Daniel J Povinelli
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 77825 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Daniel J Povinelli |
| NOMBRES | Daniel J |
| APELLIDO | Povinelli |
| FIRMA | POVINELLI D J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Louisiana at Lafayette |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0790-9252 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 26 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 64 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 26 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1987 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2017 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
The relationship between joint attention and theory of mind in neurotypical adults
Joint attention (JA) is hypothesized to have a close relationship with developing theory of mind (ToM) capabilities. We tested the co-occurrence of ToM and JA in social interactions between adults with no reported history of psychiatric illness or neurodevelopmental disorders. Participants engaged in an experimental task that encouraged nonverbal communication, including JA, and also ToM activity. We adapted an in-lab variant of experience sampli…
Chimps as secret agents
Theory of Mind experience sampling in typical adults
Darwin's mistake
Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and not of kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman mind…
Differences in How 12‐ and 24‐Month‐Olds Interpret the Gaze of Adults
This study examined the hypothesis that toddlers interpret an adult's head turn as evidence that the adult was looking at something, whereas younger infants interpret gaze based on an expectancy that an interesting object will be present on the side to which the adult has turned. Infants of 12 months and toddlers of 24 months were first shown that an adult head turn to the side predicted the activation of a remote‐controlled toy on that side of t…
The Development of Body Self‐Awareness
Two experiments examined toddlers' performance on a new task designed to examine the development of body self‐awareness. The new task was conceived from observations by Piaget (1953/1977) and theoretical work from Povinelli and Cant (1995) and involved a toy shopping cart to the back of which a small mat had been attached. Children were asked to push the cart to their mothers but in attempting to do so they had to step on the mat and in consequen…
Behind the ape's appearance
Daniel John Povinelli is Louisiana Board of Re gents Endowed Professor of Science at the Univer sity of Louisiana at Lafayette, and director of the Cognitive Evolution Group and the Center for Child Studies. His latest book is Folk Physics for Apes: The Chimpanzee's Theory of How the World Works (2000). JL/ook at Megan. Not just at her distinc tively chimpanzee features her accen tuated brow ridge, her prognathic face, her coarse black hair but a…
The support problem
This chapter presents the results of studies on the classic ‘support’ problem, originally employed by Piaget (1952). Here, the problem involves a goal object (a toy) that is out of the infant's reach, but is resting on a support (a blanket) that is within reach. The question is whether the infant appreciates that the toy can be obtained by pulling on the support. Although it has been shown that apes can immediately understand the support problem …
The trap-table problem
This chapter reports the results of an investigation of chimpanzees' ability to solve the trap-table problem, wherein chimpanzees were required to reason about the interaction between a simple tool (a rake), a goal object (a food reward), and the substrate (the table surface) along which the goal object moved. The trap-table task was designed so that it would embody the same logical causal interactions inherent in the trap-tube problem, but would…
The inverted- and broken-rake problems
This chapter explores whether chimpanzees might exhibit a better a priori understanding of the causal aspects of tool use in a case where they only needed to attend to the interaction between the tool and the goal object, as opposed to simultaneously keeping track of the substrate upon which the tool and goal object were operating. By testing chimpanzees in this manner, researchers sought to determine which aspects of the relation between pulling…
The trap-tube problem
The bendable‐tool and tool-construction problems
This chapter presents the results of experiments that were undertaken to determine if the chimpanzees' ability to modify tools reflects an underlying appreciation of the causal structure of the problems at hand. The results suggest that although chimpanzees will modify tools if they understand their properties, these actions are only weakly related (if at all) to an understanding of the causal structure of the particular problem that they face. H…
The tool-insertion problem
This chapter focuses on just one of the causal relations involved in the interaction between the fishing tool and the substrate in and around which it must operate: namely, the size/configuration of the end of the tool and the opening in the termite mound into which it is inserted. The study addressed this issue by asking whether chimpanzees possess an explicit understanding of this kind of relation. In order to do so, researchers created a simpl…
Toward a folk physics for chimpanzees
This chapter addresses some difficult theoretical issues which, up to this point, have been gingerly sidestepped. First, it offers an account of how chimpanzees interpret the interactions between the objects they use as tools and the effects that these objects produce. It illustrates the nature of this understanding by detailing one example of what is considered a ‘principle’ of the chimpanzees' folk physics. Second, it compares and contrasts a g…
Escaping the argument by analogy
This chapter exposes the logical weakness in assuming that the similarity in the natural behavior of humans and chimpanzees implies a comparable degree of similarity in the mental states which attend and generate that behavior. In short, it formally challenges the argument by analogy. It shows to how the nature of psychological evolution may virtually guarantee that many of the behaviors that we share in common with other species are associated w…
The rope, hook, touching-stick, and related problems
This chapter tests Köhler's (1927) claim that the chimpanzee has no explicit notion of physical connection, but merely sees contact to a greater or lesser degree. In order to explore apes' ability to conceive of their solutions in terms of physical connection, researchers examined their reactions to a rope-and-banana problem, a hook retrieval problem, a touching-stick problem, and two problems that involved tools or substrates whose critical comp…
The flimsy-tool problem
This chapter reports the results of several studies that examined whether chimpanzees possessed a conceptual understanding of the relation between the rigidity of a tool and its ability to move an object. To this end, apes were confronted with two similar rakes: one of which had a rigid base that could easily drag an apple to within their reach, and the other of which had a flimsy, pliant base that could not move the apple. After allowing apes to…
Causality, tool use, and folk physics
Chapter 2 showed how the natural, spontaneous social behavior of chimpanzees — no matter how similar it appears to our own — may be attended by very different kinds of psychological states. This chapter sets the stage for asking similar kinds of questions about chimpanzees' natural and spontaneous interactions with physical objects in the context of their use and manufacture of simple tools. It begins with a review of the very limited experimenta…
Folk physics cannot be assumed
This chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of the book, which is to probe chimpanzees' understanding of the physics that allow such acts of tool using and making in the first place — their folk physics of tools. It considers the arguments of the skeptic regarding the necessity of understanding how chimpanzees conceive of the physics that underlies their use and construction of simple tools. It then draws a distinction between folk physi…
Folk Physics for Apes
From an early age, humans know a surprising amount about basic physical principles, such as gravity, force, mass, and shape. We can see this in the way that young children play and manipulate objects around them. The same behavior has long been observed in primates — chimpanzees have been shown to possess a remarkable ability to make and use simple tools. But what does this tell us about their inner mental state — do they therefore share the same…
Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present
The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with ano…
Young children's understanding of briefly versus extremely delayed images of the self
Eighty-eight young 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were scheduled for 2 testing sessions. On Visit 1, the children were videotaped playing a game while an experimenter covertly placed a large sticker on their head and covertly removed it after the game. One week later, the children were videotaped playing a different game. A sticker was again covertly placed on their heads. Half the children in each age group then observed the video from the previous wee…
The thinking ape
Attribution of Cognitive States to Animals
Subjects were asked to indicate the likelihood that each of 30 animals (chosen as exemplars of the major phylogenetic classes) could engage in three complex cognitive tasks. Subjects were also asked to rate the extent to which they felt each animal was similar to themselves and whether they felt the animal experienced the world in a manner similar to the way they experienced it. The results showed that in all cases the perceived similarity and in…
Reconstructing the evolution of mind
Attribution of Cognitive States to Animals
Subjects were asked to indicate the likelihood that each of 30 animals (chosen as exemplars of the major phylogenetic classes) could engage in three complex cognitive tasks. Subjects were also asked to rate the extent to which they felt each animal was similar to themselves and whether they felt the animal experienced the world in a manner similar to the way they experienced it. The results showed that in all cases the perceived similarity and in…
Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present
The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with ano…
Young children's understanding of briefly versus extremely delayed images of the self
Eighty-eight young 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were scheduled for 2 testing sessions. On Visit 1, the children were videotaped playing a game while an experimenter covertly placed a large sticker on their head and covertly removed it after the game. One week later, the children were videotaped playing a different game. A sticker was again covertly placed on their heads. Half the children in each age group then observed the video from the previous wee…
Behind the ape's appearance
Daniel John Povinelli is Louisiana Board of Re gents Endowed Professor of Science at the Univer sity of Louisiana at Lafayette, and director of the Cognitive Evolution Group and the Center for Child Studies. His latest book is Folk Physics for Apes: The Chimpanzee's Theory of How the World Works (2000). JL/ook at Megan. Not just at her distinc tively chimpanzee features her accen tuated brow ridge, her prognathic face, her coarse black hair but a…
Monkeys, apes, mirrors and minds
Chimps as secret agents
Reconstructing the evolution of mind
Monkeys, apes, mirrors and minds
Attribution of Cognitive States to Animals
Subjects were asked to indicate the likelihood that each of 30 animals (chosen as exemplars of the major phylogenetic classes) could engage in three complex cognitive tasks. Subjects were also asked to rate the extent to which they felt each animal was similar to themselves and whether they felt the animal experienced the world in a manner similar to the way they experienced it. The results showed that in all cases the perceived similarity and in…
Reconstructing the evolution of mind
The thinking ape
Young children's understanding of briefly versus extremely delayed images of the self
Eighty-eight young 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were scheduled for 2 testing sessions. On Visit 1, the children were videotaped playing a game while an experimenter covertly placed a large sticker on their head and covertly removed it after the game. One week later, the children were videotaped playing a different game. A sticker was again covertly placed on their heads. Half the children in each age group then observed the video from the previous wee…
Development of young children's understanding that the recent past is causally bound to the present
The results of 6 studies (involving 304 children) suggested that 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, understand that very recent past events determine the present. In Studies 1-3, 3- and 4-year-old children were introduced to 2 empty hiding locations. With children's backs to these locations, a camera recorded an experimenter secretly hiding a puppet in one of them. Children then viewed the videotape of what had just happened, along with ano…
The support problem
This chapter presents the results of studies on the classic ‘support’ problem, originally employed by Piaget (1952). Here, the problem involves a goal object (a toy) that is out of the infant's reach, but is resting on a support (a blanket) that is within reach. The question is whether the infant appreciates that the toy can be obtained by pulling on the support. Although it has been shown that apes can immediately understand the support problem …
The trap-table problem
This chapter reports the results of an investigation of chimpanzees' ability to solve the trap-table problem, wherein chimpanzees were required to reason about the interaction between a simple tool (a rake), a goal object (a food reward), and the substrate (the table surface) along which the goal object moved. The trap-table task was designed so that it would embody the same logical causal interactions inherent in the trap-tube problem, but would…
The inverted- and broken-rake problems
This chapter explores whether chimpanzees might exhibit a better a priori understanding of the causal aspects of tool use in a case where they only needed to attend to the interaction between the tool and the goal object, as opposed to simultaneously keeping track of the substrate upon which the tool and goal object were operating. By testing chimpanzees in this manner, researchers sought to determine which aspects of the relation between pulling…
The trap-tube problem
The bendable‐tool and tool-construction problems
This chapter presents the results of experiments that were undertaken to determine if the chimpanzees' ability to modify tools reflects an underlying appreciation of the causal structure of the problems at hand. The results suggest that although chimpanzees will modify tools if they understand their properties, these actions are only weakly related (if at all) to an understanding of the causal structure of the particular problem that they face. H…
The tool-insertion problem
This chapter focuses on just one of the causal relations involved in the interaction between the fishing tool and the substrate in and around which it must operate: namely, the size/configuration of the end of the tool and the opening in the termite mound into which it is inserted. The study addressed this issue by asking whether chimpanzees possess an explicit understanding of this kind of relation. In order to do so, researchers created a simpl…
Toward a folk physics for chimpanzees
This chapter addresses some difficult theoretical issues which, up to this point, have been gingerly sidestepped. First, it offers an account of how chimpanzees interpret the interactions between the objects they use as tools and the effects that these objects produce. It illustrates the nature of this understanding by detailing one example of what is considered a ‘principle’ of the chimpanzees' folk physics. Second, it compares and contrasts a g…
Escaping the argument by analogy
This chapter exposes the logical weakness in assuming that the similarity in the natural behavior of humans and chimpanzees implies a comparable degree of similarity in the mental states which attend and generate that behavior. In short, it formally challenges the argument by analogy. It shows to how the nature of psychological evolution may virtually guarantee that many of the behaviors that we share in common with other species are associated w…
The rope, hook, touching-stick, and related problems
This chapter tests Köhler's (1927) claim that the chimpanzee has no explicit notion of physical connection, but merely sees contact to a greater or lesser degree. In order to explore apes' ability to conceive of their solutions in terms of physical connection, researchers examined their reactions to a rope-and-banana problem, a hook retrieval problem, a touching-stick problem, and two problems that involved tools or substrates whose critical comp…
The flimsy-tool problem
This chapter reports the results of several studies that examined whether chimpanzees possessed a conceptual understanding of the relation between the rigidity of a tool and its ability to move an object. To this end, apes were confronted with two similar rakes: one of which had a rigid base that could easily drag an apple to within their reach, and the other of which had a flimsy, pliant base that could not move the apple. After allowing apes to…
Causality, tool use, and folk physics
Chapter 2 showed how the natural, spontaneous social behavior of chimpanzees — no matter how similar it appears to our own — may be attended by very different kinds of psychological states. This chapter sets the stage for asking similar kinds of questions about chimpanzees' natural and spontaneous interactions with physical objects in the context of their use and manufacture of simple tools. It begins with a review of the very limited experimenta…
Folk physics cannot be assumed
This chapter begins with a discussion of the purpose of the book, which is to probe chimpanzees' understanding of the physics that allow such acts of tool using and making in the first place — their folk physics of tools. It considers the arguments of the skeptic regarding the necessity of understanding how chimpanzees conceive of the physics that underlies their use and construction of simple tools. It then draws a distinction between folk physi…
Folk Physics for Apes
From an early age, humans know a surprising amount about basic physical principles, such as gravity, force, mass, and shape. We can see this in the way that young children play and manipulate objects around them. The same behavior has long been observed in primates — chimpanzees have been shown to possess a remarkable ability to make and use simple tools. But what does this tell us about their inner mental state — do they therefore share the same…
Behind the ape's appearance
Daniel John Povinelli is Louisiana Board of Re gents Endowed Professor of Science at the Univer sity of Louisiana at Lafayette, and director of the Cognitive Evolution Group and the Center for Child Studies. His latest book is Folk Physics for Apes: The Chimpanzee's Theory of How the World Works (2000). JL/ook at Megan. Not just at her distinc tively chimpanzee features her accen tuated brow ridge, her prognathic face, her coarse black hair but a…
Differences in How 12‐ and 24‐Month‐Olds Interpret the Gaze of Adults
This study examined the hypothesis that toddlers interpret an adult's head turn as evidence that the adult was looking at something, whereas younger infants interpret gaze based on an expectancy that an interesting object will be present on the side to which the adult has turned. Infants of 12 months and toddlers of 24 months were first shown that an adult head turn to the side predicted the activation of a remote‐controlled toy on that side of t…
The Development of Body Self‐Awareness
Two experiments examined toddlers' performance on a new task designed to examine the development of body self‐awareness. The new task was conceived from observations by Piaget (1953/1977) and theoretical work from Povinelli and Cant (1995) and involved a toy shopping cart to the back of which a small mat had been attached. Children were asked to push the cart to their mothers but in attempting to do so they had to step on the mat and in consequen…
Darwin's mistake
Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as “one of degree and not of kind” (Darwin 1871). In the present target article, we argue that Darwin was mistaken: the profound biological continuity between human and nonhuman animals masks an equally profound discontinuity between human and nonhuman mind…
Theory of Mind experience sampling in typical adults
Chimps as secret agents
Psychology (18 obras) · Child and Animal Learning Development (14 obras) · Epistemology (11 obras) · Cognitive psychology (10 obras) · Computer Science (10 obras) · Primate Behavior and Ecology (10 obras) · Philosophy (8 obras) · Cognitive science (7 obras) · Developmental psychology (7 obras) · Biology (6 obras)