Lombard Marlize, Gärdenfors Peter
Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park Campus, Johannesburg 2006, South Africa; Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) Wallenberg Research Centre at Stellenbosch University, Marais Street, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa,
Cognitive Science, Department of Philosophy, Lund University, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden; Wallenberg Research Centre at Stellenbosch University, Marais Street, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa.
J Anthropol Sci. 2017 Dec 30;95:219-234. doi: 10.4436/JASS.95006. Epub 2017 May 8.
We suggest a seven-grade model for the evolution of causal cognition as a framework that can be used to gauge variation in the complexity of causal reasoning from the panin-hominin split until the appearance of cognitively modern hunter-gatherer communities. The intention is to put forward a cohesive model for the evolution of causal cognition in humans, which can be assessed against increasingly fine-grained empirical data from the palaeoanthropological and archaeological records. We propose that the tracking behaviour (i.e., the ability to interpret and follow external, inanimate, visual clues of hominins) provides a rich case study for tracing the evolution of causal cognition in our lineage. The grades of causal cognition are tentatively linked to aspects of the Stone Age/Palaeolithic archaeological record. Our model can also be applied to current work in evolutionary psychology and research on causal cognition, so that an inter-disciplinary understanding and correlation of processes becomes increasingly possible.
我们提出了一个用于因果认知进化的七级模型，作为一个框架，可用于衡量从类人猿与人科动物分化直至认知上现代的狩猎采集者群体出现这一过程中因果推理复杂性的变化。目的是提出一个关于人类因果认知进化的连贯模型，该模型可根据古人类学和考古记录中日益精细的实证数据进行评估。我们认为，追踪行为（即解读和追踪人科动物外部无生命视觉线索的能力）为追溯我们谱系中因果认知的进化提供了一个丰富的案例研究。因果认知的等级初步与石器时代/旧石器时代考古记录的各个方面相关联。我们的模型还可应用于当前进化心理学和因果认知研究工作，从而使跨学科对这些过程的理解和关联变得越来越有可能。
