New thinking: the evolution of human cognition

Compiled and edited by Cecilia Heyes and Uta Frith in collaboration with the and All Souls College

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Humans are animals that specialise in thinking and knowing, and our extraordinary cognitive abilities have transformed every aspect of our lives. In contrast with our chimpanzee cousins and Stone Age ancestors, we are complex, political, economic, scientific and artistic creatures, living in a vast range of habitats, many of our own creation. Research on the evolution of human cognition asks what types of thinking make us such peculiar animals, and how has this been generated by evolutionary processes.

New research in this field looks deeper into the evolutionary history of human cognition, and adopts a more multi-disciplinary approach than earlier ‘’. It is informed by comparisons between humans and a range of primate and non-primate species, and integrates findings from anthropology, archaeology, economics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. Using these methods, recent research reveals profound commonalities, as well striking differences, between human and nonhuman minds, and suggests that the evolution of human cognition has been much more gradual and incremental than previously assumed. It accords crucial roles to , techno- social co-evolution and gene-culture co-evolution. These have produced domain-general developmental processes with extraordinary power; power that makes human cognition, and human lives, unique.

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Full contents are listed overleaf…

New thinking: the evolution of human cognition Compiled and edited by Cecilia Heyes and Uta Frith

Introduction: New thinking: the evolution of human cognition; C Heyes

Embodied cognitive evolution and the cerebellum; R Barton

Taking sociality seriously: the structure of multi-dimensional social networks as a source of information for individuals; L Barrett, P Henzi and D Lusseau

The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins; A Whiten and D Erdal

Hominin cognitive evolution: identifying patterns and processes in the fossil and archaeological record; S Shultz, E Nelson and R Dunbar

Language, gesture, skill: the co-evolutionary foundations of language; K Sterelny

The co-evolution of language and emotions; E Jablonka, S Ginsburg and D Dor

Darwinism and cultural change; P Godfrey-Smith

Transmission fidelity is the key to the build-up of cumulative culture; H Lewis and K Laland

Grist and mills: on the cultural origins of cultural learning; C Heyes

Social cognition on the internet: testing constraints on social network size; R Dunbar

The power of possibility: causal learning, counterfactual reasoning, and pretend play; D Buchsbaum, S Bridgers, D Weisberg and A Gopnik

The role of metacognition in human social interactions; C Frith

The economic approach to ‘’; N Robalino and A Robson

New thinking, innateness and inherited representation; N Shea

denotes open access articles, published via EXiS Open Choice