 |
| Research article summary (published 27 Jul 2003): |
|
Free Full Text! See links below |
Beyond learning fixed rules and social cues: abstraction in the social arena.
Full Abstract
Abstraction is a central idea in many areas of physical comparative cognition such as categorization, numerical competence or problem solving. This idea, however, has rarely been applied to comparative social cognition. In this paper, I propose that the notion of abstraction can be applied to the social arena and become an important tool to investigate the social cognition and behaviour processes in animals. To make this point, I present recent evidence showing that chimpanzees know about what others can see and about what others intend. These data do not fit either low-level mechanisms based on stimulus-response associations or high-level explanations based on metarepresentational mechanisms such as false belief attribution. Instead, I argue that social abstraction, in particular the development of concepts such as seeing in others, is key to explaining the behaviour of our closest relative in a variety of situations.
Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills
Author information
Author/s: Call, Joseph (J);
Affiliation: Max-Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. call@eva.mpg.de
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article
Journal: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci), published in England. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-Jul; vol 358 (issue 1435) : pp 1189-96
Dates: Created 2003/08/06; Completed 2003/09/23; Revised 2004/11/17;
PMID: 12903652, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):
Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.
This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.
MeSH headings (categories)
This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.
|
|
Related articles
This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.
See a large map of 100+ related articles.