Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: the cultural intelligence hypothesis.

Abstract

Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world.

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Igor Kagan (Caltech) to Caltech CNS Journal Club

Tots More Socially Cognitive Than Apes

By LAURAN NEERGAARD – Sep 6, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — Toddlers may act up like little apes, but researchers who compared the species concluded a 2-year-old child still has the more sophisticated social learning skills.

In one test, preschoolers who wanted a toy hidden in a trick tube intently copied a scientist's movements to retrieve the prize. Chimps watched the lesson, but then mostly tried to smash or bite open the tube. When it came to simple math, however, the apes seemed to know more than the youngsters, apparently "adding" how many tasty raisins researchers had hidden.

In a novel study, scientists lured 106 chimpanzees, 32 orangutans and 105 toddlers to sit thro ... read more

September 29, 2007

Thanks Igor. De Waal's observation is highly relevant here. It means that a conspecific dependent component of the knowledge transfer could certainly bias the assessment of social cognitive skills in favor of humans, which is a possible confound in the Tomasello study. Moreover, social rank dependency of cultural transfer has been observed in Japanese macaques: "A new case of fish-eating in Japanese macaques: implications for social constraints on the diffusion of feeding innovation." Leca JB, Gunst N, Watanabe K, Huffman MA Am J Primatol 2007, Vol 69, Issue 7, pp 821-8 - Zoltan Nadasdy (Caltech) September 30, 2007 Comment deleted

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Igor Kagan (Caltech) to Neuronal basis of Consciousness

Tots More Socially Cognitive Than Apes

By LAURAN NEERGAARD – Sep 6, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) — Toddlers may act up like little apes, but researchers who compared the species concluded a 2-year-old child still has the more sophisticated social learning skills.

In one test, preschoolers who wanted a toy hidden in a trick tube intently copied a scientist's movements to retrieve the prize. Chimps watched the lesson, but then mostly tried to smash or bite open the tube. When it came to simple math, however, the apes seemed to know more than the youngsters, apparently "adding" how many tasty raisins researchers had hidden.

In a novel study, scientists lured 106 chimpanzees, 32 orangutans and 105 toddlers to sit thro ... read more

September 29, 2007

Thanks Igor. De Waal's observation is highly relevant here. It means that a conspecific dependent component of the knowledge transfer could certainly bias the assessment of social cognitive skills in favor of humans, which is a possible confound in the Tomasello study. Moreover, social rank dependency of cultural transfer has been observed in Japanese macaques: "A new case of fish-eating in Japanese macaques: implications for social constraints on the diffusion of feeding innovation." Leca JB, Gunst N, Watanabe K, Huffman MA Am J Primatol 2007, Vol 69, Issue 7, pp 821-8 - Zoltan Nadasdy (Caltech) September 30, 2007 Comment deleted

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Igor Kagan (Caltech) to Caltech CNS Journal Club

In my (humble) opinion, the conclusions of the study are heavily influenced by authors' (Tomasello and el.) a priory conceptual thinking. Tomasello has been previously advocating the "cultural intelligence" distinction between humans and animals. For example, Tomasello views accumulation of improvements/inventions through the generations as uniquely human (Tomasello 1999 "The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition"). Indeed, there are observations demonstrating that newly acquired knowledge is transferred
between generations in some animal species. I highly recommend Frans De Waal's book "The Ape and the Sushi Master" for many interesting facts and discussions on this and other related topics.

In one of their previous ... read more

September 26, 2007

I agree, that the study was loaded. I would add with sarcasm, to support the importance of using a species-specific set of social interactions instead of the human specific ones, that dolphins, as highly social mammals, would also badly fail on these social tasks :) But seriously, not disputing that social interactions are species specific, I think Tomasello's goal in this study was to identify where apes are standing relative to humans on the scale designed for humans, to elucidate the evolutionary history of human cognitive capacities. I don't think that he is denying that apes have also evolved their specific repertoire of social skills during the last 6 million years. I think this is a fair bias. However, I totally agree that using conspecifics to demonstrate these task ... more - Zoltan Nadasdy (Caltech) September 26, 2007 Comment deleted

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Zoltan Nadasdy (Caltech) to Caltech CNS Journal Club

This study seems to be biased towards the "cultural intelligence" hypothesis.
Nonetheless, it is an ambitious project with very reach data.

Possible confounds:
1) Kids were better instructed and motivated in the social tasks utilizing the human interaction and language. The con-specific task presentation itself might provided an advantage to the children group in every task.
2) In the theory-of-mind experiments the differences between the two actors were clearly defined and necessary. The introduction of the second person did not force the subjects to switch point of view, as it should be, as a critical component of the concept of theory-of-mind.

Minor comments.
The large number of outliers in the h ... read more

September 26, 2007
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