The ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural cognition

The ontogeny and phylogeny of

cultural cognition

Some uniquely human abilities

• language

• artifacts and technology

• social practices and institutions

Some uniquely human abilities

• language

• artifacts and technology

• social practices and institutions

taking a walk together

pointing out interesting sights for others

holding a ladder steady for someone

playing a duet

meeting for lunch

planning a party

play

ing

card

sdriving in traffic

holding open a door for someone

showing your vacation photos

attending a

summer school

‘playing house’ with your kid

helping your kid with homework

going on a date

co-au

thorin

g a

pape

r

playing hide-and-seek

cooking dinner

together

All involve sharing and collaboration.

Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll (2005)


We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to

participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality.





Two components:1) understanding of others’ goals and intentions





Two components:1) understanding of others’ goals and intentions2) motivation to share psychological states with others


• By 9-12 months, infants understand something about others’ goals and intentions.

• Young children with autism and chimpanzees may have (at least) some understanding of others’ goals.

• An understanding of others’ goals and intentions gives individuals a tremendous social advantage in terms of being able to explain and predict others’ behavior.

• But neither is enough to explain some interesting aspects of human cognition.

• In addition…

Sharing intentions

Understanding of others’ goals and intentions

ResultReality

failure

success

accident

stateof world

+ constraintsAction

GOAL

relevant skills,knowledge

INTENTION

Decision-makingrelevantreality


Attention

Joint Attention

SHARED GOAL


relevant reality

Decision-Making

JOINT INTENTION

SHARED GOAL

relevant reality

Decision-Making

JOINT INTENTION


Sharing intentions


Sharing and coordinating psychological states

– Motivation to share (joint emotions, attention, interest)

• ‘primary intersubjectivity’

• joint attention

• declarative pointing

– Collaboration (joint goals, intentions)

• role reversal

• helping

• cooperation and collaborative activities

Motivation to share in infants

• Early proto-conversations (early infancy; sharing emotions) (e.g., work by Rochat & Striano, Stern, Trevarthen)


• Early proto-conversations (early infancy)(e.g., work by Rochat & Striano, Stern, Trevarthen)

• Joint attention (by 9 months; sharing attention & interest; triadic) (e.g., work by Bakeman & Adamson, Tomasello, Trevarthen)

13-month-old infant in joint attentional engagement



• Joint attention (by 9 months)

(e.g., work by Bakeman & Adamson, Tomasello, Trevarthen)

• Declarative gestures(e.g., work by Bates, Bruner, Camaioni, Lempers, Tomasello)

– shows (around 10 months)

– points (around 12 months)

3-year-old child pointing declaratively



• Joint attention (by 9 months)

(e.g., work by Bakeman & Adamson, Tomasello, Trevarthen)

• Declarative gestures(e.g., work by Bates, Bruner, Camaioni, Lempers, Tomasello)

– shows (around 10 months)

– points (around 12 months)– Moore: not sharing, just attention to self

Liszkowski, Carpenter, Henning, Striano, & Tomasello (2004)

• 12-month-olds

• Toys were activated to elicit pointing. E reacted to infants’ points in one of four different ways:

– Ignore

– Look only to Event

– Look only to Face

– Joint Attention

Infants were most satisfied in the Joint Attention condition:

• in Joint Attention, they pointed more across trials

• in the other conditions, within trials, they repeated points more often.

12-month-olds point to share attention and interest.

# of trials with a point

Repeated pointing

Joint Attention + -Face - +Event - +Ignore

- +

Liszkowski, Carpenter, & Tomasello (in press)

When E misunderstands the infant’s referent, even if E reacts with excitement, 12-month-old infants repeat their pointing. Infants’ pointing is thus about specific objects or events, not just to obtain an adult reaction. (also evidence of collaborative communication: message repair)

Motivation to share in chimpanzees and children with autism

• Early proto-conversations: no (?) (autism: e.g., work by Hobson) (chimpanzees: Tomonaga et al.)

• Joint attention: no (autism: e.g., work by Carpenter, Charman, Dawson, Mundy, Wetherby)

(chimpanzees: e.g., Bard & Vauclair, Tomasello & Carpenter)

• Declarative gestures: no (autism: e.g., work by Baron-Cohen, Carpenter, Loveland, Mundy, Sigman)

(chimpanzees: e.g., Gomez, Tomasello & Carpenter)

Sharing and coordinating intentions

– Motivation to share• ‘primary intersubjectivity’

• joint attention


– Collaboration

Collaboration

Bratman (1992): 1. shared goal: each participant has the goal that

we (in mutual knowledge) do X together

2. coordination of plans/intentions. This requires that:

• each participant understands both roles of the interaction (so can reverse roles if needed) and

• each can help the other with his role if needed.



• joint attention


– Collaboration• role reversal

• helping


Carpenter, Tomasello, & Striano (2005); Tomasello & Carpenter (2005)

• 12- and 18-month-olds, children with autism, chimpanzees

• E performed one role of an action and had S perform the other, e.g.,:• E hid a toy for S to find, or

• E held out a plate for S to place a toy on it.

• Test: E gave the object(s) for the other role to S and waited.

• Does S perform E’s previous role (hiding or offering) toward E (while looking at her)?

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

12 mos 18 mos Chimpanzees Autism DD

% o

f S

s w

ho h

id w

ith lo

ok to

E

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

12 mos 18 mos Chimpanzees

% o

f Ss w

ho o

ffer

ed

with

look

to E

Hiding Task

Offering Task

* p=.053

Infants sometimes reversed roles (hid the toy for E or held out the plate for her) and looked to E.

Children with autism and chimpanzees sometimes performed these actions but did so without looks to E.

They may have been reversing at an action, rather than a psychological level. (see also work by Hobson)


– Motivation to share• ‘primary intersubjectivity’• joint attention• declarative pointing


• helping (see also Kuhlmeier, Wynn, & Bloom, 2003) • cooperation and collaborative activities

Liszkowski, Carpenter, Striano, & Tomasello (2006)

12- and 18-month-olds

• Infants watched E repeat an action (e.g., punching holes) with a target object.

• The target and a distractor object were displaced.

• E began looking around.

Infants pointed to help the adult by informing her about the location of the object she was looking for.

0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

0.45

12 months 18 months

Pro

port

ion

of tr

ials

with

poi

ntTarget Distractor

Warneken & Tomasello (2006): 18-month-old infant

Warneken & Tomasello (2006): nursery-reared chimpanzee

Warneken & Tomasello (2006)

• 18-month-olds help instrumentally, in many different situations

• chimpanzees: only when E reached– but other positive results for chimpanzees too

• helping doesn’t necessarily involve a shared goal: understanding other’s individual goal is sufficient



• joint attention



• helping




• joint attention



• helping

• cooperation and collaborative activities– communication (Clark, 1997; Golinkoff, 1993; Sperber & Wilson, 1986; Tomasello et

al., 2005, submitted)

Behne, Carpenter, & Tomasello (2005); Hare & Tomasello (2004)

• 14- to 24-month-olds,

chimpanzees

• E hid a toy/food in one of two opaque containers.

• E indicated the toy’s location by pointing or gazing ostensively at the correct container.

Infants pass this test.

Chimpanzees do not use cooperative/communicative (pointing) cues but do use competitive (reaching) ones.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

14 months 18 months 24 months

Mean

% c

orr

ect

resp

on

ses +

/- S

E

Gaze

Point

Infants

Chimpanzees



– Collaboration• role reversal• helping• cooperation and collaborative activities

– communication

– instrumental

Problem-Solving Play

Parallel

RolesTube with Handles

Trampoline

Complementary

RolesElevator Double Tube

trampoline

double tubeelevator

tube with handles

Warneken, Chen, & Tomasello (2006); Liebal et al. (in prep.)

• 18- and 24-month-olds, chimpanzees (and children with autism)

• Social and instrumental games

• E1 & E2 demonstrate how to operate the apparatus.

• E1 cooperates with the child to perform the joint activity.

• E1 refrains from the activity for 15 seconds.

Warneken, Chen, & Tomasello (2006)

By 18 months, infants are able to cooperate with an adult to achieve a joint goal.

• When the adult stopped playing his role, children communicatively requested his continued participation.

• New results: at least by 2 years, children do this even in tasks in which they could achieve the goal individually (Gräfenhein, Behne, Carpenter, & Tomasello, in prep.)

Chimpanzees (and children with autism) showed far less coordination of roles and no communicative requests for their partner’s continued participation.• Chimpanzees showed no interest in the social games.



– Collaboration• role reversal• helping• cooperation and collaborative activities

– communication – instrumental– pretense

Pretense

• Pretend play is (probably) uniquely human.

• It is often collaborative (shared goal, roles, etc.).• Some consider it to be the earliest form of true collective

intentionality in infancy (Rakoczy, 2006).

• It sets the stage for later collective beliefs (money, marriage, government…).

Summary

• In addition to their understanding of others’ goals and intentions, infants demonstrate:

1. the motivation to share psychological states with others

and

2. ability to cooperate and coordinate intentions with others.

• Chimpanzees and children with autism do not show evidence of either of these additional motivations or abilities.

Where does it come from?

• Primates are competitive. Humans in addition are cooperative – they evolved skills and motivations for collaborating.

(a sketchy)

Phylogenetic hypothesis



• How?– Individuals or groups who could collaborate more effectively

had a selective advantage (more food, better shelter & protection, etc.).

(a sketchy)






• The abilities to share and collaborate made language and other cultural learning and creation possible.

(a sketchy)






• The abilities to share and collaborate made language and other cultural learning and creation possible.

• Over cultural-historical time, repeated, habitual instances of sharing intentions resulted in social practices and institutions (e.g., marriage, money, government).

(a sketchy)



• Two interweaving lines of development:1. understanding of goals and intentions

2. motivation to share psychological states and activities

(a sketchy)

Ontogenetic hypothesis


• Two interweaving lines of development:1. understanding of goals and intentions

2. motivation to share psychological states and activities

• The motivation to share transforms the understanding intentions line, resulting in shared collaborative activities.

(a sketchy)

Ontogenetic hypothesis


Understanding intentions line:

Emotions → Goals → Intentions




Sharing motivation line:

+





Product: Proto-conversations

(3 months)

+

=





Product: Proto- →conversations

(3 months)

Shared goals(9 months)





Product: Proto- →conversations

(3 months)

Shared goals →(9 months)

Collaboration(14 months)


Individualistic(chimpanzees, children with

autism)

Collaborative(1-year-old+ infants)

gaze following joint attention

social learning instructed learning

social manipulation cooperative communication

group activity collaboration

Tomasello & Carpenter (in press)

Take-home message

• What is unique about human cultural cognition is the motivation to share and the ability to collaborate.

• The interaction of:– a biological adaptation– cultural-historical processes, and– individual development

results in uniquely human abilities ranging from language to taking a walk together, all of which involve shared intentionality.

The ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural cognition

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