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Doctor Michael Tomasello

Lecture Abstract


The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition

Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other primates are not, as evidenced most clearly by the fact that only human cultural traditions accumulate modifications over historical time (the rachet effect). The key adaptation involves individuals coming to understand other individuals as intentional agents like the self. This evolutionarily novel form of social understanding emerges in human ontogeny at around one year of age as infants begin to engage with other persons in various kinds of joint attentional activities. Young children's joint attentional skills then enable them to engage in some uniquely powerful forms of cultural learning, including the acquisition of language and many other conventional skills, and to comprehend their worlds in some uniquely powerful ways involving perspectivally based symbolic representations.


Tomasello, M. (1999). The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Harvard University Press.