Great Apes and Human Development: A Personal History

Tomasello, Michael

doi:10.1111/cdep.12281

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Using this approach, many comparative facts of primate cognition have been established (e.g. [14]). However, the shared evolutionary history between species is seldom considered quantitatively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Establishing an infrastructure for collaboration in primate cognition research

Primates¹,

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Inferring the evolutionary history of cognitive abilities requires large and diverse samples. However, such samples are often beyond the reach of individual researchers or institutions, and studies are often limited to small numbers of species. Consequently, methodological and site-specific-differences across studies can limit comparisons between species. Here we introduce the ManyPrimates project, which addresses these challenges by providing a large-scale collaborative framework for comparative studies in primate cognition. To demonstrate the viability of the project we conducted a case study of short-term memory. In this initial study, we were able to include 176 individuals from 12 primate species housed at 11 sites across Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. All subjects were tested in a delayed-response task using consistent methodology across sites. Individuals could access food rewards by remembering the position of the hidden reward after a 0, 15, or 30-second delay. Overall, individuals performed better with shorter delays, as predicted by previous studies. Phylogenetic analysis revealed a strong phylogenetic signal for short-term memory. Although, with only 12 species, the validity of this analysis is limited, our initial results demonstrate the feasibility of a large, collaborative open-science project. We present the ManyPrimates project as an exciting opportunity to address open questions in primate cognition and behaviour with large, diverse datasets.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Establishing an infrastructure for collaboration in primate cognition research

Primates¹,

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…understanding of the true belief condition. Even the authors of these studies have argued that more research is needed to better elucidate what apes understand about false beliefs in these tasks and how (if at all) they can use false belief representation to guide their behavior (see Tomasello, 2018a). It is still noteworthy that, in contrast to these great ape findings, monkeys have failed all false belief tasks to date, including those using implicit looking measures (Marticorena et al, 2011;Martin & Santos, 2014), suggesting possible differences in implicit theory of mind between monkeys and great apes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do non-human primates really represent others’ ignorance? A test of the awareness relations hypothesis

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Non-human primates can often predict how another agent will behave based on that agent's knowledge about the world. But how do non-human primates represent others' knowledge states? Researchers have recently proposed that non-human primates form "awareness relations" to attribute objectively true information to other minds, as opposed to human-like representations that track others' ignorance or false belief states. We present the first explicit test of the awareness relations hypothesis by examining when rhesus macaques' understanding of other agents' knowledge falters. In Experiment 1, monkeys watched an agent observe a piece of fruit (the target object) being hidden in one of two boxes. While the agent's view was occluded, either the fruit moved out of its box and directly back into it, or the box containing the fruit opened and immediately closed. We found that monkeys looked significantly longer when the agent reached incorrectly rather than correctly after the box's movement, but not after the fruit's movement. This result suggests that monkeys did not expect the agent to know the fruit's location when it briefly and arbitrarily moved while the agent could not see it, but did expect the agent to know the fruit's location when only the box moved while the agent could not see it. In Experiment 2, we replicated and extended both findings with a larger sample, a different target object, and opposite directions of motion in the test trials. These findings suggest that monkeys reason about others' knowledge of objects by forming awareness relations which are disrupted by arbitrary spatial manipulation of the target object while an agent has no perceptual access to it.

show abstract

“…The system of cultural transmission that humans have evolved requires imagination (of which mentalizing is one aspect) in order to establish trust; however, the transmission of knowledge that follows places a constraint on the imagination to ensure that there is an agreed version of reality. Being able to mentalize one another makes it possible to have a collectively agreed imagination which makes human cooperation possible [27]. The significance of epistemic trust in relation to our model of psychopathology is therefore that it enables the individual to align their social imagination with the prevailing social reality in an adaptive way, creating the foundation for the intergenerational transmission of ideas and the creation of social networks that in turn support culture.…”

Section: Mentalizing Meta-cognition and Social Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mentalizing, Epistemic Trust and the Phenomenology of Psychotherapy

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper seeks to elucidate the phenomenological experience of psychotherapy in the context of the theory of mentalizing and epistemic trust. We describe two related phenomenological experiences that are the domain of psychotherapeutic work. The first is the patient's direct experience of their own personal narrative being recognised, marked and reflected back to them by the therapist. Secondly, this intersubjective recognition makes possible the regulation and alignment of the patient's imaginative capacity in relation to our phenomenological experiences. In describing three aspects of the communication process that unfold in effective psychotherapeutic interventions-1) the epistemic match, 2) improving mentalizing, and 3) the re-emergence of social learning-the way in which any effective treatment is embedded in metacognitive processes about the self in relation to perceptual social reality is explained. In particular, attention is drawn to wider social determinants of psychopathology. We discuss the possible mechanism for the relationship between the social-economic environment and psychopathology, and the implications of this for psychotherapeutic treatment.

show abstract

Great Apes and Human Development: A Personal History

Cited by 15 publications

References 40 publications

Establishing an infrastructure for collaboration in primate cognition research

Establishing an infrastructure for collaboration in primate cognition research

Do non-human primates really represent others’ ignorance? A test of the awareness relations hypothesis

Mentalizing, Epistemic Trust and the Phenomenology of Psychotherapy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About