Podcasts by New Thinking: Advances in the Study of Human Cognitive Evolution
An interdisciplinary conference focusing on new ideas and discoveries in research on the evolution of human cognition The conference focuses on genetic, developmental, and socio-cultural processes that have played a particularly significant role in the evolution of human cognition, and on uniquely human cognitive achievements in domains such as causal understanding, language, social learning, theory of mind and meta-cognition.
The event was supported by All Souls College, The British Academy, Guarantors of Brain, and Magdalen College
Further podcasts by Oxford University
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The Social Brain on the Internet from 2011-08-23T12:46:07
In primates and humans alike, the number of social relationships an individual can have is constrained in part by its social cognitive competences and in part by the time available to invest in fac...
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Why the Hominin Cognitive Niche Was and Is a Crucially Socio-cognitive Niche from 2011-08-23T12:44:24
Tooby and deVore argued that hominin evolution hinged on the exploitation of a unique 'cognitive niche'. We propose that a diversity of evidence indicates this was fundamentally a socio-cognitive n...
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Metacognition and the Social Mind: How Individuals Interact at the Neural Level from 2011-08-23T12:42:24
I will review recent research in neuroimaging and computation neuroscience, and present a new paradigm for studying decision making in pairs. Results from this paradigm demonstrate that discussion ...
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Experiencing Language from 2011-08-23T12:22:32
The evolutionary relationship between human linguistic capacity and humans' emotional make-up has not, as yet, received focused attention. Was the evolution of language in our lineage possible beca...
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Signals, Honesty and the Evolution of Language from 2011-08-23T12:11:31
The evolution of language is a long-standing puzzle for many reasons. One is that its very virtues as a system of communication seem to open the door to ruinous free-riding and deception. This pape...
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Embodiment: Taking Sociality Seriously from 2011-08-22T19:21:36
A very wise person of our acquaintance once said, 'Read old books to get new ideas'. Here, we pursue the ideas presented in old books by Lev Vygotsky and George Herbert Mead as a means to account f...
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Cortico-cerebellar Evolution and the Distributed Neural Basis of Cognition from 2011-08-22T19:11:32
Biologists interested in cognitive evolution have focussed on the dramatic expansion of the forebrain, particularly the neocortex, in lineages such as primates. Another structure, however - the cer...
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A New Comparative Psychology from 2011-08-22T19:09:38
In their classic 1969 paper Hodos and Campbell bemoaned the absence of appropriate evolutionary theory in comparative psychology. In this talk I will argue that despite the advent of Evolutionary P...
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The Mystery of Cumulative Culture from 2011-08-22T18:41:41
Human demographic and ecological success is frequently attributed to our capacity for cumulative culture, which allows human knowledge and technology to build up and improve over time. Yet it remai...
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Cultural Inheritance of Cultural Learning from 2011-08-22T18:38:01
It is widely acknowledged that the cumulative cultural inheritance of technological skills and social practices has played a major role in shaping the ways of life of modern humans. The term 'cultu...
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Welcome and Introduction from 2011-08-22T17:10:36
Introduction to the "New Thinking: Advances in the Study of Human Cognitive Evolution" conference.
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