Did human language first emerge as songs?
A thought-provoking new paper on the evolutionary emergence of language by Shigeru Miyagawa, Robert C. Berwick, and Kazuo Okanoya: "The emergence of hierarchical structure in human language." Freely
Two articles on human evolution
Two interesting articles in the December 2012 issue of Current Anthropology :
- Michael Tomasello, Alicia P. Melis, Claudio Tennie, Emily Wyman, and Esther Herrmann: “Two Key Steps in the Evolut
The spread of “Correlation does not imply causation”
Daniel Engber's short article at Slate on the success of the misleading formula "correlation does not imply causation" is doubly relevant here: as an example of the epidemiology of a scientific idea,
Paul Harris on How Children Learn from Others
A new book of obvious cognition-and-culture relevance by Paul Harris: Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn from Others (Harvard UP, 2012).
The blurb:
"If children were little scientists
‘New [and polemical] thinking’ on the evolution of human cognition
A Theme Issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B on 'New thinking: the evolution of human cognition' compiled and edited by Cecilia Heyes and Uta Frith, with contributions from,
Dual process theories of language and thinking
A special Issue of Mind and Society (vol 11 (1) June 2012) on “Dual process theories of language and thinking”
"There has been increasing interest in recent years in dual process theories of
Social learning in humans and nonhuman animals
An interesting issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology (2012, Volume 126, Issue 2) on social learning in humans and nonhuman animals.
From the intro:
"The past decade has seen a resurgent,
The Smartphone Psychology Manifesto
In Perspectives on Psychological Science (May 2012 vol. 7), Geoffrey Miller publishes a "Smartphone Psychology Manifesto" (available here) with methodological suggestions for the use of smartphones
Science Magazine’s special issue on Human Conflict
This May 18, Science has a special issue on human conflict, of evolutionary, cognitive and cultural relevance, with contributions from Scott Atran, Christopher Boehm, Samuel Bowles, Frans de Waal,
The social motivation theory of autism
Just out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, "The social motivation theory of autism," an article (available here) by Coralie Chevallier, Gregor Kohls, Vanessa Troiani, Edward S Brodkin, and Robert T
Do infants understand social dominance relations?
Forthcoming in PNAS, a groundbreaking article by Olivier Mascaro and Gergely Csibra investigating the "Representation of stable social dominance relations by human infants" (available here).
Abstr
Tool use, gesture and the evolution of language
A special issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B entitled "From action to language: comparative perspective on primate tool use, gesture and the evolution of human language"
Nick Enfield reviews Hurford’s The Origins of Grammar
In the Times Literary Supplement, Nick Enfield reviews James R. Hurford's new book The Origins of Grammar, Oxford UP, 2011 (a sequel to The Origins of Meaning, Oxford UP, 2007):
"If you could
Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death
A team of mathematicians and phycisists, Alexander M. Petersen, Joel Tenenbaum, Shlomo Havlin, and H. Eugene Stanley, studied the "Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth
Emotion in Eastern and Western Music
Just out in PLoSOne, an article on musical cognition entitled "Expression of Emotion in Eastern and Western Music Mirrors Vocalization" by Daniel Liu Bowling, Janani Sundararajan, Shui'er Han, Dale
The Psychosemantics of Free Riding
Forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and available here, "The Psychosemantics of Free Riding: Dissecting the Architecture of a Moral Concept" by Andrew W. Delton, Leda
The Social Evolution Forum
Peter Turchin (co-author of Secular Cycles [1]) and Michael Hochberg recently launched the Social Evolution Forum (socialevolutionforum.wordpress.com), a web platform dedicated to naturalistic
Learning word meanings at 6 months?
Forthcoming in PNAS, an article by Elika Bergelson and Daniel Swingley arguing that "At 6–9 months, human infants know the meanings of many common nouns" with obvious implications for the study of
Biology of cultural conflict
A new 'Theme Issue' of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences is available online: 'The biology of cultural conflict' compiled and edited by Gregory S. Berns and Scott
It’s All in the Mind, but Whose Mind? The participants, or the experimenter’s?
In PLoS One, an article by Stéphane Doyen, Olivier Klein, Cora-Lise Pichon, and Axel Cleeremans entitled "Behavioral Priming: It's All in the Mind, but Whose Mind?" They begin:
"In their seminal
Early social cognition in three cultural contexts
Coming out of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology An important comparative study on Early social cognition in three cultural
Why are the faces of primates so dramatically different from one another?
UCLA biologists working as "evolutionary detectives" studied the faces of 129 adult male primates from Central and South America, and they offer some answers in research published online Jan. 11, in
Flavor network and the principles of food pairing
In the online and open access Scientific Reports of Nature, a fascinating paper on "Flavor network and the principles of food pairing" by Yong-Yeol Ahn, Sebastian E. Ahnert, James P. Bagrow and &
Attributing Mind to Groups vs. Group Members
Forthcoming in Psychological Science, an interesting social cognition article by Adam Waytz and Liane Young entitled "The Group-Member Mind Trade-Off: Attributing Mind to Groups Versus Group Members"