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Social Cognition and the Evolution of Language: Constructing Cognitive Phylogenies
Open accessAbstract
Human language and social cognition are closely linked: advanced social cognition is necessary for children to acquire language, and language allows forms of social understanding (and, more broadly, culture) that would otherwise be impossible. Both "language" and "social cognition" are complex constructs, involving many independent cognitive mechanisms, and the comparative approach provides a powerful route to understanding the evolution of such mechanisms. We provide a broad comparative review of mechanisms underlying social intelligence in vertebrates, with the goal of determining which human mechanisms are broadly shared, which have evolved in parallel in other clades, and which, potentially, are uniquely developed in our species. We emphasize the importance of convergent evolution for testing hypotheses about neural mechanisms and their evolution.
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“Humans are not the only species in which communicative learning is affected by social interaction (see Fitch et al., 2010 for review).”
From Brain mechanisms in early language acquisition (2010) · cites this paper as Fitch et al., 2010
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“The social intelligence hypothesis proposes that increased social complexity (frequently indexed by social group size) was the major selective pressure in primate cognitive evolution (6, 44, 48, 50, 87, 115, 120, 125-141).”
From The evolution of self-control. (2014) · cites this paper as [48]
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“The lack of cognitive data collected with similar methods across large samples of species precludes meaningful species comparisons that can reveal the major forces shaping cognitive evolution across species, including humans (48,70,89,(93)(94)(95)(96)(97)(98).”
From The evolution of self-control. (2014) · cites this paper as [48]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Fitch, W. T., Huber, L., & Bugnyar, T.
- Affiliations
- University of Vienna (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Fitch, W. Tecumseh
- Venue
- Neuron
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2010-03
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 795-814
- ISSN
- 0896-6273 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4415479
- OpenAlex
- W2141160550
- Cited by
- 264
- References
- 257
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 17 · 2019: 18 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 25 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 16
- FWCI
- 17.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuron (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Phaidra (Universität Wien) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- social cognition, language evolution, social intelligence, vertebrates, convergent evolution, comparative cognition, language acquisition, culture
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Cognition, Cultural Evolution, Humans, Language, Phylogeny, Species Specificity, Emotional Intelligence
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