23 found
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  1. Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans.Richard W. Byrne & Andrew Whiten (eds.) - 1988 - Oxford University Press.
    This book presents an alternative to conventional ideas about the evolution of the human intellect.
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  2. Towards a unified science of cultural evolution.Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten & Kevin N. Laland - 2006 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4):329-347.
    We suggest that human culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties, and argue that the structure of a science of cultural evolution should share fundamental features with the structure of the science of biological evolution. This latter claim is tested by outlining the methods and approaches employed by the principal subdisciplines of evolutionary biology and assessing whether there is an existing or potential corresponding approach to the study of cultural evolution. Existing approaches within anthropology and archaeology demonstrate a good match with (...)
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  3. Imitation, mirror neurons and autism.Justin H. G. Williams, Andrew Whiten, Thomas Suddendorf & David I. Perrett - unknown
    Various deficits in the cognitive functioning of people with autism have been documented in recent years but these provide only partial explanations for the condition. We focus instead on an imitative disturbance involving difficulties both in copying actions and in inhibiting more stereotyped mimicking, such as echolalia. A candidate for the neural basis of this disturbance may be found in a recently discovered class of neurons in frontal cortex, 'mirror neurons' (MNs). These neurons show activity in relation both to specific (...)
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  4.  44
    17 When does smart behaviour-reading become mind-reading?Andrew Whiten - 1996 - In Peter Carruthers & Peter K. Smith (eds.), Theories of Theories of Mind. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 277.
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  5.  36
    Primate Culture and Social Learning.Andrew Whiten - 2000 - Cognitive Science 24 (3):477-508.
    The human primate is a deeply cultural species, our cognition being shaped by culture, and cultural transmission amounting to an “epidemic of mental representations” (Sperber, 1996). The architecture of this aspect of human cognition has been shaped by our evolutionary past in ways that we can now begin to discern through comparative studies of other primates. Processes of social learning (learning from others) are important for cognitive science to understand because they are cognitively complex and take many interrelated forms; they (...)
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  6.  24
    The Hierarchical Transformation of Event Knowledge in Human Cultural Transmission.Alex Mesoudi & Andrew Whiten - 2004 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 4 (1):1-24.
    There is extensive evidence that adults, children, and some non-human species, represent routine events in the form of hierarchically structured 'action scripts,' and show superior recall and imitation of information at relatively high-levels of this hierarchy. Here we investigate the hypothesis that a 'hierarchical bias' operates in human cultural transmission, acting to impose a hierarchical structure onto descriptions of everyday events, and to increasingly describe those events in terms of higher hierarchical levels. Descriptions of three everyday events expressed entirely in (...)
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  7.  19
    Twenty questions about cultural cognitive gadgets.Andrew Whiten - 2019 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 42.
    Heyes sets out an intriguing theory but it raises more questions than compelling answers concerning culturally shaped cognition. I set out what I see as the most pressing questions, ranging over the book's early chapters concerning the structure of the theory, to two of Heyes’ four exemplar cognitive domains, selective social learning and imitation.
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  8.  59
    Meta-representation and secondary representation.Andrew Whiten & Thomas Suddendorf - 2001 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5 (9):378-378.
  9.  16
    Imitation, pretence and mindreading: secondary representation in comparative primatology and developmental psychology.Andrew Whiten - 1996 - In A. Russon, Kim A. Bard & S. Parkers (eds.), Reaching Into Thought: The Minds of the Great Apes. Cambridge University Press. pp. 300--324.
  10.  24
    How imitators represent the imitated: The vital experiments.Andrew Whiten - 1998 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (5):707-708.
    Byrne & Russon rightly draw attention to complex and neglected aspects of ape imitation. However, program-level imitation as a single, absolute category may mislead us in understanding abstractions involved in imitation. Designing the right experiments will offer clarity. One recent experiment has shown imitation of sequential structure: What is needed to test other components of what the authors propose?
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  11.  14
    Culture and the evolution of interconnected minds.Andrew Whiten - 2013 - In Simon Baron-Cohen, Michael Lombardo & Helen Tager-Flusberg (eds.), Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives From Developmental Social Neuroscience. Oxford University Press. pp. 431.
  12.  52
    A science of culture: Clarifications and extensions.Alex Mesoudi, Andrew Whiten & Kevin N. Laland - 2006 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (4):366-375.
    We are encouraged that the majority of commentators endorse our evolutionary framework for studying culture, and several suggest extensions. Here we clarify our position, dwelling on misunderstandings and requests for exposition. We reiterate that using evolutionary biology as a model for unifying the social sciences within a single synthetic framework can stimulate a more progressive and rigorous science of culture. (Published Online November 9 2006).
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  13.  54
    Imitation, emulation, and the transmission of culture.Andrew Whiten - 2008 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (1):39-40.
    Three related issues are addressed. First, Hurley treats emulation and imitation as a straightforward dichotomy with emulation emerging first. Recent conceptual analyses and chimpanzee experiments challenge this. Second, other recent chimpanzee experiments reveal high-fidelity social transmission, questioning whether copying fidelity is the brake on cumulative culture. Finally, other cognitive processes such as pretence need to be integrated.
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  14. Theory of mind.Andrew Whiten - 2003 - In L. Nadel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Nature Publishing Group.
  15.  16
    Conformity versus transmission in animal cultures.Andrew Whiten - 2022 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45:e273.
    The principal contrasts that Jagiello et al. highlight are among many cultural transmission biases we now know of. I suggest they are also reflected more widely in social learning decisions among nonhuman animal cultures governing whether cultural innovations spread, or are instead over-ridden by immigrants' conformity in their new group. Such conformity may serve either informational or social-integrative functions.
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  16.  18
    A unified account of culture should accommodate animal cultures.Andrew Whiten - 2020 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43.
    Discoveries about social learning and culture in non-human animals have burgeoned this century, yet despite aspiring to offer a unified account of culture, the target article neglects these discoveries almost totally. I offer an overview of principal findings in this field including phylogenetic reach, intraspecies pervasiveness, stability, fidelity, and attentional funnelling in social learning. Can the authors’ approach accommodate these?
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  17.  14
    Clarifying the time frame and units of selection in the cultural group selection hypothesis.Andrew Whiten & David Erdal - 2016 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39.
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  18.  37
    Human enculturation, chimpanzee enculturation (?) and the nature of imitation.Andrew Whiten - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (3):538-539.
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  19.  89
    Imitation and cultural transmission in apes and cetaceans.Andrew Whiten - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2):359-360.
    Recent evidence suggests imitation is more developed in some cetaceans than the authors imply. Apart from apes, only dolphins have so far shown a grasp of what it is to imitate; moreover dolphins ape humans more clearly than do apes. Why have such abilities not been associated with the kind of progressive cultural complexity characteristic of humans?
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  20.  10
    Refining our understanding of the “elephant in the room”.Andrew Whiten - 2020 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43.
    The authors do the field of cultural evolution a service by exploring the role of non-social cognition in human cumulative technological culture, truly neglected in comparison with socio-cognitive abilities frequently assumed to be the primary drivers. Some specifics of their delineation of the critical factors are problematic, however. I highlight recent chimpanzee–human comparative findings that should help refine such analyses.
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  21.  21
    Social complexity: The roles of primates' grooming and people's talking.Andrew Whiten - 1993 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16 (4):719-719.
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  22.  29
    Triangulation, intervening variables, and experience projection.Andrew Whiten - 1998 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1):132-133.
    I focus on the logic of the goggles experiment, which if it as watertight as Heyes argues, should clearly support ape theory of mind if positive, and clearly reject it if negative. This is not the case, since the experiment tests for only one kind of mindreading, “experience projection”: but it is an excellent test for this, given adequate controls.
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  23.  17
    When does cultural transmission favour or instead substitute for general intelligence?Andrew Whiten - 2017 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40.
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