29. April | 18 Uhr   Alte Aula

Social Cognition and Cultural Transmission

Humans pass on behaviors, ideas, and traditions within groups and across generations. This process of cultural transmission enables the accumulation of knowledge and thus forms the basis of human cultural evolution. An important question in Cognitive Science is which individual level processes enable humans to participate in cultural transmission. For a long time, the ability to imitate others, especially their tool use actions, was considered to be the key psychological mechanism on which cultural transmission rests. More recently, the research focus has shifted to mechanisms of interpersonal coordination and communication that enable humans to actively teach and understand each other and to thus learn in the context of cooperative joint action. In my talk I will show examples for comparative, developmental, and cognitive neuroscience studies addressing the psychological mechanisms that make human cultures possible.

Bio

Günther Knoblich is Professor of Cognitive Science at Central European University, Vienna. His research interests include joint action, communication, and problem solving. He coordinated several interdisciplinary research projects such as an ERC Synergy project on Coordination, Communication, and Cultural Transmission (2015-2022) and the EuroCores project EuroUnderstanding (2011-2014). He received his PhD from Hamburg University in 1997 and held research and faculty positions at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Rutgers University, Birmingham University, and the Donders Institute Nijmegen.