Lawrence A. Hirschfeld

The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity

The existence and diversity of human cultures are made possible by our species-specific cognitive capacities. But how? Do cultures emerge and diverge as a result of the deployment, over generations and in different populations, of general abilities to learn, imitate and communicate? What role if any do domain-specific evolved cognitive abilities play in the emergence and evolution of cultures? These questions have been approached from different vantage points in different disciplines. Here we present a view that is currently developing out of the converging work of developmental psychologists, evolutionary psychologists and cognitive anthropologists.

Can autistic children predict behavior by social stereotypes

Explaining and predicting behavior involves understanding others in terms of their mental states — the so-called Theory of Mind (ToM). It also involves the capacity to understand others in terms of culturally transmitted information about group membership, for example, which social groups exist in one’s culture and which stereotypes adhere to these groups. This capacity typically emerges between 3 and 5 years of age, just like ToM understanding [1,2]. Are the cognitive capacities underlying ToM and stereotypes the same or do they provide independent means of understanding and predicting the actions of others? Children with autism have a profound inability to engage in everyday social interaction, as well as impairments in verbal and nonverbal communication, which have been attributed to a severe delay in ToM development [3,4]. If the use of stereotypes and mental states were part and parcel of the same underlying cognitive process [5], then autistic children should have similar difficulties with both. We report here that 8-year-old autistic children with a mental age of 7, who fail ToM tasks, nevertheless know and use gender and race stereotypes just like normal children. This provides a powerful argument for the assumption of distinct processes in social reasoning

Biological and cultural bases of human inference

Contents: Preface. R. Viale, Introduction: Local or Universal Principles of Reasoning? R. Viale, D. Osherson, Cognitive Development, Culture, and Inductive Judgment. R.E. Nisbett, T. Masuda, Culture and Point of View. A. Norenzayan, Cultural Variation in Reasoning. S. Atran, D.L. Medin, N. Ross, Thinking About Biology: Modular Constraints on Categorization and Reasoning in the Everyday Life of Americans, Maya, and Scientists. L.A. Hirschfeld, Who Needs a Theory of Mind? J. Perner, A. Kuhberger, Framing and the Theory-Simulation Controversy: Predicting Peoples Decisions. D. Sperber, An Evolutionary Perspective on Testimony and Argumentation. J.M. Weinberg, S. Nichols, S. Stich, Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions. L. Macchi, M. Bagassi, Probabilistic Reasoning and Natural Language.

SEVEN MYTHS OF RACE AND THE YOUNG CHILD

Racism reproduces through children. Racial bias is acquired early, and like many earlyacquired predilections it is tenaciously resistant to counterevidence. Much of the institutional struggle against racism focuses on children, working to change their attitudes and judgments by addressing what children supposedly have come to know and believe about race. Yet much of what lay folk and educators alike imagine about children’s knowledge of race and how they have come to acquire it is inaccurate. This essay is concerned to identify these inaccuracies, present evidence that challenges them, and briefly consider why they— like racialist thinking itself—are so tenaciously held and resistant to counterevidence.

The Bilingual Brain Revisited: A Comment on Hagen (2008)

L.K. Hagen (2008; Evolutionary Psychology, 6, 43–63) proposes that effortless first acquisition compared to more difficult second language acquisition provides evidence that the monolinguistic nature of our ancestral social environments implies a near-constant state of intergroup conflict. I argue to the contrary that the capacity to acquire multiple languages simultaneously in childhood without decrement to first language acquisition suggests that there was selection pressure for multilingualism. I further argue that this cognitive capacity is evidence for an ancestral environment in which distinct groups commingled (e.g., through long-term trading and marriage relationships) in relative security.

The Rutherford Atom of Culture

Increasingly, psychologists have shown a healthy interest in cultural variation and a skepticism about assuming that research with North American and Northern European undergraduates provides reliable insight into universal psychological processes. Unfortunately, this reappraisal has not been extended to questioning the notion of culture central to this project. Rather, there is wide acceptance that culture refers to a kind of social form that is entity-like, territorialized, marked by a high degree of shared beliefs and coalescing into patterns of key values that animate a broad range of cultural performances and representations. Ironically, anthropologists and other scholars in cultural studies have overwhelmingly come to reject this view of culture. Arguably, then, the move in psychology to attend to cultural environments has paradoxically further distanced it from the fields most concerned with cultural forms. This essay reviews this state of affairs and offers a proposal how a more nuanced appreciation of cultural life can be articulated with theories and methods familiar and available to psychologists.

Por que os antropólogos não gostam de crianças

Dos principais trabalhos em antropologia, poucos se ocupam especificamente das criancas, o que e uma situacao curiosa, uma vez que quase toda a antropologia contemporânea se baseia na premissa de que a cultura e aprendida, nao herdada. Embora as criancas tenham uma capacidade notavel e indiscutivel para o aprendizado em geral, e o da cultura em particular, fato e que a antropologia tem demonstrado pouco interesse nelas e em suas vidas. Este artigo examina os motivos para essa lacuna lamentavel e apresenta razoes teoricas e empiricas para repudia-la. Entendemos que a resistencia aos estudos da infância e um subproduto de (1) uma visao empobrecida da aprendizagem cultural, que superestima o papel desempenhado pelos adultos e subestima a contribuicao das criancas na reproducao cultural e, (2) uma falta de apreciacao do alcance e da forca da cultura infantil, particularmente na formacao da cultura adulta. A proposta deste trabalho e mostrar que a marginalizacao das criancas e da infância obscureceu nossa compreensao de como as formas culturais surgem e do porque elas sao mantidas. Dois estudos de caso, explorando a crenca de criancas norte-americanas sobre a contaminacao social, ilustram esses pontos.