Putting social cognitive mechanisms back into cumulative technological culture: Social interactions serve as a mechanism for children's early knowledge acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda S. Haber ◽  
Kathleen H. Corriveau
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Technical Information ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture

Abstract Osiurak and Reynaud offer a unified cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture, arguing that it begins with non-social cognitive skills that allow humans to learn and develop new technical information. Drawing on research focusing on how children acquire knowledge through interactions others, we argue that social learning is essential for humans to acquire technical information.

scholarly journals The elephant in the room: What matters cognitively in cumulative technological culture

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Osiurak ◽  
Emanuelle Reynaud
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Technical Reasoning

Abstract Cumulative technological culture (CTC) refers to the increase in the efficiency and complexity of tools and techniques in human populations over generations. A fascinating question is to understand the cognitive origins of this phenomenon. Because CTC is definitely a social phenomenon, most accounts have suggested a series of cognitive mechanisms oriented toward the social dimension (e.g., teaching, imitation, theory of mind, and metacognition), thereby minimizing the technical dimension and the potential influence of non-social, cognitive skills. What if we have failed to see the elephant in the room? What if social cognitive mechanisms were only catalyzing factors and not the sufficient and necessary conditions for the emergence of CTC? In this article, we offer an alternative, unified cognitive approach to this phenomenon by assuming that CTC originates in non-social cognitive skills, namely technical-reasoning skills which enable humans to develop the technical potential necessary to constantly acquire and improve technical information. This leads us to discuss how theory of mind and metacognition, in concert with technical reasoning, can help boost CTC. The cognitive approach developed here opens up promising new avenues for reinterpreting classical issues (e.g., innovation, emulation vs. imitation, social vs. asocial learning, cooperation, teaching, and overimitation) in a field that has so far been largely dominated by other disciplines, such as evolutionary biology, mathematics, anthropology, archeology, economics, and philosophy.

A cognitive approach to cumulative technological culture is useful and necessary but only if it also applies to other species

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Social Learning Processes

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.

Supporting Social Interactions In Human-Ai Teams: Profiling Human Teammates From Sparse Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 665-669
Author(s):  
Rhyse Bendell ◽  
Jessica Williams ◽  
Stephen M. Fiore ◽  
Florian Jentsch
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Social Intelligence ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Human Agent

Artificial intelligence has been developed to perform all manner of tasks but has not gained capabilities to support social cognition. We suggest that teams comprised of both humans and artificially intelligent agents cannot achieve optimal team performance unless all teammates have the capacity to employ social-cognitive mechanisms. These form the foundation for generating inferences about their counterparts and enable execution of informed, appropriate behaviors. Social intelligence and its utilization are known to be vital components of human-human teaming processes due to their importance in guiding the recognition, interpretation, and use of the signals that humans naturally use to shape their exchanges. Although modern sensors and algorithms could allow AI to observe most social cues, signals, and other indicators, the approximation of human-to-human social interaction -based upon aggregation and modeling of such cues is currently beyond the capacity of potential AI teammates. Partially, this is because humans are notoriously variable. We describe an approach for measuring social-cognitive features to produce the raw information needed to create human agent profiles that can be operated upon by artificial intelligences.

scholarly journals Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1567) ◽  
pp. 1149-1157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gergely Csibra ◽  
György Gergely
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Evolutionary Adaptation ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Technological Culture ◽  
Natural Pedagogy ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Human Specific

We propose that the cognitive mechanisms that enable the transmission of cultural knowledge by communication between individuals constitute a system of ‘natural pedagogy’ in humans, and represent an evolutionary adaptation along the hominin lineage. We discuss three kinds of arguments that support this hypothesis. First, natural pedagogy is likely to be human-specific: while social learning and communication are both widespread in non-human animals, we know of no example of social learning by communication in any other species apart from humans. Second, natural pedagogy is universal: despite the huge variability in child-rearing practices, all human cultures rely on communication to transmit to novices a variety of different types of cultural knowledge, including information about artefact kinds, conventional behaviours, arbitrary referential symbols, cognitively opaque skills and know-how embedded in means-end actions. Third, the data available on early hominin technological culture are more compatible with the assumption that natural pedagogy was an independently selected adaptive cognitive system than considering it as a by-product of some other human-specific adaptation, such as language. By providing a qualitatively new type of social learning mechanism, natural pedagogy is not only the product but also one of the sources of the rich cultural heritage of our species.

scholarly journals Unravelling competitors’ brain-andbody correlates. The two-persons social neuroscience approach to study competition

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-104
Author(s):  
Michela Balconi ◽  
Laura Angioletti
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Competitive Behavior ◽  
Body System ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Single Person ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Brain

Competition refers to a condition for which an individual or a group strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others. It follows that, unlike cooperation, the gain of one foresees the loss of the other. Most accounts have focused on the individual and social cognitive mechanisms featuring cooperative/competitive behavior, however, a fascinating question regards the neurophysiological correlates of competitive social phenomenon. What happens at a neural and peripheral level in the brain-and-body system of two people engaged in a competitive dynamic? The combination of multiple neuroscientific techniques adopted to unveil the individual and social complexity of competition leads us discussing a more recent and promising paradigm in neuroscience, the hyperscanning. In the social neuroscience field, hyperscanning allowed shifting from a single-person to a two-persons perspective and can open new opportunities to study interpersonal brain-and-body connectivity during competitive social interactions in increasingly ecological contexts.

Understanding Others to Learn and Help Others Learn

2019 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Hyowon Gweon
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Young Age ◽  
Effective Learning ◽  
Learning From Others ◽  
Rational Decisions

Through learning from others and sharing what we know in our everyday social interactions, we learn things that go far beyond what we can directly experience. What makes human social learning so distinctive, powerful, and effective? This chapter reviews recent developmental evidence on how our understanding of others—basic aspects of human social cognition—can support effective learning and communication. Even at a young age, humans show remarkable abilities to reason about others’ minds to (1) draw sophisticated inferences from information provided by others, (2) use such information to evaluate others’ informativeness, and (3) actively teach and communicate information to others. These studies suggest that human social learning is rooted in the basic social-cognitive abilities to understand what others want, need, and know, as well as what is useful or costly for others. Such abilities allow even young children to make flexible and rational decisions to learn from others and teach others, providing foundations for the development of distinctively human social learning.

Collective Human Agency in the Context of Organizational Participation

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Georg Weber ◽  
Hans Jeppe Jeppesen
Keyword(s):  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Work Motivation ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Employee Participation ◽  
Ecological Approach ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Organizational Decision Making ◽  
Organizational Participation ◽  
The Social

Abstract. Connecting the social cognitive approach of human agency by Bandura (1997) and activity theory by Leontiev (1978) , this paper proposes a new theoretical framework for analyzing and understanding employee participation in organizational decision-making. Focusing on the social cognitive concepts of self-reactiveness, self-reflectiveness, intentionality, and forethought, commonalities, complementarities, and differences between both theories are explained. Efficacy in agency is conceived as a cognitive foundation of work motivation, whereas the mediation of societal requirements and resources through practical activity is conceptualized as an ecological approach to motivation. Additionally, we discuss to which degree collective objectifications can be understood as material indicators of employees’ collective efficacy. By way of example, we explore whether an integrated application of concepts from both theories promotes a clearer understanding of mechanisms connected to the practice of employee participation.

Re-conceptualizing Machiavellianism and Social-Cognitive Skills

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
William Hart ◽  
Christopher J. Breeden ◽  
Charlotte Kinrade
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Skill ◽  
Prediction Skill ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
College Sample ◽  
Social Prediction

Abstract. Machiavellianism is presumed to encompass advanced social-cognitive skill, but research has generally suggested that Machiavellian individuals are rather deficient in social-cognitive skill. However, previous research on the matter has been limited to measures of (a) Machiavellianism that are unidimensional and saturated with both antagonism and disinhibition and measures (b) only one type of social-cognitive skill. Using a large college sample ( N = 461), we examined how various dimensions of Machiavellianism relate to two types of social-cognitive skill: person-perception skill and general social prediction skill. Consistent with some prior theorizing, the planful dimension of Machiavellianism was positively related to both person-perception and general social prediction skills; antagonistic dimensions of Machiavellianism were negatively related to both skills; either agentic or cynical dimensions of Machiavellianism were generally unrelated to both skills. Overall, the current evidence suggests a complicated relationship between Machiavellianism and social-cognitive skill because Machiavellianism encompasses features that blend deficiency, proficiency, and average levels of social-cognitive skills.

The social-cognitive mechanisms regulating adolescents' use of doping substances

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Lucidi ◽  
A. Zelli ◽  
L. Mallia ◽  
C. Grano ◽  
C. Violani
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
The Social
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