Abstract: It is widely believed that what distinguishes the social cognition of humans from that of other animals is the belief-desire psychology of four-year-old children and adults (so-called theory of mind). We argue here that this is actually the second ontogenetic step in uniquely human social cognition. The first step is one year old children’s understanding of persons as intentional agents, which enables skills of cultural learning and shared intentionality. This initial step is ‘the real thing ’ in the sense that it enables young children to participate in cultural activities using shared, perspectival symbols with a conventional/normative/reflective dimension—for example, linguistic communication and pretend play—thus inaugurating children’s understanding of things mental. Understanding beliefs and participating in collective intentionality at four years of age—enabling the comprehension of such things as money and marriage—results from several years of engagement with other persons in perspective-shifting and reflective discourse containing propositional attitude constructions. By all appearances, the cognitive skills of human beings are very different from those of other animal species, including our nearest primate relatives. Human

The current article proposes a new theory of infant pointing involving multiple layers of intentionality and shared intentionality. In the context of this theory, evidence is presented for a rich interpretation of prelinguistic communication, that is, one that posits that when 12-month-old infants point for an adult they are in some sense trying to influence her mental states. Moreover, evidence is also presented for a deeply social view in which infant pointing is best understoodFon many levels and in many waysFas depending on uniquely human skills and motivations for cooperation and shared intentionality (e.g., joint intentions and attention with others). Children’s early linguistic skills are built on this already existing platform of prelinguistic communication. Human beings communicate with one another in unique ways. Most obviously, humans communicate with one another linguistically, that is, with socially learned, intersubjectively shared symbols of a type not used by other animal species in their natural forms of communication. But humans also communicate with one another in unique ways gesturally. Many of the most important gestures humans useFfor example,

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Non-arbitrary reference, processing constraints, and spatial modulation of gesture: an evolutionary scenario for verbal agreement in human language3 ABSTRACT* Evidence for intermediate forms in the evolution of verbal agreement in human language is provided. Spatial modulation of gesture and sign is traced through human signed languages, deaf children during the formation of a signed language, deaf children with minimal language exposure, hearing adults under experimental conditions, hearing children acquiring spoken language, apes (both with and without language training), Panamanian golden frogs, and honeybees. It is argued that iconic and indexical reference interact with processing constraints, yielding spatial modulation of gesture to indicate participants in an action. This is argued to be the precursor for spatial verb agreement systems in signed languages, and potentially for verbal agreement in spoken languages. * We would like to thank Edith Casey for Figures 1 – 4.4 1. Introduction. Within