Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:22:46.991Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

To what adaptive problems is human teaching a solution?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 June 2015

Mikołaj Hernik  and
György Gergely
Mikołaj Hernik
Affiliation:
Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary. [email protected]@ceu.huhttp://www.babakutato.hu/lab-members/hernik-mikolajhttp://people.ceu.hu/gyorgy_gergely
György Gergely
Affiliation:
Cognitive Development Center, Central European University, 1051 Budapest, Hungary. [email protected]@ceu.huhttp://www.babakutato.hu/lab-members/hernik-mikolajhttp://people.ceu.hu/gyorgy_gergely
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We welcome Kline's systematic overview of teaching from a functional evolutionary perspective. However, Kline's framework does not provide satisfying characterization of the adaptive problems driving the evolution of teaching through communication found in humans, where the key function is better characterized in terms of licensing inferences to opaque generic content than in terms of overcoming shortages of access and attention.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 38 , 2015 , e42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Butler, L. P. & Markman, E. M. (2012) Preschoolers use intentional and pedagogical cues to guide inductive inferences and exploration. Child Development 83(4):1416–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, M., Volein, Á., Gergely, G. & Csibra, G. (2011) Differential effects of communicative presentation on the encoding of visual features vs. numerosity of sets of objects in infants. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society of Research in Child Development, Montreal, Canada. March 31–April 2, 2011.Google Scholar
Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366(1567):1149–57. doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Egyed, K., Király, I. & Gergely, G. (2013) Communicating shared knowledge in infancy. Psychological Science 24(7):1348–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B. & Schulz, L. E. (2010) Infants consider both the sample and the sampling process in inductive generalization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107(20):9066–71.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hernik, M. & Csibra, G. (2015) Infants learn enduring functions of novel tools from action demonstrations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 130:176–92. [Epub: November 14, 2014]. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2014.10.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Király, I., Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2013) Beyond rational imitation: Learning arbitrary means actions from communicative demonstrations. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 116(2):471–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Träuble, B. & Bätz, J. (2014) Shared function knowledge: Infants' attention to function information in communicative contexts. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 124:67–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yoon, J. M., Johnson, M. H. & Csibra, G. (2008) Communication-induced memory biases in preverbal infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105(36):13690–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed