An Interview with Michael Tomasello: Cooperation and Human Cognition

[...]from my very first writings on chimpanzee versus human culture, I’ve said I’m happy to call it chimp culture, it’s the same thing in a general evolutionary perspective, there’s non-genetic transfer of information across generations, but the proximate mechanisms are different. [...]I would say,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Spanish journal of psychology Vol. 19
Main Authors Hernández-Lloreda, María Victoria, Colmenares, Fernando
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.01.2016
Subjects
Animal cognition
Animals
Cognition
Collaboration
Conformity
Cooperation
Culture
Humans
Monkeys & apes
Older people
Primates
Psychologists
Psychology
Social norms
Society
Specialization
Teachers
Teaching
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Summary:[...]from my very first writings on chimpanzee versus human culture, I’ve said I’m happy to call it chimp culture, it’s the same thing in a general evolutionary perspective, there’s non-genetic transfer of information across generations, but the proximate mechanisms are different. [...]I would say, there are some quantitative differences in imitative learning but in addition you have this normative conformity and teaching and those are the things that enable the ratchet effect. What you really need for teaching is for the teacher to do whatever it takes to make sure that the learner learns, and then when the learner has learnt, they quit, and the only one that really fits that definition that I know of is the cats bringing the half dead mice, and it’s only that one context, it is just this, it is a quite constrained adaptive specialization so, again the answer to these questions of, “do they do ?” or “don’t they do ?” depends on your definition of x. So I don’t think it’s so productive to get into a definitional battle of what exactly is teaching, but I’ll just say that the examples from animals to my knowledge for any given species is typically one specific behavior that for the meerkats and the lions is bringing the half dead prey. The human version is that the adults are motivated to make sure that the children learn a whole range of things, not only skills that they need but even more widespread and universal, teaching them how to behave in public, how to respect your elders, how to behave socially so that you are accepted into the group.
ISSN:1138-7416
1988-2904
DOI:10.1017/sjp.2016.97