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Course Description

 

 

Social cognition in young children and chimpanzees

 

 

Malinda Carpenter

MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany

 

In this course we will discuss key differences between children’s and chimpanzees’ social-cognitive understanding and motivations, with the aim of explaining uniquely human aspects of cultural cognition.  In particular, we will discuss understanding of others’ psychological states (‘theory of mind’), social learning, and communication.  The main focus will be on human infants and young children but whenever possible we will also briefly discuss relevant results from apes (and children with autism).  At the end, we will discuss a theory that claims to explain all these results:  that uniquely human skills and motivations for shared intentionality are what underlie uniquely human skills for cultural learning and creation.

 

Lecture 1.‘Theory of mind’: Children’s and chimpanzees’ understanding of others’ mental states. Part 1:Introduction; false beliefs, knowledge, and desires

• introduction to this course
• why having a ‘theory of mind’ is important
• brief history
• understanding of beliefs (and false beliefs)
• understanding of knowledge/ignorance
• understanding of desires
• apes, briefly
• children with autism

Required reading:   Flynn, E. (2004). Understanding minds. In J. Oates & A. Grayson (Eds.), Cognitive and language development in children (pp. 231-258). Malden, MA:  Blackwell.

Seminar 1.  Discussion of methodological issues concerning ‘theory of mind’ tests

• alternative explanations, control conditions, and problems with these tests
• how to test for ‘theory of mind’ in nonverbal infants and animals?  discussion of nonverbal methods

 

 

Lecture 2. ‘Theory of mind’: Children’s and chimpanzees’ understanding of others’ mental states. Part 2: Intentions and attention

• understanding of goals and intentions
• understanding of perception and attention
• apes, briefly
• children with autism
• foreshadowing of the rest of the course

Required reading:  sections 1 and 2 only (pp. 676-680) of Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675-691.

Seminar 2.  Discussion of the controversy over ‘rich’ and ‘lean’ explanations of one-year-olds’ social-cognitive understanding

• understanding of beliefs at 4 years or at 15 months?
• understanding of knowledge at 2 years or 12 months?
• babies’ understanding of goals?

 

 

Lecture 3. Social learning in children and chimpanzees

• history, issues, terms
• apes:  emulation
• children: imitation (goals/intentions)
• other issues (social motivations, pedagogy)
• children with autism

Required reading: Call, J., & Carpenter, M. (2002). Three sources of information in social learning. In K. Dautenhahn & C. Nehaniv (Eds.), Imitation in animals and artifacts (pp. 211-228). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Optional reading:  Carpenter, M. (in press). Instrumental, social, and shared goals and intentions in imitation. To appear in S. J. Rogers & J. Williams (Eds.), Imitation and the development of the social mind: Lessons from typical development and autism. New York: Guilford.

Seminar 3.  Further discussion of social learning:  methodological issues, neonatal imitation, etc.

 

 

Lecture 4. Gestural communication in children and chimpanzees

• development of intentional communication in infants
• pointing (reference, attitude, common ground, communicative intentions, motives)
• connection to language
• apes, briefly
• children with autism

Required reading:  Tomasello, M. (in press). Why don't apes point? In N. Enfield & S. Levinson (Eds.), The roots of human sociality: Culture, cognition, and interaction. Oxford: Berg.

Seminar 4.  Further discussion of communication, including experimental design challenge

 

 

Lecture 5. The ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural cognition

• human cultural learning and creation
• culture in apes?  what is the difference?
• uniquely human motivation to share experiences with others (primary intersubjectivity, joint attention, declaratives)
• this plus understanding of others’ mental states à shared intentionality à cultural learning and creation
• collaboration, collaborative communication, pretense, etc.
• evolutionary story
• autism

Required reading:  the rest of Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The ontogeny and phylogeny of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675-691.

Optional reading:  peer commentaries on this article and the authors’ response (pp. 691-727).

Seminar 5.  Discussion (perhaps combined with Josep Call)

 

Assignments

Students who take the course for credit will be asked to write a brief (5-7 page) paper that critically reviews one or more of the articles read in class, or to comment on other work that is related to the issues discussed in the class.

 

Malinda Carpenter, Ph.D.

Malinda Carpenter (Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, 1995, Emory University, USA) is currently a Staff Scientist in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.  Her research interests include imitation, gestural communication, and understanding and sharing of others’ psychological states in typically-developing children, children with autism, and apes (see http://www.eva.mpg.de/psycho/staff/carpenter/index.html for publications).