A Cultural Epidemiology of Monsters?
A new book by the archeologist David Wengrow: The Origins of Monsters: Image and Cognition in the First Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Princeton U.P.)
The blurb: It has often been claimed that
The Phylogeny of ATU 333 (a.k.a. Little Red Riding Hood)
An interesting, methodologically innovative paper by Jamie Terhani in PLoS One on the phylogeny of "Little Red Riding Hood."
Abstract:
Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continui
Does “science” make you moral?
Whatever one thinks of priming studies, it is nice to have, after many studies where priming religion reinforces moral attitudes (for instance Shariff & Norenzayan 2007), an article in PLOS One,
Did the Neandertals speak?
In an open access article, "On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences" published in Frontiers in Language Sciences, that challenges
Special issue of Mind and Society on “Cultural and Cognitive Dimensions of Innovation
In the Volume 12, Issue 1, June 2013 of Mind and Society: Special issue on “Cultural and Cognitive Dimensions of Innovation" edited and introduced by Petra Ahrweiler and Riccardo Viale.
From the
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,
Maurice Boch on the Cognitive Challenge to Anthropology
A new book (Cambridge UP 2012) of obvious cognition-and-culture relevance by Maurice Bloch.
The blurb:
"In this provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes
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