Journal
TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES
Volume 13, Issue 4, Pages 148-153Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2009.01.005
Keywords
-
Funding
- Medical Research Council [G9715587] Funding Source: Medline
- MRC [G9715587] Funding Source: UKRI
- Medical Research Council [G9715587] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call 'natural pedagogy', enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We argue that human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive to ostensive signals that indicate that they are being addressed by communication, (ii) by developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as conveying information that is kind-relevant and generalizable.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available