nivel, relativamente específicos, y que gradualmente extraen esquemas más abstractos. Existe considerable evidencia empírica en apoyo de esta segunda posición. Además, las teorías constructivistas proporcionan una mejor explicación de las conductas basadas en reglas; no sólo de los patrones observados, sino también de la ausencia de ciertas construcciones en las producciones verbales tempranas de los niños y de diversas asincronías evolutivas

The coordination of attention and action in great apes and humans

Great apes can discern what others are attending to and even direct others' attention to themselves in flexible ways. But they seemingly do not coordinate their attention with one another recursively-understanding that the other is monitoring their attention just as they are monitoring hers-in acts of joint attention, at least not in the same way as young human children. Similarly, great apes collaborate with partners in many flexible ways, but they seemingly do not coordinate with others to form mutually obligating joint goals and commitments, nor regulate the collaboration via acts of intentional communication, at least not in the same way as young human children. The hypothesis defended here is that it is precisely in their capacities to coordinate attention and action with others-that is, in their capacities for shared intentionality-that humans are most clearly distinguished from other great apes.This article is part of the theme issue 'Revisiting the human 'interaction engine': comparative approaches to social action coordinatio

Shared intentionality, reason-giving and the evolution of human culture

The biological approach to culture focuses almost exclusively on processes of social learning, to the neglect of processes of cultural coordination including joint action and shared intentionality. In this paper, we argue that the distinctive features of human culture derive from humans' unique skills and motivations for coordinating with one another around different types of action and information. As different levels of these skills of ‘shared intentionality’ emerged over the last several hundred thousand years, human culture became characterized first by such things as collaborative activities and pedagogy based on cooperative communication, and then by such things as collaborative innovations and normatively structured pedagogy. As a kind of capstone of this trajectory, humans began to coordinate not just on joint actions and shared beliefs, but on the reasons for what we believe or how we act. Coordinating on reasons powered the kinds of extremely rapid innovation and stable cumulative cultural evolution especially characteristic of the human species in the last several tens of thousands of years. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The emergence of collective knowledge and cumulative culture in animals, humans and machines’