研究人员报告说，姗姗学步的儿童比他们最近的灵长类亲戚有更复杂的社会学习技能。这种天生的能力对学习很重要，使儿童在一生中能不断完善他们的自然的和社会技能。研究人员用一系列的测试比较了约230个对象，包括黑猩猩、黄猩猩、以及两岁半的儿童，他们在空间、数量、以及因果关系等自然认知技能上大致相同，但是在交流这个社会功能、社会学习和心理理论技能上，儿童在74%的测试中给出正确答案，而两种猩猩的正确率只有33%。这些发现支持了文化智慧假说，既人类具有独特的社会认知技能来进行文化群体的互动。Esther Herrmann和同事说，这是第一次比较儿童、黑猩猩、和黄猩猩的社会和自然技能的全面测试，他们写道，这些发现为人类认知的进化提供了重要的线索。研究人员打算用这个认知测验系列来系统地测试其他与人类关系密切的灵长类物种，并最终随着这些物种基因组的测序来比较他们的基因组。
Science 7 September 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5843, pp. 1360 - 1366
DOI: 10.1126/science.1146282
Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis
Esther Herrmann,1* Josep Call,1 María Victoria Hernàndez-Lloreda,2 Brian Hare,1,3 Michael Tomasello1
Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans' closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more "general intelligence," we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world.
1 Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, D-04103, Germany.
2 Departamento de Metodologáa de las Ciencias del Comportamiento, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain.
3 Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, Durham, NC 27705, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: eherrman@eva.mpg.de
(E.H.)
