2003
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0017.00217
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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… Show more

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Cited by 433 publications
(175 citation statements)
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References 57 publications
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“…In high infant mortality environments selection on those capacities would have been especially strong. Hrdy (122) links those circumstance to the evolution in our lineage of motivations and capacities for intersubjective engagement that M. Tomasello and colleagues (124,125) identify as the foundation for human prosociality.…”
Section: Back To Grandmothersmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In high infant mortality environments selection on those capacities would have been especially strong. Hrdy (122) links those circumstance to the evolution in our lineage of motivations and capacities for intersubjective engagement that M. Tomasello and colleagues (124,125) identify as the foundation for human prosociality.…”
Section: Back To Grandmothersmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…However, the account complements several prior theories of human distinctiveness, notably theories based in social interaction (2,3,7,10,47), as well as reproduction and childrearing (48)(49)(50)(51). Altricial neonates require substantial parental attention.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 71%
“…Numerous authors have theorized about possible factors that may have given rise to humans' powerful cognitive systems. These theorized factors include social learning and interaction (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10), diet (11)(12)(13), relational/analogical abilities (14), language (15,16), the rise of female food gathering (17), hunting (18,19), a constellation of traits leading to improved causal reasoning (20), and general elaboration of abilities found in primates (21,22). Although these theories often make testable predictions about the relationship between brain size and other factors, they…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…cognitive skills would not differ very much-perhaps a little, but not very much-from those of other great apes (ref. 4, p. 121)". Therefore, there is an important distinction between trying to understand how cumulative culture has influenced the collective cognition of our species and trying to understand how humans became such prolifically cultural beings in the first place.…”
Section: What Makes Human Cognition Unique?mentioning
confidence: 99%