Barry Hewlett: Washington State University, Vancouver

Cultural anthropologists Margaret Mead, David Lancy, and Barbara Rogoff indicate that teaching does not exist or is rare in small-scale cultures. By contrast, recent research by cognitive neuroscientists Gyorgy Gergely and Gergely Csibra indicate that one type of teaching, called natural pedagogy, is a human universal, part of human nature, and not found in the great apes. They hypothesize that this form of teaching emerges in infancy and that it enhances humans’ ability to faithfully transmit “opaque” cultural knowledge, such the function of a particular tool. Learners evolved to pay attention to particular cues, such as eye and body movements, and teachers evolved the skills to convey important information to learners, such as pointing, using personal names, looking at or making sounds about important knowledge. Cognitive science research on natural pedagogy is limited because all of their studies have been conducted in laboratories with Western infants. This study uses videotapes of 10 Aka hunter-gatherer 12-14 month-old infants in naturalistic settings to evaluate the natural pedagogy hypothesis. The study shows that natural pedagogy exists in hunter-gatherers, but that it occurs relatively infrequently. The study also identifies two other forms of hunter-gatherer teaching—distributed teaching and opportunity scaffolding–that are rare or do not exist in the great apes and occur more frequently than natural pedagogy. The talk suggests that interactions between inherent evolved cognitive mechanisms, such as natural pedagogy, and culturally constructed niches of hunter-gatherers that promoted trust, enhanced social learning and made cumulative culture a distinctive feature of modern Homo sapiens.