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Abstract
This book proposes a theory of human cognitive evolution, drawing from paleontology, linguistics, anthropology, cognitive science, and especially neuropsychology. The properties of humankind's brain, culture, and cognition have coevolved in a tight iterative loop; the main event in human evolution has occurred at the cognitive level, however, mediating change at the anatomical and cultural levels. During the past two million years humans have passed through three major cognitive transitions, each of which has left the human mind with a new way of representing reality and a new form of culture. Modern humans consequently have three systems of memory representation that were not available to our closest primate relatives: mimetic skill, language, and external symbols. These three systems are supported by new types of ''hard'' storage devices, two of which (mimetic and linguistic) are biological, one technological. Full symbolic literacy consists of a complex of skills for interacting with the external memory system. The independence of these three uniquely human ways of representing knowledge is suggested in the way the mind breaks down after brain injury and confirmed by various other lines of evidence. Each of the three systems is based on an inventive capacity, and the products of those capacities - such as languages, symbols, gestures, social rituals, and images - continue to be invented and vetted in the social arena. Cognitive evolution is not yet complete: the externalization of memory has altered the actual memory architecture within which humans think. This is changing the role of biological memory and the way in which the human brain deploys its resources; it is also changing the form of modern culture.
... En la tercera parte sostenemos que los costos para la memoria individual relacionados a recordar de manera colaborativa en interacciones sociales están determinados, en gran medida, por la maleabilidad y la adaptabilidad de la memoria humana. En la cuarta parte indicamos que la maleabilidad y la adaptabilidad de la memoria humana, en continua interacción con recursos cognitivos externos, han permitido el surgimiento de redes híbridas, que incorporan aspectos culturales y cognitivos a través de nuestra historia cultural y evolutiva (Donald, 1991). Estas redes de naturaleza híbrida contienen elementos culturales y cognitivos creando las condiciones para el surgimiento de memorias colectivas a gran escala. ...
... Las memorias colectivas se basan en redes cognitivas distribuidas que incluyen individuos con sus mentes corporizadas en interacción con estructuras institucionales (ej. bibliotecas) y la tecnología (Donald, 1991). Un ejemplo bien conocido de cómo estas redes cognitivas distribuidas operan de sustento para la formación de recuerdos socialmente distribuidos se puede encontrar en los procesos a través de los cuales se enseña y se aprende la historia nacional en las escuelas. ...
... Varios autores (Donald, 1991(Donald, , 1993Malafouris, 2013;Sterelny, 2012) afirman que el comportamiento humano inteligente tiene sus raíces en interacciones entre las personas, con sus cuerpos adaptables y cerebros plásticos, y los contextos sociales y materiales donde habitan, es decir, no solamente en modelos abstractos o representaciones de conducta humana en nuestros cerebros. La creación de redes cognitivas distribuidas en nuestra historia evolutiva nos permitió aprender, recordar, transmitir y acumular conocimientos y habilidades a lo largo del tiempo. ...
Resumen
La investigación sobre la maleabilidad de la memoria humana ha mostrado cómo podemos incorporar información errónea dadas ciertas condiciones sociales. Esta línea de investigación ha llevado a psicólogos cognitivos a centrarse en los errores de la memoria y la desinformación que puede ser causados por contagio social. Basado en el mismo efecto de contagio social, estudios recientes se han centrado en las características potencialmente adaptables de la memoria. Dicha adaptabilidad nos facilita desarollar la confianza en los miembros de los grupos sociales a los que pertenecemos. Esto nos permite promover la cooperación creando las condiciones para la formación y mantenimiento de ‘comunidades de memoria’, que son la base para la construcción y la transmisión de memoria colectivas.
Si por un momento nos distanciamos de los actuales debates filosóficos acerca de si los grupos pueden tener una mente, y por lo tanto ellos mismos pueden formar memorias colectivas, ésta puede ser definida como memorias individuales compartidas en una comunidad, que le confieren identidad a la comunidad. Las memorias colectivas pueden pertenecer a un proyecto identitario que los miembros de grupos sociales emplean para conservar su historia y mantener cohesión. El objetivo de nuestro artículo es investigar cuáles son los factores sociales y cognitivos que promueven la formación de memorias colectivas en interacciones sociales. Para esto discutimos numerosos estudios en psicología social, cultural y cognitiva que se han centrado en encontrar y explicar los beneficios y costos de formar memorias colectivas. La evidencia empírica sugiere que la adaptabilidad de la memoria humana, y en consecuencia la capacidad que grupos sociales tienen para formar memorias colectivas sobre las cuales basar sus identidades sociales parece ser bastante independiente de la veracidad y precisión de tales recuerdos.
... A gradual growth of the brain size and an increase of the complexity of thinking took place during Homo's evolution (Donald, 1997;Freeman & Herron, 2004;Ridley, 2005;Stringer & Andrews, 2005;Gärdenfors, 2006), with anatomical changes and new aptitudes constantly being developed, suggesting cognitive and cultural changes (Oakley, 1985;Dennet, 1996;Donald, 1997;Tulving, 2005). Behavior is also considered hierarchical in organization (Dehaene, 2007) and evolution favoring hierarchical structuring, possibly due to developmental constrains (Futuyma, 2005). ...
... A gradual growth of the brain size and an increase of the complexity of thinking took place during Homo's evolution (Donald, 1997;Freeman & Herron, 2004;Ridley, 2005;Stringer & Andrews, 2005;Gärdenfors, 2006), with anatomical changes and new aptitudes constantly being developed, suggesting cognitive and cultural changes (Oakley, 1985;Dennet, 1996;Donald, 1997;Tulving, 2005). Behavior is also considered hierarchical in organization (Dehaene, 2007) and evolution favoring hierarchical structuring, possibly due to developmental constrains (Futuyma, 2005). ...
... Investigation on the proposed by many researchers categorization and evolution of various cognitive devices (e.g. Oakley, 1985;Tooby & Cosmides, 1992;Dennet, 1996;Donald, 1997;Tulving, 2005), reveal several significant common elements leading to interesting biopedagogical assumptions, as e.g. those referred to: ...
... This is why, following anthropological and semiotic theories, I embrace the idea of Astrid Erll (2008) about culture as a three-dimensional phenomenon with: Social aspects (people, social relations, institutions); Material aspects (artifacts and media); And mental aspects (cultural defined ways of thinking). From this point of view, we take into consideration the theories about mental representations, and public or collective representations (Durkheim 1982;Sperber 1996), social memory (Halbwachs 1992), as well as the fundamental aspects of human learning in social contexts through the mediation of symbolic systems (Vygotsky 1978;Vygotsky 1997;Nelson 2003;Nelson 2006;Wertsch 2009;Callaghan and Corbit 2015), which underline the inseparable relationship between thought and language (Vygotsky 1986;Donald 1993a;M. Turner 1996;Hutto 2008). ...
... Furthermore, Merlin Donald puts forward a hypothesis about successive cognitive transitions in human evolution, in which he identifies a third developing stage where external memory storages and retrievals appeared (Donald 1993a). Likewise, Damasio (2010) underlines the advance of external memory storage systems, not only those organically installed in human brains, but also those that human intelligence has designed and manufactured. ...
The goal of this research is to develop an interpretive methodology of folktales for educational purposes, allowing students to develop a multidimensional way of thinking. I am particularly interested in exposing children to the influences of other cultural communities, which present different cultural patterns and whose folktales introduce variations in their narrative structures, symbolism, attributes of dramatis personae, and combination of motifs.
This methodological proposal for the interpretation of the folktales within the educational environment is based on four essential areas of study: (1) the morphological analysis of tales, both at synchronic and diachronic structural levels; (2) the symbolism in the story that allows us to separate the ideological messages at the superficial dimension from latent psychological contents culturally diverse, yet based on socio-cultural tensions shared by all humans; (3) the social functions of folktales and the historical contextualization of retellings and adaptations; and (4) the study of folktales as part of folk psychology narratives, a concept proposed by Daniel D. Hutto (2008), reinforcing the idea that individuals during childhood elaborate a self-construal from a prosthetic consciousness, through the development of a human capacity, that I refer to as “narrativity”.
Finally, this interpretative methodology of the folktales for educational purposes was applied to a selection of fourteen tales of the types ATU 333 (Little Red Riding Hood) and ATU 123 (The Wolf and the Children) from the International Tale Index of Aarne-Thompson-Uther. In this corpus, I have included classical fairy tales (Perrault and the Brothers Grimm), a European oral variant, and a Latin fable, as well as Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese versions. The specific objectives of this comparative study are: (1) discovering elements common to different variants, both at the structural level and in the group of motifs making the story; (2) understanding the process of "cultural embellishment" that these narratives were subjected during successive retellings identifying changes and variations in social canonicity; (3) learning what socio-psychological significance different versions of a certain tale type from different cultures may have; and (4) interpreting what these stories from different times and diverse cultures represent and how they might affect current young readers and listeners.
... This is why, following anthropological and semiotic theories, I embrace the idea of Astrid Erll (2008) about culture as a three-dimensional phenomenon with: Social aspects (people, social relations, institutions); Material aspects (artifacts and media); And mental aspects (cultural defined ways of thinking). From this point of view, we take into consideration the theories about mental representations, and public or collective representations (Durkheim 1982;Sperber 1996), social memory (Halbwachs 1992), as well as the fundamental aspects of human learning in social contexts through the mediation of symbolic systems (Vygotsky 1978;Vygotsky 1997;Nelson 2003;Nelson 2006;Wertsch 2009;Callaghan and Corbit 2015), which underline the inseparable relationship between thought and language (Vygotsky 1986;Donald 1993a;M. Turner 1996;Hutto 2008). ...
... Furthermore, Merlin Donald puts forward a hypothesis about successive cognitive transitions in human evolution, in which he identifies a third developing stage where external memory storages and retrievals appeared (Donald 1993a). Likewise, Damasio (2010) underlines the advance of external memory storage systems, not only those organically installed in human brains, but also those that human intelligence has designed and manufactured. ...
... En esta línea, nuestras recientes investigaciones (Mareovich, 2015;Mareovich & Peralta, 2015;Mareovich & Peralta, en prensa;Mareovich, Taverna & Peralta, 2015) se han focalizado en el aprendizaje de palabras, sustantivos y adjetivos, en interacciones con libros ilustrados por parte de niños de dos a tres años de edad. Los resultados más relevantes son los siguientes: existen diferencias entre el aprendizaje de un sustantivo a travésde, 1993;Huebner, 2000;Lonigan, 1994;Payne, Whitehurst & Angell, 1994;Peralta, 1995;Raikes et al, 2006;Rideout, Vandewater & Wartela, 2003Uno de nuestros trabajos explora la dinámica y las características de las interacciones con libros ilustrados en el hogar. Trabajaremos con dos grupos de niños de 9 a 24 meses. ...
... Un texto (Vilches, 1984, 2000) se desarrolla por el interés que el autor de humor gráfico deposita, ya no sólo en referentes externos, sino también en sus propias creaciones, en la puesta en escena de las mismas. Así, el autor juega con laDonald, 1993). Investigaciones recientes (Gardner & Forrester, 2010;Rosemberg, 2002;Rosemberg & Menti, 2014) destacan la necesidad de articular el estudio del desarrollo y el desempeño discursivo infantil con el microanálisis de la interacción. ...
Paper abstracts of the IV Learning & Development Conference
... ediği, düşünce sisteminin nasıl kurulduğu konusunu araştırmak gerekmektedir. Özellikle prehistorik bir akıl söz konusu olduğunda ise durum daha bir zorlaşmaktadır. Bu konuda çalışmalarını yürütmekte olan arkeologlar ve diğer bilim insanları başta Renfrew olmak üzere (Boyer 1998;Carruthers 2002Carruthers , 2006Coward -Gamble 2008;DeBaune -Clay 2004;DeBaune vd. 2009;Garrard 2009;Knappett 2010;Malafouris 2010Malafouris , 2013Marshack 1972;Renfrew 1998Renfrew , 2001Renfrew -Bahn 2005;Renfrew vd. 2008;Renfrew -Scarre 1998;Renfrew -Zubrow 1994;Roskos-Ewoldsen vd. 1993;Turner 2006;Wynn 2002) bilişsel arkeoloji olarak tanımlanan ve arkeoloji için yeni bir araştırma alanı geliştirmeye başlamıştır. Bu aland ...
... Bu konuda çalışmalarını yürütmekte olan arkeologlar ve diğer bilim insanları başta Renfrew olmak üzere (Boyer 1998;Carruthers 2002Carruthers , 2006Coward -Gamble 2008;DeBaune -Clay 2004;DeBaune vd. 2009;Garrard 2009;Knappett 2010;Malafouris 2010Malafouris , 2013Marshack 1972;Renfrew 1998Renfrew , 2001Renfrew -Bahn 2005;Renfrew vd. 2008;Renfrew -Scarre 1998;Renfrew -Zubrow 1994;Roskos-Ewoldsen vd. ...
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... To the same direction, Vygotsky (1978) mastered Darwin's explanation of phyloontogenetic approach in social context, a theme he dealt with and thus contributed to learning epistemology, but he did not focus, or even refer in a specific way, to the hierarchical evolution, development and relative pedagogical value of the basic biopedagogic competences' learning importance, cultivation and configuration (Alahiotis andKaratzia-Stavlioti 2008, 2013). In a more general basis, the traditional constructivism is also criticized, since it is ignoring the human cognitive architecture (Kirschner Sweller and Clark 2006), which is studied intensively in the last years on a neuro-scientific level (Donald 1997;Gärdenfors 2006;Dehaene 2007;Posner and Rothbart 2007). ...
... During the evolution of the Homo species there was a radical increase not only of the brain size, but also of the complicated way of thinking, which led hierarchically and interactively, in time, to cognitive thinking and cultural changes (Dehaene 2007;Donald 1997;Posner and Rothbart 2007;Alahiotis 2007) (Figure 1). This hierarchical construction is considered substantial for the sequential origin/acquisition of human (Homo sapiens) basic cognitive competences (Gärdenfors 2006). ...
... Imitatie is een complex proces, waarbij gezichtsvermogen, representatie, geheugen en motorische vaardigheden een grote rol spelen. Mensen blijken een grote aanleg te hebben voor imitatiegedrag (Donald, 1991(Donald, , 1993. Perceptuele en motorische voorstellingen van gedrag lijken samen te vallen in het brein (Borenstein & Ruppin, 2004). ...
Het onderzoeksproject Geestelijke Weerbaarheid en Humanisme aan de Universiteit voor
Humanistiek wil het vermogen tot geestelijke weerbaarheid opnieuw doordenken en actualiseren.
Dit onderzoek maakt onderdeel uit van het onderzoeksproject en beoogt te verkennen in hoeverre
geestelijk modelleren van Oman en Thoresen (2003a; 2003b) kan bijdragen aan het het bevorderen
van geestelijke weerbaarheid zoals door Van Praag is beschreven.
Van Praag (1947b) gebruikt de term 'geestelijke weerbaarheid' als aanduiding voor het vermogen
weerstand te bieden aan de bezieling en bevliegingen die zich meester van ons kunnen maken. Hij
spoort mensen in zijn werk aan om enerzijds niet te vervlakken en een bewust geestelijk leven te
leiden. Anderzijds moet die bezieling of bevlieging in ons leven niet de overhand krijgen, zodat wij
geen grip meer hebben op het bestaan.
Door het gedrag van anderen te observeren en op unieke situaties toe te passen, stellen mensen
zich in staat een palet van verschillende opties van gedrag eigen te maken (Bandura, 1986).
Geestelijk modelleren is het proces waarbij mensen geestkracht ontwikkelen aan de hand van het
leven en de daden van geestelijke voorbeeldfiguren (Oman & Thoresen, 2003a). Het draagt bij aan
het vermogen van de mens zich weerbaar tegen interne impulsen en externe invloeden op te stellen.
Ook draagt het bij aan het kunnen creëren, openhouden en invullen van ruimte voor ontplooiing,
zingeving en levenskunst.
Van Praag legt evenals Oman, Thoresen en Bandura de nadruk op het belang van de ander als
een bron van zelfkennis en geestelijke ontplooiing. Het bewust worden van individuele verschillen
geeft mensen richting aan de zoektocht naar het hogere. Het hogere refereert naar de persoonlijke
perceptie van het hogere wezen, het hogere object, de ultieme realiteit of de ultieme waarheid.
Overgave aan een voorbeeldfiguur is daarin geen belangeloos of onbewust identificatieproces. De
persoonlijke omstandigheden en de persoonlijke zingeving spelen een centrale rol in wat wel en wat
niet van geestelijke voorbeeldfiguren geleerd wordt.
Dat is lang niet altijd het geval. In de discussie wordt er verder stil gestaan bij de overgave aan
voorbeeldfiguren, waarbij de waarnemer langzaam in de schaduw van het geestelijke
voorbeeldfiguur verdwijnt. Deze verhouding tussen idool en fan wordt aan de hand van voorbeelden
geïllustreerd en geproblematiseerd. De discussie vormt een aanzet om meer onderzoek te doen naar
de kenmerken en eigenschappen van geestelijke voorbeeldfiguren en hoe ze kunnen worden
ingezet.
... However, less dramatic cases are available. Donald (1993) points to documented instances of deaf people from pre-literate societies. Despite their lack of exposure to formal writing systems or fully realized sign language, there seems to be little reason to suspect that such individuals were incapable of some forms of sophisticated cognition. ...
What role does language play in our thoughts? A longstanding proposal that has gained traction among supporters of embodied or grounded cognition suggests that it serves as a cognitive scaffold. This idea turns on the fact that language—with its ability to capture statistical regularities, leverage culturally acquired information, and engage grounded metaphors—is an effective and readily available support for our thinking. In this essay, I argue that language should be viewed as more than this; it should be viewed as a neuroenhancement. The neurologically realized language system is an important subcomponent of a flexible, multimodal, and multilevel conceptual system. It is not merely a source for information about the world but also a computational add-on that extends our conceptual reach. This approach provides a compelling explanation of the course of development, our facility with abstract concepts, and even the scope of language-specific influences on cognition.
... For him, a major part of mimetic skill is imitative learning as a road to complex praxis, as related principally to tool technology. It is about the ability to store exemplar representations of motor actions in long-term memory and then voluntarily bring them up during bouts of rehearsal or pedagogy (Donald, 1993(Donald, , 2013. As he writes (Donald, 1991:169): "When there is an audience to interpret the action, mimesis also serves the purpose of social communication. ...
Pantomime refers to iconic gesturing that is done for communicative purposes in the absence of speech. Gestural theories of the origins of language claim that a stage of pantomime preceded speech as an initial form of referential communication. However, gestural theories conceive of pantomime as a unitary process, and do not distinguish among the various means by which it can be produced. We attempt here to develop a scheme for classifying pantomime based on a proposal of two new sub-categories of pantomime, resulting in a final scheme comprised of five categories of iconic gesturing. We employ the scheme to establish associations between the category of pantomime used and the type of action and/or object being depicted. Based on these associations, we argue that there are two basic modes of pantomiming and that these apply to distinct semantic categories of referents. These modes of pantomiming lead to two alternative models for a gestural origin of language, one based on people and one based on the environment.
... mbolic storage system» is alphabetic writing, but in common with several other archaeologists I argue that there are other and earlier, non-linguistic systems of external symbolic storage. 17 432 Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East 13 Searle 1995. 14 Cohen 1985. 15 Cohen 1985: 15. 16 Donald 1991. Donald 1993 for a précis of the book. 17 At a conference where a number of archaeologists met with Merlin Donald and discussed the application of his ideas on external symbolic storage, following Donald's introduction of his ideas (Donald Language is a system of symbolic representation, and the importance of the full modern language faculty that we ...
There is a widespread tendency to ascribe a causal role to environmental change in the
explanation of the major processes in human prehistory, but no modern historians explain
major events in recent history in terms of global or regional climatic change. Our expe-
rience is that we operate almost entirely within the constraints and facilities of a culturally
formed environment. If our earliest hominid ancestors were constrained within their phys-
ical and biological environments, we need to define the point within human history when
symbolic cultural environments emerged. Drawing on the work of cognitive and
developmental psychologists, I make the case that the earliest Neolithic in southwest Asia
was the first time in human history that the cultural environment was more important than
the natural environment in human affairs.
... Prva istinska prelomna tačka u evoluciji kognicije bila je revolucija motornih vještina koja je hominidima omogućila korištenje čitavog tijela kao sredstva reprezentacije (Donald, 1993). Socio-kulturalne implikacije mimetičkih vještina bile su veoma značajne i mogu posluţiti za objašnjenje dokumentovanih dostignuća H. erectusa. ...
... La explicación de los esquemas psicológicos de los homíninos se basa en el trabajo de Merlín Donald(Donald, 1991) que sugiere que el ser humano, a lo largo de sus etapas evolutivas, ha pasado de una forma de cultura a otra, modificando con ello sus formas de representación de la realidad y los soportes en los que se extiende, primero bajo sus propios recursos biológicos y, por ultimo en nuevos recursos tecnológicos(Donald, 1993). Este camino nos ha llevado de una etapa de comprensión episódica (propia de los primates no humanos actuales), a una proyección corporal (la cultura mimética) y, de ésta, a un marco explicativo más amplio que dio paso a la narración (la cultura mítica) para, por último, entrar al tipo de cultura en el que nos encontramos actualmente, la de soporte tecnológico, cuya característica es la extensión de nuestros recursos simbólicos y mnemotécnicos a soportes exteriores: pintura, literatura, música, código binario, etc. Su propuesta comienza con los primeros homíninos y permite explicar porqué hablamos, rezamos, escribimos y navegamos en internet. ...
As all other organisms on earth, human beings owe their structural, functional and ethological adaptations, to the effect of the requirements imposed by the environment. Most of the greatest leaps on human innovation are due to the interaction with the climate throughout their evolutionary history. Therefore, we have to look into our history as a species and the climatic pressures faced during the evolution in order to understand the most essential elements for generating a habitat compatible with human needs.
... Adapting market models for dolphins also suggests another type of currency that may be relevant, one that has as yet received little attention in the market literature-mimesis (Donald, 1993;Zlatev, 2007). Mimesis is the use of imitation in a communicative context. ...
Dynamic models of “Biological Markets” can provide a systematic and ecologically-valid approach to
studying communication and social cognition in dolphins. These market models view interacting animals as traders
engaged in a negotiation for social commodities, whose values vary with the state of their current market. Across the
phyla, factors like the supply and demand of social resources can impact on investment and partner choice. Such
models map well to the polyadic nature of typical social interactions, generating predictions based on configurations
of participants, and enabling us to use behavioral observations to address issues of cognitive organization. Plus, by
positing communicative signals as social currency, these models provide tools to discern which aspects of dolphins’
vocal and gestural repertoires impact on their social relationships. Adapting these models for dolphins highlights the
premise that “partnerhood is good,” wherein both players gain when they partner. When considered over time, the
gains and losses of valued partners may accumulate into “wealth” or “debt” for a particular player, altering its
threshold for responding to its market’s odds. For example, “Partner Debt” could motivate a player to more readily
take action to destabilize its current market. In dolphins, one type of social currency that bears further investigation
is the use of vocal and/or gestural mimicry. Such mimesis may promote prosociality, cooperation, and even the
coordination of third party information.
... Although they saw bow hunting as enabling H. sapiens to overcome obstacles that constrained previous human dispersals from Africa to temperate western Eurasia, they interpret the lack of this techno-behaviour in the Neanderthal record not as reflecting variability in cognitive complexity, but as a result of energetic constraints and time-budgeting factors associated with such complex technologies (Shea & Sisk, 2010). Similar to others (e.g., Coolidge & Wynn, 2009;Wadley, 2013), I consider technical systems a more secure footing for exploring H. sapiens-specific cognitive and behavioural trends -as opposed to, for example, evidence for symbolic behaviours (e.g., Donald, 1993). The potential of such technical systems to inform on human cognitive evolution should thus be thoroughly explored before rejecting their cerebral implications out of hand. ...
Bow-and-arrow technology is, arguably, one of the key inventions in the human story. It has been described as 'a machine that changed the world'. Many think of its value in terms of subsistence hunting and/or warfare. Here I explore how some of the associated techno-behaviours of bow hunting helped shape the human mind, contributing to us becoming masters in flexible thinking. Such cognitive plasticity, or intelligence, is represented in our ability to learn, teach, innovate and respond flexibly to new or complex situations. These abilities are anchored in genetic predispositions towards faster reaction times, greater working memory, inhibitory control and greater response to novelty. By 'squeezing blood from stones', evidence for bow hunting has been pushed back to more than 60 000 years ago in southern Africa, with some suggesting an even older age. The time between roughly 60 000 and 100 000 years ago is currently held as the phase during which the ancient human mind can be shown to process information in similar ways to ours today. I also touch on potential neurological underpinnings for understanding the cognition of archery. I suggest that, by exploring the techno-behaviours and cognition associated with Stone Age bow hunting and neurological studies conducted in the context of modern archery, we can add to our understanding of the evolution of the sapient mind.
... Recent technological and methodological development have led to increase in studies of WM models (including the levels and capacity of WM, neural executive mechanisms of WM, it`s brain localization and links with IQ, language and speech) (Phillips, & Christie, 1977;Donald, 1991;Baddeley, 2001;Erricsson, & Kintsch, 1995, Houde & Tzourio-Mazoyer, 2003Broadbent, 1975;Cowan, 2012). ...
We analyzed working memory errors stemming from 193 Russian college students taking the Tarnow Unchunkable Test utilizing double digit items on a visual display. In three-item trials with at most one error per trial, single incorrect tens and ones digits (" singlets ") were overrepresented and made up the majority of errors, indicating a base 10 organization. These errors indicate that there are separate memory maps for each position and that there are pointers that can move primarily within these maps. Several pointers make up a pointer collection. The number of pointer collections possible is the working memory capacity limit. A model for self-organizing maps is constructed in which the organization is created by turning common pointer collections into maps thereby replacing a pointer collection with a single pointer. The factors 5 and 11 were underrepresented in the errors, presumably because base 10 properties beyond positional order were used for error correction, perhaps reflecting the existence of additional maps of integers divisible by 5 and integers divisible by 11.
... The psychologist Merlin Donald claimed in his landmark book (Donald, 1991) and subsequent precis (Donald, 1997) that the human mind co-evolved in close interaction with both brain and culture over millions of years. He postulated three major cognitive transitions with each cognitive step-change being marked by the development of novel and increasingly hybrid forms of representation and by the subsequent rise of more complex human cultures. ...
Learning technologies are regularly associated with innovative teaching but will they contribute to profound innovations in education itself? This paper addresses the question by building upon Merlin.Donald's co-evolutionary theory of mind, cognition and culture. He claimed that the invention of technologies for storing and sharing external symbol systems, such as writing, gave rise to a 'theoretic culture' with rich symbolic representations and a resultant need for formal education. More recently, Shaffer and Kaput have claimed that the development of external and shared symbol-processing technologies is giving rise to an emerging 'virtual culture'. They argue that mathematics curricula are grounded in theoretic culture and should change to meet the novel demands of 'virtual culture' for symbol-processing and representational fluency. The generic character of their cultural claim is noted in this paper and it is suggested that equivalent pedagogic arguments are applicable across the educational spectrum. Hence, four general characteristics of virtual culture are proposed, against which applications of learning technologies can be evaluated for their innovative potential. Two illustrative uses of learning technologies are evaluated in terms of their 'virtual culture potential' and some anticipated questions about this approach are discussed towards the end of the paper.
... The result is a plethora of models that argue modern cognition arose abruptly ~50,000 years ago (e.g., Ambrose and Lorenz 1990; Gamble 1999; Klein 2000 Klein , 2009 Klein [1989; efforts have focused on identifying the cognitive entailments of specific behaviors to justify their use as indicators of advanced cognition and thus strengthen a favored origins model. Flexible and shared attention, planning depth, advanced theory of mind, advanced symboling, and/or executive functions are consistently cited as integral components of fully modern cognition (e.g., Mithen 1996; Deacon 1997; Donald 1997and Wadley 2013). However, the nature of these cognitive processes and their relationship to complex behaviors in general and to the archaeological record in particular are under-theorized. ...
This research uses Peircean Semiotics to model the evolution of symbolic behavior in the human lineage and the potential material correlates of this evolutionary process in the archaeological record. The semiotic model states the capacity for symbolic behavior developed in two distinct stages. Emergent capacities are characterized by the sporadic use of non-symbolic and symbolic material culture that affects information exchange between individuals. Symbolic exchange will be rare. Mobilized capacities are defined by the constant use of non-symbolic and symbolic objects that affect both interpersonal and group-level information exchange. Symbolic behavior will be obligatory and widespread. The model was tested against the published archaeological record dating from ~200,000 years ago to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in three sub-regions of Africa and Eurasia. A number of Exploratory and Confirmatory Data Analysis techniques were used to identify patterning in artifacts through time consistent with model predictions. The results indicate Emergent symboling capacities were expressed as early as ~100,000 years ago in Southern Africa and the Levant. However, capacities do not appear fully Mobilized in these regions until ~17,000 years ago. Emergent symboling is not evident in the European record until ~42,000 years ago, but develops rapidly. The results also indicate both Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic behavior, but expressed those capacities differently. Moreover, interactions between the two populations did not select for symbolic expression, nor did periodic aggregation within groups. The analysis ultimately situates the capacity for symbolic behavior in increased engagement with materiality and the ability to recognize material objects can be made meaningful– an ability that must have been shared with Anatomically Modern Humans’ and Neanderthals’ most recent common ancestor. Consequently, the results have significant implications for notions of ‘modernity’ and human uniqueness that drive human origins research. This work pioneers deductive approaches to cognitive evolution, and both strengths and weaknesses are discussed. In offering notable results and best practices, it effectively operationalizes the semiotic model as a viable analytical method for human origins research.
... We are thus suspicious of classic 'homuncular' decompositions of the human mind into discrete, nearly–decomposable, and innately specified mental modules (Anderson, Richardson & Chemero 2012). Rather, we are sympathetic to the view that many of the more complex forms of human cognition are socially or technologically 'scaffolded' in that they rely on, and actively incorporate, culturally constructed skills, practices, artifacts, and other environmental support structures to complement our biologically more basic cognitive representations and processes (Suchman 1987; Donald 1991; Norman 1991; Hutchins 1995; Clark 1997; Logan 1997; Wertsch 1998; Wilson 2004; Wilson & Clark 2008; Menary 2007; Harnad & Dror 2008; Sutton 2010; Theiner 2011; Anderson, Richardson & Chemero 2012; Kirsh 2013; Rowlands 2013). For example, the development of logic, mathematics, and the scientific method would be unthinkable without the creation, transmission, and skillful deployment of visually perspicuous symbolic representations such as written language, diagrams, and specialized graphical notations (Goody 1977; Latour & Woolgar 1979; Latour 1986; Logan 1986; Olson 1994; Crosby 1997). ...
Organizational learning, at the broadest levels, as it has come to be understood within the organization theory and management literatures, concerns the experientially driven changes in knowledge processes, structures, and resources that enable organizations to perform skillfully in their task environments (Argote and Miron–Spektor, 2011). In this chapter, we examine routines and capabilities as an important micro–foundation for organizational learning. Adopting a micro–foundational approach in line with Barney and Felin (2013), we propose a new model for explaining how routines and capabilities play a causal role in transforming experience into repertoires of (actual or potential) organization–level behavior. More specifically, we argue that routines and capabilities are built out of capacities for shared – both joint and collective – intentionality (Tomasello, 1999, 2014; Bratman, 1999a, 2014) that enable individuals to engage in complex forms of collaboration in conjunction with multiple layers of scaffolds that encompass material and symbolic resources, social processes, and cultural norms and practices (Weick, 1995; Hutchins, 1995; Clark, 1997, 2008; Orlikowski, 2007). In short, we outline what we call the ‘scaffolded joint action’ model and suggest its potential as a micro–foundation of organizational learning.
... In my own work, I have developed a gradualistic coevolutionary scenario for language based upon these kinds of early changes to the primate cognitive repertoire (Donald, 1991(Donald, , 1993a(Donald, , 1999(Donald, , 2001(Donald, , 2013. ...
Languages are socially constructed systems of expression, generated interactively in social networks, which can be assimilated by the individual brain as it develops. Languages co-evolved with culture, reflecting the changing complexity of human culture as it acquired the properties of a distributed cognitive system. Two key preconditions set the stage for the evolution of such cultures: a very general ability to rehearse and refine skills (evident early in hominin evolution in toolmaking), and the emergence of material culture as an external (to the brain) memory record that could retain and accumulate knowledge across generations. The ability to practice and rehearse skill provided immediate survival-related benefits in that it expanded the physical powers of early hominins, but the same adaptation also provided the imaginative substrate for a system of “mimetic” expression, such as found in ritual and pantomime, and in proto-words, which performed an expressive function somewhat like the home signs of deaf non-signers. The hominid brain continued to adapt to the increasing importance and complexity of culture as human interactions with material culture became more complex; above all, this entailed a gradual expansion in the integrative systems of the brain, especially those involved in the metacognitive supervision of self-performances. This supported a style of embodied mimetic imagination that improved the coordination of shared activities such as fire tending, but also in rituals and reciprocal mimetic games. The time-depth of this mimetic adaptation, and its role in both the construction and acquisition of languages, explains the importance of mimetic expression in the media, religion, and politics. Spoken language evolved out of voco-mimesis, and emerged long after the more basic abilities needed to refine skill and share intentions, probably coinciding with the common ancestor of sapient humans. Self-monitoring and self-supervised practice were necessary preconditions for lexical invention, and as these abilities evolved further, communicative skills extended to more abstract and complex aspects of the communication environments—that is, the “cognitive ecologies”—being generated by human groups. The hominin brain adapted continuously to the need to assimilate language and its many cognitive byproducts by expanding many of its higher integrative systems, a process that seems to have accelerated and peaked in the past half million years.
... 7 Donald, M., (1991) Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press [21]. measure nothing related to the intellectual activity we call design. ...
Design thinking has seen rapid growth since mid-2000s far beyond the engineering and arts disciplines traditionally concerned with design. In universities, it is increasingly being used to create programs where graduates from multiple disciplines can learn to develop a design orientation to problem solving. This rising popularity of design thinking as a generalist training methodology positioned alongside theMBAprogram while helpful, obscures the central role it plays in the engineering disciplines. In this paper, we argue for design thinking to be recognized as a foundational science for engineering alongside Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
... Studies on speech imitation report different types of human imitation behavior such as convergence (mutual adaptation during the course of the interaction) [1], voice disguise (attempt of impersonating someone else's voice) [2], [3], or mere imitation (simple mimicry [4], shadowing [5], [6]). On the one hand, these behaviors may be defined as different in so far as they depend on factors like contexts of production [7] or imitator's intention [8]. On the other hand, they share a major common trait, namely their qualification as imitative speech behavior: the speaker's production must sound similar to its model, whatever imitation characteristics are used. ...
Studies on professional impersonators and naïve speakers has underlined that speech imitation proficiency varies across speakers. Imitation in speech supposes that a speaker succeeds in reproducing specific features of the perceived speech. Because of the inherent variability of human speech behaviors, the question lies open whether different speakers can accurately imitate phonetic features, and more specifically prosodic patterns. This exploratory study proposes to test f0 contours' imitation of 4 sentences originally pronounced by a female speaker, by 4 naïve listeners undertaking 3 different tasks: mere repetition, imitation and exaggeration of the perceived sentences., Two tests were performed: imitated sentences and models were time-warped and objective comparisons were performed using two (dis)similarity measures reported in the literature; a panel of 15 listeners evaluated perceptually the same set of sentences during an AX similarity judgment task. Similarity scores were used to build multiple rankings in order to observe the correlation between the two tests' rankings and to evaluate prosodic imitation proficiency across speakers/listeners. This research has implication for L2 phonetic correction using the Verbo-Tonal Method, which requires excellent prosodic awareness and control by the teacher in the production of lexicalized and delexicalized sentences.
... Serge Brin e Larry Page, inventori di Google, prevedono di dotare il loro motore di ricerca di un'intelligenza artificiale, una HAL-like machine 2 connessa direttamente al cervello, considerando il cervello come «un computer antiquato che ha bisogno di un processore più veloce e un più grande hard drive» (Brin e Page, 2004). L'ampliamento delle dimensioni cerebrali non sembra si stia verificando in termini fisiologici, ma potrebbe essere possibile grazie all'uso di nuove modalità sensoriali e di nuovi " actuators " , come il BCI, che porterebbero ad una intelligenza umana che si evolve verso una rappresentazione sempre più sofisticata ed esterna (Donald, 1991). La capacità di visualizzare le azioni e di produrre onde cerebrali che permettono il movimento di strumenti esterni all'uomo, non è più solo terra fertile per narrazioni fantascientifiche 3 , ma una realtà che richiede grandi cambiamenti cognitivi che sembrano spostare l'ago della bilancia delle abilità cognitive da quelle verbali a quelle non verbali. ...
Caratteristica principale del cervello è la plasticità neuronale che permette a tale struttura anatomica di dare risposte funzionali adattive alle spinte ambientali, creando fenotipi cerebrali diversi attraverso una rete di connessioni e cablaggi cerebrali che sono ereditati non genicamente, ma epigeneticamnete attraverso l'apprendimento sociale. Quali sono i cambiamenti che subisce il cervello umano nell'Era Digitale? Quali risvolti nelle abilità cognitive superiori? Quale impatto hanno le tecnologie digitali sulla literacy? Queste sono le domande alle quali il presente lavoro intende dare delle risposte. PAROLE CHIAVE Era digitale, Nuove tecnologie, Evoluzione cerebrale, Branching literacy.
Abstract One of the main characteristics of the brain is that of neural plasticity, which allows this anatomical structure to give functional adaptive responses to environmental stimuli. This is achieved via the creation of different cerebral phenotypes from a network of connections and cerebral wiring that are inheritable, not genetically but epigenetically, through social learning. So what changes is the brain undergoing in the Digital Age? What are the implications for higher-order cognitive skills? What impact do digital technologies have on literacy? These are the questions that this work seeks to address.
... More broadly, such an investigation calls for a reexamination of the skills, habits, and understandings young people need to become productive and constructive members of society, and about how this collection of " things worth knowing " are organized and constituted in the educational process. The traditional disciplines (e.g., mathematics, history, science, and language arts) evolved to parse the intellectual landscape of the Middle Ages (Donald 1991), and shaped the school curriculum in the nineteenth century. Indeed, part of Dewey's (1915) critique of schooling was that this traditional organization of knowledge was misaligned with the social and cultural realities of the industrial era. ...
The theory of pedagogical praxis begins with the premise that information technologies make it easier for students to become active participants in the life of their community – and that professional practices such as architecture, mediation, and journalism can provide constructive models for helping students learn from such experiences. In this vision, new technology reinvigorates Dewey's(1915)idea of linking school with society. Technology builds a bridge that allows young people to participate in the learning practices of professionals; in the process they develop epistemological frameworks that organize the skills, habits, and understandings they need to thrive in a complex, post-industrial society. While further work needs to be done to explore the processes through which such learning can take place, studies suggest that this may be a productive avenue for continuing study. This paper presents an overview of the theories and methods that inform such work.
... The term toolforthought marks both the difficult ontological shift and the resulting ontological dissonance that may characterize the advent of virtual culture. Donald (1997) describes the process through which technology and human cognition have co-evolved as a " tight iterative loop " (p. 737). ...
... Some are surely encoded in prototypical stories (Nelson, 1996). Others in direct event memories (Donald, 1991; Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986). Some are reduced to heuristic " rules of thumb, " or sayings or maxims. ...
This paper looks at a central question in educational games: how do the things players do in a game help them do other things in the world outside of the game? The paper frames the problem in both personal and literary terms, and then proposes a particular theoretical perspective on the issue. Empirical data and studies of computer games that use, explore, and expand this theory are presented; but the larger goal of the paper is not to argue for one particular theory. Rather, the paper provides an example of a broader class of theories that examine learning as simultaneously symbolic and situated, and makes the case that theories of this kind are needed to develop to study learning that happens in games.
... Professional practices are socially and economically privileged, but pedagogical praxis suggests that any community of practice has such a frame. Just as communities of practice in the world should not be a priori more or less valuable than those in the academy—including the traditional disciplines such as mathematics, history, science, and language arts, which evolved to parse the intellectual landscape of the Middle Ages, and shaped the school curriculum in the 19 th century (Donald, 1991)—so communities with economic power and social prestige should not necessarily be more privileged than other communities of practice in thinking about pedagogical ends. Pedagogical praxis suggests that we have an opportunity to reorganize the educational landscape around a fundamental question: Which epistemic frames should students develop to become fully actualized and empowered citizens in a postindustrial society? ...
Multiculturalism is an essential tool for democratic citizenship in a world made ever more closely in- terconnected by information technologies. In this paper, I propose a model for progressive multicultural education in the computer age. I begin by describing the Pragmatic Progressive model of learning implicit in Dewey's writing on education. I then discuss two revisions to the model in light of techno- logical developments and theoretical work over the last few decades. Taken together, these revisions suggest that we might profitably revisit—and revise—Dewey's ideas in the post-industrial era. I bring these ideas together to describe a theory of pedagogical praxis that offers an opportunity to move from multiculturalism to multisubculturalism: a view of education that focuses on diverse educational goals rather than diverse pathways to a single pedagogical end—and thus a view of learning more suited to the diverse ways of thinking and living that characterize our increasingly integrated world.
We present and contrast two accounts of cooperative communication, both based on Active Inference, a framework that unifies biological and cognitive processes. The mental alignment account, defended in Vasil et al., takes the function of cooperative communication to be the alignment of the interlocutor's mental states, and cooperative communicative behavior to be driven by an evolutionarily selected adaptive prior belief favoring the selection of action policies that promote such an alignment. We argue that the mental alignment account should be rejected because it neglects the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication, which skews its view of the dynamics of communicative interaction. We introduce our own conception of cooperative communication, inspired by a more radical ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. Cooperative communication, on our ecological conception, serves to guide and constrain the dynamics of the cooperative interaction via the construction and restructuring of shared fields of affordances, in order to reach the local goals of the joint actions in which episodes of cooperative communication are embedded. We argue that our ecological conception provides a better theoretical standpoint to account for the action-oriented nature of cooperative communication in the active inference framework.
Remembering the past through conversations with others is a uniquely human endeavor. Conversational remembering consists of specific dynamics and can lead to mnemonic outcomes. While conversational dynamics refer to the interactive processes (e.g., the roles speakers and listeners may undertake during the conversation) shaping collaborative remembering, conversational outcomes are about the mnemonic and functional consequences (e.g., forging social bonds) of those processes. Thus, the aim of the present article is to introduce the reader to key concepts and paradigms that have been rigorously developed to empirically investigate the dynamics and outcomes of conversational remembering in cognitive research. The collected review and empirical articles gathered in this topic provide the state‐of‐the‐art in the field.
The main of this paper is to tissue considerations about the prominence of the emergence of a socially mediatorial conducts system by mean of a symbolic communicator system to the viability of human species. These considerations will be mainly approached concerning the hypothesis developed by Norbert Elias in Symbol Theory, where the enaction of a social
life is understood as one of principal conditions that enabled our species to succeed levels of sustentability. It is put together with this hypothesis, increasing the reader's insights and making a more profound study of this matter, a search developed by Peter Allen about evolutionary viability of mathematically shaped systems. In our comprehension, these considerations also get importance because they forward for the study of constitutive elements of civilizing and decivilizing processes, favouring the understanding about how these processes enact and interfere each other.
If a theory of concept composition aspires to psychological plausibility, it may first need to address several preliminary issues associated with naturally occurring human concepts: content variability, multiple representational forms, and pragmatic constraints. Not only do these issues constitute a significant challenge for explaining individual concepts, they pose an even more formidable challenge for explaining concept compositions. How do concepts combine as their content changes, as different representational forms become active, and as pragmatic constraints shape processing? Arguably, concepts are most ubiquitous and important in compositions, relative to when they occur in isolation. Furthermore, entering into compositions may play central roles in producing the changes in content, form, and pragmatic relevance observed for individual concepts. Developing a theory of concept composition that embraces and illuminates these issues would not only constitute a significant contribution to the study of concepts, it would provide insight into the nature of human cognition.
Following Wolfgang Iser’s studies, literary criticism could no longer avoid a confrontation with the phenomenology of the act of reading. This has led the analysis of a literary text towards new researches regarding the reader’s response theory. In particular, it is impossible to define the field of literary investigation, its coordinates and characteristics, without considering the anthropological dimention which defines the epistemological nature of literature itself. We propose in this study a new approach that we call “neurohermeneutic approach”. Unlike an analytical or descriptive approach, the neurohermeneutic approach investigates broth the relations that the reader’s mind establishes with the text figurations and how these figurations stimulates the reader’s mind in that inexhaustible, always new and surprising act of the reading.
A partire dagli studi di Wolfgang Iser, la riflessione critica non ha più potuto evitare il confronto con la fenomenologia dell’atto della lettura, e questo ha condotto l’analisi del testo fino alle recenti ricerche in merito alla reader’s response theory. Soprattutto risulta ormai impossibile definire il campo di indagine letterario, le sue caratteristiche e coordinate, a prescindere da un affondo nella dimensione antropologica che definisce la natura epistemologica della letteratura stessa. Proponiamo in questo studio un nuovo approccio che definiamo “neuroermeneutico” e che, a differenza di un approccio analitico o descrittivo, indaga sia le relazioni che la mente del lettore instaura con le figurazioni del testo, sia come queste figurazioni sollecitino la mente del lettore in quell’atto inesauribile, sempre nuovo e sorprendente, della lettura.
The article aims at discussing a more integrating approach on learning. The proposal is to discuss learning as a continuum of processes and tacit knowledge, based on association and extraction of environmental regularities, which are made explicit through the intervention of deliberate processes of representation change and restructuring. The issue is also discussed in the context of formal schooling.
In this paper – which also serves as an introduction to this special issue of Hunter Gatherer Research – we concentrate on a number of aspects relevant to the relationships between archaeology and narratives, and also to the theoretical and methodological challenges of research involving hunting and gathering societies. We focus on the 'narrative turn', which became influential across a range of disciplines due to the shift it introduced from a story being the sole focus of analysis to 'the lamp by which other things are seen' (Kreiswirth 1994:62). Working with a narrative approach, we consider how archaeologists have framed the relationship between hunting and gathering people and their environments, and in contrast, discuss the ways that contemporary Indigenous people themselves explain these relationships and the importance of narrative in understanding such relationships. Further, we critically discuss the way narrative or storytelling has been positioned in human cognitive evolution and in establishing human 'uniqueness', highlighting some problematic ongoing trends in Western scholarship. these examples led us to question the relationship between knowledge, myth and reality, particularly in the context of the relationship between the Western academy and Indigenous knowledge. We close this paper by drawing together the implications for narratives of human evolution and hunter-gatherer archaeology. even though, or perhaps because, a narrative approach challenges the status quo we find that it offers many advantages to better understand the past and also to enhance reflexivity in the present.
In this paper we study the written narratives used by 54 third- and seventh graders in elementary schools with different socio-educational characteristics in Northern Patagonia, Argentina, when writing individually, on paper, and during class, a text of their choice. We aim to capture the various ways in which these students solve the narrative production, considering the adjustment to specific prescriptions for written language and to conventional features of narrative structure, as of the lexicogrammatical choices according to grammar and genre. We categorized the 54 texts according to three linguistic levels: textual (unit of analysis: text), lexicogrammatical, and morpho-orthographic (unit of analysis: word). We applied diverse techniques of Multivariate Descriptive Statistics, in order to capture associations between categories in each linguistic level and childrens grade/school. Results showed socio-educational trends at the textual and morpho-orthographic levels, and stilistic patterns at the lexicogrammatical level, related to socio-cultural traits. In sum, these results account for a variety of degrees and ways of appropriating narrative writing, which emerge from the double perspective of adjustment to prescriptions, as well as exploration and exploitation of a range of options.
English variant of the last-year paper (http://www.ekmair.ukma.edu.ua/bitstream/handle/123456789/6912/Korol_Hobekli_Tepe.pdf)
«This publication covers the specific phenomenon of monumental structures in such Pre-Pottery communities as Göbekli Tepe (Anatolia Region, X-IX millennium B.C.) and Norte Chico (Central Peru, IV-III millennium B.C.). The discovery of the above-mentioned sites has altered the existing viewpoints on civilization processes, therefore this publication is a step towards seeking new answers.
Of all the key approaches mentioned in this publication, the author advocates the concept of communicational network as a driving force in complex societies. Transregional intercultural exchange of information during ritual feasts and religious practices in similar monumental sanctuaries appears to be a plausible incentive to innovation and, in the end, to civilization»
While it has been argued that addiction is not a unified concept (Karasaki, Fraser, Moore, and Dietze, 2013), perhaps the most widely used definition by medical professionals and addiction researchers is drawn from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM). This manual has undergone numerous revisions that reflect changes in how addiction is defined and understood. Drawing on the current DSM criteria (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), for the purpose of this chapter the term ‘addiction’ will connote problematic and compulsive engagement in an activity. The activity to which one is addicted may be drug use, and the harms may be apparent.1 However, the activity may be something less stigmatized such as work, sex, internet use, or eating,2 and (even in the case of drug use) it may be more difficult in some cases to decipher the degree to which the compulsion is problematic or ‘harmful’.
In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition
theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet.
From the mid-1990s, many US firms began outsourcing formerly internal activities, while academics like J. Brian Quinn of Dartmouth asserted that a firm should develop world-class capabilities for core capabilities but seek world-class outsiders to accomplish everything else. First, parts manufacturing, then more knowledge-based tasks, and finally innovation itself were outsourced, in search of strategic advantage (Quinn, 1999, 2000; Quinn and Hilmer, 1994). Displacing the long trend of internalized functions for greater control that began in the nineteenth century (Chandler, 1977), increasing externalization of noncore activities has characterized the twenty-first century.
This chapter presents the hypothesis that verbal language originated in prehistoric ceremonials. The hypothesis is an application of cultural linguistics, a theory which synthesizes linguistic anthropology and cognitive linguistics (Palmer 1996; Sharifian 2011 and this volume). Duranti (2003, p. 342) has noted that the evolution of language is one of two topics, the other being the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that are ‘a must’ in introductory books on language and culture. Hence a cultural linguistic hypothesis for the emergence of verbal language should come as no surprise. The hypothesis is relatively elaborate compared to most other such proposals as befits the complexity and uniqueness of human speech by comparison to the verbal communications of non-human primates. As we present our origin story, we write in the declarative mood and simple past tense, as though it were a known fact that verbal language emerged as we theorize it did. Just as historians have their ‘historical present’, we have our ‘hypothetical past’. The device will avoid a great many instances of ‘would have’, ‘could have’, ‘might have’, and similar hedges. The reader should remain aware that our story is a hypothesis, but one that takes into account current archaeology and linguistic science.
Human evolution is marked by the emergence of a special kind of social–cognitive process, unique to hominids: distributed cognition, performed in mind-sharing cultures. Human social groups are more cognitively complex than others, but, at the time of our emergence as a species, human social groups were not necessarily larger in population than their predecessors. The increased complexity of their cognitive system was inherent, not so much in group size, but in the nature of the cooperative, interactive social cognitive processes that apparently characterized species Homo from the outset.
In our 2008 chapter of this handbook, we included a large selection or verbatim quotes from Bowlby's work in an attempt to capture the essence of his views on the internal working model construct. In this revised chapter, we begin with a much briefer summary of Bowlby's major IWM postulates folowed by a brief discussion of their fit with developmental research on event memory. Our primary focus, however, is on IWM-relevant neuroimagining research that has proliferated in the last 20 years. This literature reveals that Bowlby was remarkably prescient in his claim that the human brain constructs working models in a more than metaphoric sense. We conclude with reflections on ways in which neuroimaging research can affirm, expand, and clarify our thinking about IWMs in attachment relationships,
As children move from infancy through early childhood, their social and emotional competence forms the underpinnings of their mental health. Infant and early childhood mental health and development shape this chapter, which integrates research in the biology of social emotional development, its behavioral manifestations, and the importance of social relationships for its development. This chapter discusses some developmental milestones (e.g., object permanence and behavior inhibition) which support social and emotional development in the first years of life, which the infant acquires at a very early stage, beginning almost immediately after birth with parent-child bonding. Temperamental factors, the constitutional characteristics which do not change as a result of experience, are also addressed. Following the development of a sense of self, the child develops a rudimentary theory of mind as he or she encounters evidence that different people have different feelings and thoughts. In recent years, empirical research has suggested that concern for others, previously thought to emerge only during the second year, may already be present in the first year of life.
Culture evolves, not just in the trivial sense that cultures change over time, but also in the strong sense that such change is governed by Darwinian principles. Both biological and cultural evolution are essentially cumulative selection processes in which information (whether genetic or cultural) is sieved, retained and then transmitted to the next generation. In both domains such a process will result in recognizable lineages and tree-like phylogenies so characteristic of Darwinian evolution. Because a principle of inheritance (i.e., faithful replication of information) holds in both domains, we may trace back particular transmission histories and identify the forces that influenced them. The idea that culture evolves is quite old, but only in recent years there has been a serious effort to turn this idea into science. This article offers a concise analysis of how a rudimentary idea gradually evolved into a thriving research program.
Since Margaret Mead's field studies in the South Pacific a century ago, there has been the tacit understanding that as culture varies, so too must the socialization of children to become competent culture users and bearers. More recently, the work of anthropologists has been mined to find broader patterns that may be common to childhood across a range of societies. One improbable commonality has been the tolerance, even encouragement, of toddler behavior that is patently risky, such as playing with or attempting to use a sharp-edged tool. This laissez faire approach to socialization follows from a reliance on children as "self-initiated learners." In this article, the ethnographic literature that shows why children are encouraged to learn without prompting or guidance and how that happens is reviewed.
This chapter presents a generic change model based on the Neo-Piagetian/Neo-Eriksonian one that I have developed. It helps in understanding other step models of various psychological phenomena by showing their consistency with this one. It helps by indicating generic change processes applicable even to nonliving systems. Some of the topics referred to in this chapter with respect to the present generic change model include readiness for change, information processing, discovery learning, open-ended change, executive function, psychotherapy, education, evolution, social drivers, and causality itself (e.g., genes/epigenesis, causal graphs).
This series of books examines a single question: ‘Will Late Modernity be replaced by a social formation that could be called Morphogenic Society?’ Social theorists of different persuasions have accepted that ‘morphogenesis’ has rapidly increased from the last decades of the Twentieth century (and some have presumed this means that processes of ‘morphostasis’ are in proportionate decline). Indeed, this view has been elevated to the status of ‘acceleration theory’ (Rosa 2003; Rosa and Scheuerman 2009), which was seriously critiqued in our last Volume 2014). Fundamentally, the proposition about the possible advent of a (global) Morphogenic Society concerns the transformation of a social formation. It is not synonymous with a tally of amounts or speed of social changes, always supposing the quantum of change could be counted and that ‘speed’ could be measured and be meaningful without reference to directionality. Instead and by definition, any social formation has a particular relational organization between its parts. No metrics putatively gauging the amount of change can capture this form of organization because empiricism necessarily ignores that which crucially differentiates one social formation from another. Yet, that is precisely our concern.
Infant vocal babbling has been assumed to be a speech-based phenomenon that reflects the maturation of the articulatory apparatus responsible for spoken language production. Manual babbling has now been reported to occur in deaf children exposed to signed languages from birth. The similarities between manual and vocal babbling suggest that babbling is a product of an amodal, brain-based language capacity under maturational control, in which phonetic and syllabic units are produced by the infant as a first step toward building a mature linguistic system. Contrary to prevailing accounts of the neurological basis of babbling in language ontogeny, the speech modality is not critical in babbling. Rather, babbling is tied to the abstract linguistic structure of language and to an expressive capacity capable of processing different types of signals (signed or spoken).
Although objects in visual mental images may seem to appear all of a piece, when the time to form images is measured this
introspection is revealed to be incorrect; objects in images are constructed a part at a time. Studies with split-brain patients
and normal subjects reveal that two classes of processes are used to form images--ones that activate stored memories of the
appearances of parts and ones that arrange parts into the proper configuration. Some of the processes used to arrange parts
are more effective in the left cerebral hemisphere and some are more effective in the right cerebral hemisphere; the notion
that mental images are the product of right hemisphere activity is an oversimplification.
We have argued that dynamically defined articulatory gestures are the appropriate units to serve as the atoms of phonological representation. Gestures are a natural unit, not only because they involve task-oriented movements of the articulators, but because they arguably emerge as prelinguistic discrete units of action in infants. The use of gestures, rather than constellations of gestures as in Root nodes, as basic units of description makes it possible to characterise a variety of language patterns in which gestural organisation varies. Such patterns range from the misorderings of disordered speech through phonological rules involving gestural overlap and deletion to historical changes in which the overlap of gestures provides a crucial explanatory element.
Gestures can participate in language patterns involving overlap because they are spatiotemporal in nature and therefore have internal duration. In addition, gestures differ from current theories of feature geometry by including the constriction degree as an inherent part of the gesture. Since the gestural constrictions occur in the vocal tract, which can be charactensed in terms of tube geometry, all the levels of the vocal tract will be constricted, leading to a constriction degree hierarchy. The values of the constriction degree at each higher level node in the hierarchy can be predicted on the basis of the percolation principles and tube geometry. In this way, the use of gestures as atoms can be reconciled with the use of Constriction degree at various levels in the vocal tract (or feature geometry) hierarchy.
The phonological notation developed for the gestural approach might usefully be incorporated, in whole or in part, into other phonologies. Five components of the notation were discussed, all derived from the basic premise that gestures are the primitive phonological unit, organised into gestural scores. These components include (1) constriction degree as a subordinate of the articulator node and (2) stiffness (duration) as a subordinate of the articulator node. That is, both CD and duration are inherent to the gesture. The gestures are arranged in gestural scores using (3) articulatory tiers, with (4) the relevant geometry (articulatory, tube or feature) indicated to the left of the score and (5) structural information above the score, if desired. Association lines can also be used to indicate how the gestures are combined into phonological units. Thus, gestures can serve both as characterisations of articulatory movement data and as the atoms of phonological representation.
Theoretical considerations and psycholinguistic studies have alternately provided criticism and support for the proposal that
semantic and grammatical functions are distinct subprocesses within the language domain. Neurobiological evidence concerning
this hypothesis was sought by (1) comparing, in normal adults, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by words that
provide primarily semantic information (open class) and grammatical information (closed class) and (2) comparing the effects
of the altered early language experience of congenitaily deaf subjects on ERPs to open and closed class words. In normal-hearing
adults, the different word types elicited qualitatively different ERPs that were compatible with the hypothesized different
roles of the word classes in language processing. In addition, where as ERP indices of semantic processing were virtually
identical in deaf and hearing subjects, those linked to grammatical processes were markedly different in deaf and hearing
subjects. The results suggest that nonidentical neural systems with different developmental vulnerabilities mediate these
different aspects of language. More generally, these results provide neurobiological support for the distinction between semantic
and gram-matical functions.
The question of whether there is a fundamental discontinuity between humans and other primates is discussed in relation to the predominantly human pattern of right-handedness and the left-cerebral representation of language. Both phenomena may go back at least to Homo habilis, 2-3 million years ago. However, a distinctively human mode of cognitive representation may not have emerged until later, beginning with H. erectus and the Acheulean tool culture about 1.5 million years ago and culminating with H. sapiens sapiens and rapid, flexible speech in the last 200,000 years. It is suggested that this mode is characterized by generativity, with multipart representations formed from elementary canonical parts (e.g., phonemes in speech, geons in visual perception). Generativity may be uniquely human and associated with the left-cerebral hemisphere. An alternative, analogue mode of representation, shared with other species, is associated with the right hemisphere in humans.
Observers in both literate and preliterate cultures chose the predicted emotion for photographs of the face, although agreement
was higher in the literate samples. These findings suggest that the pan-cultural element in facial displays of emotion is
the association between facial muscular movements and discrete primary emotions, although cultures may still differ in what
evokes an emotion, in rules for controlling the display of emotion, and in behavioral consequences.
A case of paroxysmal aphasia is reported. Aphasic spells occurred, in this patient, without modification in consciousness and without involvement of behaviors others than those related to oral and written speech and language. Longer spells successively recapitulated the clinical pictures of global, Wernicke's, conduction, and amnestic aphasia. Besides aphasiological evaluations, neurological, psychometrical, electroencephalographical, and CT-scan documents were obtained. The discussion bears on four main points: the linguistic characteristics of paroxysmal aphasia as compared to those of aphasias of other etiologies; Pierre Marie's oneness doctrine of aphasia; the mutual relationships of language and thought (in aphasia); the affective experience lived by one with severe aphasia, with special reference to the notion of anosognosia.