- 17 Mar, 2021
- 0 Comments
- 1 Min Read
human cognition uniqu
The most fundamental cognitive skills involved in processes of cultural creation and learning are those involved in the understanding of persons (sometimes called, misleadingly, ‘theory of mind’). Thus, Tomasello, Kruger, and
Ratner (1993) and Tomasello (1999) argued and presented evidence that a
number of different forms of social and cultural interaction and learning depend fundamentally on the way human individuals understand one another.
When one year old children understand adults’ behavior as intentional and their
perception as attentional (i.e., understand them as intentional agents1
), they are
able to interact with them and to learn from them in some unique ways. When
four-year-olds understand that others have thoughts and beliefs that may differ
from reality (i.e., understand them as mental agents), they are able to engage in
still other types of social and cultural interactions and learning. Although a
number of theorists have proposed that human beings engage in unique forms
of social cognition, the proposal of Tomasello and colleagues is distinguished
by its emphasis on the connection of these skills to culture and cultural learning, including language, and in its emphasis on the primacy of under-standing
persons as intentional agents for processes of human culture – with the understanding of persons as mental agents representing a kind of ‘icing on the cake’.
It may still turn out that some nonhuman pri