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

Evolutionary developmental psychology involves the expression of evolved, epigenetic programs, as described by the developmental systems approach, over the course of ontogeny. There have been different selection pressures on organisms at different times in ontogeny, and some characteristics of infants and children were selected in evolution to serve an adaptive function at that time in their life history rather than to prepare individuals for later adulthood. Examples of such adaptive functions of immaturity are provided from infancy, play, and cognitive development. Most evolved psychological mechanisms are proposed to be domain specific in nature and have been identified for various aspects of children’s cognitive and social development, most notably for the acquisition of language and for theory of mind. Differences in the quality and quantity of parental investment affect children’s development and influence their subsequent reproductive and childcare strategies. Some sex differences observed in childhood, particularly as expressed during play, are seen as antecedents and preparations for adult sex differences. Because evolved mechanisms were adaptive to ancestral environments, they are not always adaptive for contemporary people, and this mismatch of evolved mechanisms with modern environments is seen in children’s maladjustment to some aspects of formal schooling. We argue that an evolutionary perspective can be valuable for developing a better understanding of human ontogeny in contemporary society and that a developmental perspective is important for a better understanding of evolutionary psychology.

To understand the “pure ” incentives of altruism, economic laboratory research on humans almost always forbids communication between subjects. In reality, however, altruism usually requires interaction between givers and receivers, which clearly must influence choices. Charities, for example, speak of the “power of asking. ” Indeed, evolutionary theories of altruism are built on human sociality. We experimentally examine communication in which one subject allocates $10 between herself and a receiver, and systematically altered who in the pair could speak. We found that any time the recipient spoke, giving increased – asking is powerful. But when only allocators could speak, choices were significantly more selfish than any other condition. When empathy was heightened by putting allocators “in the receivers shoes, ” giving appeared as if recipients had been able to ask, even when they were silent. We conclude that communication dramatically influences altruistic behavior, and appears to largely work by heightening empathy. We would like to send thanks to Ben Cowan and Megan Ritz for research assistance, to Susan Henning, William Harbaugh,

Possession of a “theory of mind ” (ToM)—as demonstrated by an understanding of the false beliefs of others— is fundamental in children’s cognitive development. A key question for debate concerns the effect of language input on ToM. In this respect, comparisons of deaf native-signing children who are raised by deaf signing parents with deaf late-signing children who are raised by hearing parents provide a critical test. This article reports on two studies (N � 100 and N � 39) using “thought picture ” measures of ToM that minimize verbal task-performance requirements. These studies demonstrated that even when factors such as syntax ability, mental age in spatial ability, and executive functioning were considered, deaf late signers still showed deficits in ToM understanding relative to deaf native signers or hearing controls. Even though the native signers were significantly younger than a sample of late signers matched for spatial mental age and scores on a test of receptive sign language ability, native signers outperformed late signers on pictorial ToM tasks. The results are discussed in terms of access to conversation and extralinguistic influences on development such as the presence of sibling relationships, and suggest that the expression of a ToM is the end result of social understanding mediated by early conversational experience.

Representations of an AI agent’s mental states and processes are necessary to enable metareasoning, i.e. thinking about thinking. However, the formulation of suitable representations remains an outstanding AI research challenge, with no clear consensus on how to proceed. This paper outlines an approach involving the formulation of anthropomorphic self-models, where the representations that are used for metareasoning are based on formalizations of commonsense psychology. We describe two research activities that support this approach, the formalization of broad-coverage commonsense psychology theories and use of representations in the monitoring and control of objectlevel reasoning. We focus specifically on metareasoning about memory, but argue that anthropomorphic self-models

Abstract: Psychologists distinguish between intentional systems which have beliefs and those which are also able to attribute beliefs to others. The ability to do the latter is called having a `theory of mind', and many cognitive ethologists are hoping to find evidence for this ability in animal behaviour. I argue that Dennett's theory entails that any intentional system that interacts with another intentional system (such as vervet monkeys and chess-playing computers) has a theory of mind, which would make the distinction all but meaningless. This entailment should not be accepted; instead, Dennett's position that intentional behaviour is best predictable via the intentional stance should be rejected in favour of a pluralistic view of behaviour prediction. I introduce an additional method which humans often use to predict intentional and non-intentional behaviour, which could be called the inductive stance. One of the most interesting transitions in human mental development happens when a child realizes that other humans are conscious agents who have minds. It is thought that this `theory ' of other minds is what gives us the ability to behave as `natural psychologists ' (Humphrey, 1978) who understand that beliefs and desires motivate the behaviour of other humans and intentional systems generally. Daniel Dennett agrees that this transition is important, and for two reasons. For one, we do not engage in actual communication unless we have a theory of mind. Communication only arises once we understand that there are other things with which we can communicate. But there's more; gaining a theory of mind not only gives us the fundamentals for communication, it also gives us the ability to predict intentional behaviour. There is no question that humans can predict behaviour through ascription of beliefs and desires (as long as they are older than four years and are not autistic), and so we are led to wonder whether any other systems, organisms or artifacts, share this ability with us. Psychologists have studied chimpanzees

On the 30th anniversary of Premack and Woodruff’s seminal paper asking whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind, we review recent evidence that suggests in many respects they do, whereas in other respects they might not. Specifically, there is solid evidence from several different experimental paradigms that chimpanzees understand the goals and intentions of others, as well as the perception and knowledge of others. Nevertheless, despite several seemingly valid attempts, there is currently no evidence that chimpanzees understand false beliefs. Our conclusion for the moment is, thus, that chimpanzees understand others in terms of a perception–goal psychology, as opposed to a full-fledged, human-like belief–desire psychology.

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT

C. Lloyd Morgan is widely credited as the “father of comparative psychology ” due to his contribution of guidelines for the psychological interpretation of animal behavior. Many modern comparative psychologists believe that constraints encouraged by Morgan are now obsolete and some assert that adherence to the canon restricts further progress in the field. Nonetheless, Morgan’s guidance continues to be important in comparative psychology. A review of Morgan’s canon, its historical misuse, and consideration of popular alternatives reinforce Morgan’s role in comparative psychology. A recent model of cognitive evolution highlights the importance of Morgan’s guidelines and an illustration of the continued usefulness of the canon is given in the context of investigations of theory of mind in chimpanzees. eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic

Abstract: Humans depend massively on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. We claim that humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance to ensure that communication remains advantageous despite this risk. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences. Acknowledgements: We are grateful to two anonymous referees for useful suggestions and comments on an earlier version of this article and to the Centre for