Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis

@article{citeulike:1634025, abstract = {Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world. 10.1126/science.1146282}, author = {Herrmann, Esther and Call, Josep and Hernandez-Lloreda, Maria V. and Hare, Brian and Tomasello, Michael }, citeulike-article-id = {1634025}, doi = {10.1126/science.1146282}, journal = {Science}, keywords = {cognition, culture, evolution, theory\_of\_mind}, month = {September}, number = {5843}, pages = {1360--1366}, posted-at = {2007-09-22 03:45:06}, priority = {5}, title = {Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1146282}, volume = {317}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1634025 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1634025 TI - Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis JF - Science VL - 317 IS - 5843 SP - 1360 EP - 1366 N2 - Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world. 10.1126/science.1146282 KW - cognition KW - culture KW - evolution KW - theory_of_mind AU - Herrmann, Esther AU - Call, Josep AU - Hernandez-Lloreda, Maria AU - Hare, Brian AU - Tomasello, Michael PY - 2007/09/07/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1146282 ER -