I've been following an interesting series in ScienceBlogs on the work of Hungarian psychologists György Gergely and Gergely Csibra who propose that there is a 'natural pedagogy' that is specific to humans. The move to natural pedagogy involves two steps:
- first, the proposal that 'learning' is the acquisition of information now that can be used later - in other words, the acquisition of generalizations; and
- second, humans have a mechanism for determining when incoming information is intended to be a generalization to be learned, rather than specific to the current situation
At first we might think that the generalization is coded in the language, as in the statement, "Airplanes fly." But research on infants using baby talk suggests that the mere use of language, whatever the content, in addition to demonstration, triggers the learning mechanism. It's an interesting theory that I don't entirely buy, but the idea that specific phenomena, such as language use, may make us more receptive, seems to make sense.
The Pedagogy Series
Part 1: Perseverating on Perseverative Error: What Does The "A-not-B Error" Really Tell Us About Infant Cognition?
Part 2: Are Infants Born Prepared For Learning? The Case for Natural Pedagogy
Part 3: Is Pedagogy Specific to Humans? Teaching in the Animal World
For more on social learning:
- How Do You Figure Out How Chimps Learn? Peanuts.
- More on Chimpanzees and Peanuts
- Ed Tronick and the "Still-Face Experiment"
- Social Cognition in a Non-Social Reptile? Gaze-Following in Red-Footed Tortoises
For more on animal communication:
- Robot Lizard Push-ups
- To Hear A Mockingbird: The Plight of the Iguana
- Hands Off My Bone!
- Giant Birds and Terrified Monkeys
- Elephants Say "Bee-ware!"
- first, the proposal that 'learning' is the acquisition of information now that can be used later - in other words, the acquisition of generalizations; and
- second, humans have a mechanism for determining when incoming information is intended to be a generalization to be learned, rather than specific to the current situation
At first we might think that the generalization is coded in the language, as in the statement, "Airplanes fly." But research on infants using baby talk suggests that the mere use of language, whatever the content, in addition to demonstration, triggers the learning mechanism. It's an interesting theory that I don't entirely buy, but the idea that specific phenomena, such as language use, may make us more receptive, seems to make sense.
The Pedagogy Series
Part 1: Perseverating on Perseverative Error: What Does The "A-not-B Error" Really Tell Us About Infant Cognition?
Part 2: Are Infants Born Prepared For Learning? The Case for Natural Pedagogy
Part 3: Is Pedagogy Specific to Humans? Teaching in the Animal World
For more on social learning:
- How Do You Figure Out How Chimps Learn? Peanuts.
- More on Chimpanzees and Peanuts
- Ed Tronick and the "Still-Face Experiment"
- Social Cognition in a Non-Social Reptile? Gaze-Following in Red-Footed Tortoises
For more on animal communication:
- Robot Lizard Push-ups
- To Hear A Mockingbird: The Plight of the Iguana
- Hands Off My Bone!
- Giant Birds and Terrified Monkeys
- Elephants Say "Bee-ware!"
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