Mixing Memory has picked The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition by Michael Tomasello for an online reading group. Chris has posted a very nice introduction to the issues that places the Tomasello thesis in the context of Evolutionary Psychology, Chomski's theory about universal grammar, and the concept of theory-of-mind. In short, Tomasello presents an alternative to the view that our brains evolved to possess a highly specialized language organ. Instead, by contrasting human theory-of-mind abilities with those of primates and autistic children, we can see that the broad-based cognitive mechanisms that provide for cultural learning generally can be used specifically to promote langauge learning in humans. This view is controversial, but worthy of attenation and, I suspect, on the right track.

Mixing Memory | Introduction and Context

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