Social learning and social cognition: The case for pedagogy

著者: Gergely Csibra, György Gergely - Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development 2006 被引用: 603

Abstract We propose that humans are adapted to transfer knowledge to, and receive knowledge from, conspecifics by teaching. This adaptation, which we call ‘pedagogy’, involves the emergence of a special communication system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of mind, but could itself provide a basis for facilitating the development of these human-specific abilities both in phylogenetic and ontogenetic terms. We speculate that tool manufacturing and mediated tool use made the evolution of such a new social learning mechanism necessary.