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Learning through others. Natural Pedagogy and Mindreading: A possible cooperation
Abstract
The theory of natural pedagogy provides a model of social learning based on the direct communicative ostensive relation and aimed to the transfer of generic cultural knowledge. The pedagogical transmission of information originates from an explicit manifestation of teaching made by knowledgeable adults, who are naturally inclined
to manifestly provide their cultural baggage to naïve conspecifics. The domain of transferable knowledge encompasses artifact functions, novel means actions, first words, gestural symbols, social practices, and rituals. This teaching process can be fast and efficient in virtue of a natural inclination possessed by infants to seek information and decode signals of ostensive communication. In this sense, the natural pedagogy represents, as the two proponents – György Gergey and Gergely Csibra – claim, «a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledge able to ignorant conspecifics». This
book suggests that natural pedagogy utilises early belief attribution competences, which are employed by infants in a variety of contexts to approach and navigate the social world. Therefore, the natural pedagogy, in cooperation with the early mindreading system,
may represent one of the most efficient adaptive strategies to firmly create that deep wittgensteinian «nest of propositions» which build cultural shared beliefs structures to be relied upon and followed.
... As extensively argued by many authors (e.g. Jacob 2019b; Helming et al. 2016;Carruthers 2013;Westra 2017;Westra and Carruthers 2017;Kampis, Fogd and Kovács 2017;Loria 2020), one-year-olds prove to be already skilled, genuine mindreaders. If this is the case, the two-systems model cannot account for the ontogenesis of human mindreading: there is no strict dichotomy, as Min-ToM is automatically triggered (i.e. has a property which is typical of Systems 1) but has the conceptual power (typically belonging to System 2) of mature theorizing about the mind. ...
... Notes 5 For an accurate reflection on the relationship between teleology and mindreading, see Loria (2020). 6 For a comprehensive review of the philosophical and experimental literature, see Tomasello (2019). ...
Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini re-connect the psychology of identity with its philosophical roots in this study. They trace the contemporary problem of the self to John Locke and William James’ foundational theories on personal identity. By integrating the philosophy of identity with empirical and neuropsychological research, Marraffa and Meini provide an original synthesis of multidisciplinary conceptions of the self.
The Construction of Interiority considers Chomsky-inspired developmental psychology, Jean Piaget’s constructivism, Lev Vygotskij’s sociocultural perspective on development and John Bowlby’s attachment theory. In this theoretical framework, the book draws on the data of the psychological sciences to reconstruct the trajectory of the self as an atomised ‘I’. Marraffa and Meini link the birth of self-consciousness through the body and emotions to the construction of bounded autobiography. Their combination of philosophy and neuropsychology makes an important contribution to multiple disciplines concerned with personal identity. It provokes new routes to understanding identity and self, personality, and autobiographical memory
We argue that objectivity is acquired by learning to refer to particular situations, that is, by developing episodicity. This contrasts with the widespread idea that genericity is crucial in developing humans’ ability to conceive of an objective world. According to the collective intentionality account, objectivity is acquired by contrasting one’s particular perspective in the “here and now” with a generic group perspective on how things are generally. However, this line of argument rests on confusing two independent notions of genericity: social and worldly genericity. Holding these two notions apart shows that there is no coherent developmental route from episodicity to objectivity via genericity. In effect, the collective intentionality account presupposes objectivity. Alternatively, episodicity may develop by enculturation into the common practice of spatial-indexical use. This ability establishes an initial, socially shared spatiotemporal reference system comprising the basis for objectivity.
What role does children’s trust in communication play in their acquisition of new meanings? To answer, we report two experimental studies (N = 81) testing how three- to four-year-olds interpret the meaning of a novel communicative device when it is used by a malevolent and potentially deceptive informant. Children participated in a hiding game in which they had to find a reward hidden in one of two boxes. In the initial phase of the experiments, a malevolent informant always indicated the location of the empty box using a novel communicative device, either a marker (Study 1), or an arrow (Study 2). During that phase, 3- and 4-year-olds learned to avoid the box indicated by the novel communicative device. In the second phase of the test, the malevolent informant was replaced by a benevolent one. Nevertheless, children did not change their search strategy, and they kept avoiding the box tagged by the novel communicative device as often as when it had been produced by the malevolent informant. These results suggest that during the initial phase, children (i) did not consider the possibility that the malevolent informant might intend to deceive them, and (ii) did not ignore the unfamiliar communicative signal or treat it as irrelevant. Instead, children relied on the unfamiliar communicative signal to locate the empty box’s location. These results suggest that children’s avoidance of the location indicated by an unfamiliar signal is not unambiguous evidence for distrust of such signal. We argue that children’s trust in ostensive communication is likely to extend to unfamiliar communicative means, and that this presumption of trustworthiness plays a central role in children’s acquisition of new meanings.
Recent developmental work demonstrates a range of effects of pedagogical cues on childhood learning. The present work investigates natural pedagogy in informal parent-child play. Preschool-aged children participated in free play and a toy task with a parent in addition to a toy task with an experimenter. Sessions were extensively coded for use of pedagogical cues, such as eye contact and pointing. We present a series of analyses investigating the pedagogical cues that characterized natural pedagogy, how these cues related, and how cues bundled into facets. Implications for future research and determining the validity of these measures of natural pedagogy are discussed.
I have argued for the merits of the view that assumes two basic and initially independent cognitive systems that have evolved as separate adapta- tions to two different kinds of intentional agency that constitute our uniquely human social-cultural environment, which I called instrumental and communicative agency. The two specialized systems of adaptation have distinct representational and inferential properties and input conditions and the entities belonging to their respective domains are only partially overlapping. While all communicative agents are also instrumental agents, the opposite is not the case and when we recognize instrumental agency, we do not automatically attribute communicative intentions or abilities to such agents. Clearly, however, during early development our core concepts of instrumental and communica- tive agency become integrated in intricate ways (see Carey, 2009) through the establish- ment of representations of the numerous shared properties that are possessed by both kinds of agents (such as, for example, their capacity for rational choice of action). Finally, in considering the representational and inferential properties of our human- specific cognitive adaptations to understand teleological versus communicative agency, I have emphasized the qualitative structural differences that characterize both of these systems when compared to their phylogenetically ancient evolutionary roots that we share with our primate ancestors.
