•  15
    Spelke's book defends two hypotheses about human cognition. First, humans and other species are endowed with core knowledge systems—innate computational structures that use abstract concepts to represent various aspects of the environment. Second, humans, and only humans, acquire natural languages, whose syntax and compositional semantics allow them to construct new concepts by combining the outputs of core systems. We endorse the first hypothesis but doubt that language acquisition alone explai…Read more
  •  15
    The co-evolution of cooperation and communication: Alternative accounts
    with Nima Mussavifard
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 46. 2023.
    We challenge the proposal that partner-choice ecology explains the evolutionary emergence of ostensive communication in humans. The good fit between these domains might be because of the opposite relation (ostensive communication promotes the evolution of cooperation) or because of the dependence of both these human-specific traits on a more ancient contributor to human cognitive evolution: the use of technology.
  •  2
  •  9
    A Short History of Theories of Intuitive Theories
    with Johannes B. Mahr
    In Judit Gervain, Gergely Csibra & Kristóf Kovács (eds.), A Life in Cognition: Studies in Cognitive Science in Honor of Csaba Pléh, Springer Verlag. pp. 219-232. 2021.
    Intuitive theories are sets of integrated concepts and causal laws that people adopt to comprehend, explain, and predict certain phenomena they encounter in the world. These theories are ‘intuitive’ because they are thought to drive our intuitions about how the physical and biological world, the mental life of people, and the society we live in work, without meeting the standards of explicit scientific theorizing. The proposal that people adopt such theories has been around at least since the 19…Read more
  •  4
    A Life in Cognition: Studies in Cognitive Science in Honor of Csaba Pléh (edited book)
    with Judit Gervain and Kristóf Kovács
    Springer Verlag. 2021.
    This edited book offers a broad selection of interdisciplinary studies within cognitive science. The book illustrates and documents how cognitive science offers a unifying framework for the interaction of fields of study focusing on the human mind from linguistics and philosophy to psychology and the history of science. A selection of renowned contributors provides authoritative historical, theoretical and empirical perspectives on more than six decades of research with a special focus on the pr…Read more
  •  6
    Twelve-month-olds disambiguate new words using mutual-exclusivity inferences
    with Barbara Pomiechowska, Gábor Bródy, and Teodora Gliga
    Cognition 213 (C): 104691. 2021.
  •  6
    The social construction of the cultural mind
    with György Gergely
    Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies / Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systemsinteraction Studies 6 (3): 463-481. 2005.
    How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-…Read more
  •  1
    The past is undeniably special for human beings. To a large extent, both individuals and collectives define themselves through history. Moreover, humans seem to have a special way of cognitively representing the past: episodic memory. As opposed to other ways of representing knowledge, remembering the past in episodic memory brings with it the ability to become a witness. Episodic memory allows us to determine what of our knowledge about the past comes from our own experience and thereby what pa…Read more
  •  1
    Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1 (41). 2018.
    Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, autonoetic character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentati…Read more
  • Naturalistic Approaches to Culture (edited book)
    Akademiai. 2014.
  •  10
    Giving and taking: Representational building blocks of active resource-transfer events in human infants
    with Denis Tatone and Alessandra Geraci
    Cognition 137 (C): 47-62. 2015.
  •  2
    Learning in and about opaque worlds
    with Denis Tatone
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38. 2015.
  •  33
    What is it to remember?
    with Johannes B. Mahr
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
    In response to the commentaries, we clarify and defend our characterization of both the nature and function of episodic memory. Regarding the nature of episodic memory, we extend the distinction between event and episodic memory and discuss the relational role of episodic memory. We also address arguments against our characterization of autonoesis and argue that, while self-referential, it needs to be distinguished from an agentive notion of self. Regarding the function of episodic memory, we re…Read more
  •  9
    One‐year‐old infants use teleological representations of actions productively
    with Michael Ramscar, Daniel Yarlett, Shimon Edelman, Nathan Intrator, Szilvia Bıró, Orsolya Koós, György Gergely, Holk Cruse, and Michael D. Lee
    Cognitive Science 27 (1): 111-133. 2003.
    Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen…Read more
  •  87
    Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory
    with Johannes B. Mahr
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41. 2018.
    Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential,autonoeticcharacter. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentation…Read more
  •  17
    The social construction of the cultural mind: Imitative learning as a mechanism of human pedagogy
    with György Gergely
    Interaction Studies 6 (3): 463-481. 2005.
  •  59
    Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age
    with György Gergely, Zoltán Nádasdy, and Szilvia Bíró
    Cognition 56 (2): 165-193. 1995.
  •  43
    The social construction of the cultural mind: Imitative learning as a mechanism of human pedagogy
    with György Gergely
    Interaction Studies 6 (3): 463-481. 2005.
    How does cultural knowledge shape the development of human minds and, conversely, what kind of species-specific social-cognitive mechanisms have evolved to support the intergenerational reproduction of cultural knowledge? We critically examine current theories proposing a human-specific drive to identify with and imitate conspecifics as the evolutionary mechanism underlying cultural learning. We summarize new data demonstrating the selective interpretive nature of imitative learning in 14-month-…Read more
  •  21
    Teleological reasoning in infancy: The infant's naive theory of rational action
    with György Gergely
    Cognition 63 (2): 227-233. 1997.
  •  79
    A few reasons why we don't share Tomasello et al.'s intuitions about sharing
    with György Gergely
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (5): 701-702. 2005.
    Tomasello et al.'s two prerequisites, we argue, are not sufficient to explain the emergence of Joint Collaboration. An adequate account must include the human-specific capacity to communicate relevant information (that may have initially evolved to ensure efficient cultural learning). This, together with understanding intentional actions, does provide sufficient preconditions for Joint Collaboration without the need to postulate a primary human motive to share others' psychological states.
  •  18
    Teleological reasoning in infancy: The infant's naive theory of rational action
    with György Gergely
    Cognition 63 (2): 227-233. 1997.
  •  41
    Seeing is not believing
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1): 117-118. 1998.
    Heyes's proposed study for testing whether chimpanzees have a theory of mind is too strong because it requires that the animals apply mental concepts to the interpretation of both their own experiences and the behaviours of others, and too weak because dispositional rather than representational understanding of “ seeing ” is sufficient to pass it
  •  21
  •  21
    On the dangers of oversimulation
    with György Gergely
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (1): 127-128. 1996.
    Barresi & Moore fail to provide a satisfactory account for the development of social understanding because of (1) their ambiguous characterization of the relationship between the intentional schema and shared intentional activities, (2) their underestimation of the representational capacities of infants, and (3) their overreliance on the simulationist assumption that understanding others is tantamount to sharing their experience.
  •  108
    Recognizing communicative intentions in infancy
    Mind and Language 25 (2): 141-168. 2010.
    I make three related proposals concerning the development of receptive communication in human infants. First, I propose that the presence of communicative intentions can be recognized in others' behaviour before the content of these intentions is accessed or inferred. Second, I claim that such recognition can be achieved by decoding specialized ostensive signals. Third, I argue on empirical bases that, by decoding ostensive signals, human infants are capable of recognizing communicative intentio…Read more
  •  42
    One‐year‐old infants use teleological representations of actions productively
    with Szilvia Bíró, Orsolya Koós, and György Gergely
    Cognitive Science 27 (1): 111-133. 2003.
    Two experiments investigated whether infants represent goal‐directed actions of others in a way that allows them to draw inferences to unobserved states of affairs (such as unseen goal states or occluded obstacles). We measured looking times to assess violation of infants' expectations upon perceiving either a change in the actions of computer‐animated figures or in the context of such actions. The first experiment tested whether infants would attribute a goal to an action that they had not seen…Read more