Evolution of Primate Social Cognition

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. An Evolutionary Perspective on Primate Social Cognition

   • Francesca De Petrillo, Fabio Di Vincenzo, Laura D. Di Paolo

   Pages 1-10

3. Aspects of Primate Social Cognition

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. What Did You Get? What Social Learning, Collaboration, Prosocial Behaviour, and Inequity Aversion Tell Us About Primate Social Cognition

      • Lydia M. Hopper, Katherine A. Cronin

      Pages 13-26

   3. Affective States, Motivation, and Prosocial Behaviour in Primates

      • Hika Kuroshima, Kazuo Fujita

      Pages 27-45

   4. Understanding Empathy from Interactional Synchrony in Humans and Non-human Primates

      • Lira Yu, Yuko Hattori, Shinya Yamamoto, Masaki Tomonaga

      Pages 47-58

   5. The Cognitive Implications of Intentional Communication: A Multifaceted Mirror

      • David A. Leavens

      Pages 59-77

   6. A Comparison of the Socio-communicative Behavior in Chimpanzees and Bonobos

      • Jared P. Taglialatela, Scott C. Milne, Robert E. Evans

      Pages 79-93

4. Studying Primate Social Cognition: Theory, Observation, Experiments, and Modelling

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 95-95

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   2. Primate Social Cognition: Evidence from Primate Field Studies

      • Julia Ostner

      Pages 97-110

   3. Contribution of Social Network Analysis and Collective Phenomena to Understanding Social Complexity and Cognition

      • Denis Boyer, Gabriel Ramos-Fernandez

      Pages 111-127

   4. Comparative Economics: Using Experimental Economic Paradigms to Understand Primate Social Decision-Making

      • Julia Watzek, Mackenzie F. Smith, Sarah F. Brosnan

      Pages 129-141

   5. The Special Case of Non-human Primates in Animal Experimentation

      • Augusto Vitale, Marta Borgi

      Pages 143-161

   6. Epigenetics and the Evolution of Human Social Cognition

      • Gillian Ragsdale, Robert A. Foley

      Pages 163-179

   7. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens: Cognitively Different Kinds of Human?

      • Eiluned Pearce

      Pages 181-196

5. Cultural Artefacts and Transmission in Primates

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. Recognizing Culture in Wild Primate Tool Use

      • Michael Haslam, Tiago Falótico, Lydia Luncz

      Pages 199-209

   3. Culture and Selective Social Learning in Wild and Captive Primates

      • Stuart K. Watson, Jennifer Botting, Andrew Whiten, Erica van de Waal

      Pages 211-230

   4. The Zone of Latent Solutions and Its Relation to the Classics: Vygotsky and Köhler

      • Eva Reindl, Elisa Bandini, Claudio Tennie

      Pages 231-248

   5. Minimal Cognitive Preconditions on the Ratchet

      • Elizabeth Renner, Tadeusz Zawidzki

      Pages 249-265

This interdisciplinary volume brings together expert researchers coming from primatology, anthropology, ethology, philosophy of cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, mathematics and psychology to discuss both the foundations of non-human primate and human social cognition as well as the means there currently exist to study the various facets of social cognition.


The first part focusses on various aspects of social cognition across primates, from the relationship between food and social behaviour to the connection with empathy and communication, offering a multitude of innovative approaches that range from field-studies to philosophy.


The second part details the various epistemic and methodological means there exist to study social cognition, in particular how to ascertain the proximal and ultimate mechanisms of social cognition through experimental, modelling and field studies. 


In the final part, the mechanisms of cultural transmission in primate and human societies are investigated, and special attention is given to how the evolution of cognitive capacities underlie primates’ abilities to use and manufacture tools, and how this in turn influences their social ecology. 


A must-read for both, young scholars as well as established researchers!

• primatology
• ethology
• cognitive sciences
• comparative psychology
• evolution of culture
• cultural transmission
• primate social behaviour
• mind-reading
• food-sharing
• social learning
• brain evolution
• primate archaeology
• cultural cognition

• Georg-August-University Goettingen, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen, Germany

  Laura Desirèe Di Paolo

• Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienzà Università di Roma, Rome, Italy

  Fabio Di Vincenzo

• Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

  Francesca De Petrillo

Laura Desirèe Di Paolo, is a postdoctoral fellow at the Lichtenberg-Kolleg in the Institute for Advanced Study at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and member of the Primate Cognition Research Group at the Leibniz Science Campus in Göttingen. She is a philosopher of cognitive and life sciences, with a particular interest in primatology, and in comparative and developmental psychology. Her work focuses on social cognition and social learning strategies in human and nonhuman primates, and on their impact on the evolution of human-like cultural cognition.

Fabio Di Vincenzo is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Environmental Biology of the Sapienza University in Rome. He is councillor of the Italian Institute of Human Paleontology (IsIPU) and the Italian Institute of Anthropology (IsITA). His scientific interests focus on the evolution human populations during the Middle Pleistocene in Europe.

Francesca De Petrillo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research examines the evolutionary origins of human cognition by employing a multidisciplinary approach integrating both comparative and developmental research. In doing so, she aims to elucidate which aspects of cognition are unique to humans, and how species’ differences in life history, ecology, and social structure account for differences in their cognitive skills. She received a PhD in Environmental and Evolutionary Biology from Sapienza University of Rome and conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University and the University of Michigan.

   

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