Humans possess some unique social-cognitive skills and motivations, involving such things as joint attention, cooperative communication, dual-level collaboration and cultural learning. These are almost certainly adaptations for humans' especially complex sociocultural lives. The common assumption has been that these unique skills and motivations emerge in human infancy and early childhood as preparations for the challenges of adult life, for example, in collaborative foraging. In the current paper, I propose that the curiously early emergence of these skills in infancy––well before they are needed in adulthood––along with other pieces of evidence (such as almost exclusive use with adults not peers) suggests that aspects of the evolution of these skills represent ontogenetic adaptations to the unique socio-ecological challenges human infants face in the context of a regime of cooperative breeding and childcare. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

中文翻译：

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人类独特社会性的适应性起源


人类拥有一些独特的社会认知技能和动机，包括共同关注、合作沟通、双层协作和文化学习等。这些几乎肯定是对人类特别复杂的社会文化生活的适应。人们普遍认为，这些独特的技能和动机出现在人类婴儿期和幼儿期，为成年生活的挑战做好准备，例如协作觅食。在本文中，我提出，这些技能在婴儿期就出现得非常早——早在成年期需要它们之前——以及其他证据（例如几乎只在成年人而不是同龄人中使用）表明，这些技能的各个方面这些技能的进化代表了人类婴儿在合作繁殖和育儿制度背景下面临的独特社会生态挑战的个体发生适应。本文是主题“生命史与学习：童年、看护和老年如何塑造人类和其他动物的认知和文化”的一部分。