The ensemble hypothesis proposes that language is but one of five cognitive capacities that separate human cognition qualitatively from other animal cognition as a result of their interactions. The ensemble consists of an episodic memory capable of mental time travel, mentalizing to augment social cognition, language for overt communication, advanced executive attention for governing working memory, and inner speech for thinking in the form of causal inference. The order in which each of these components arose in hominin evolution is addressed here. It is proposed that the flourishing of symbolic artifacts during the Upper Paleolithic occurred because, for the first time, all five components were in place and interacting in anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

中文翻译：

---

不仅仅是语言：心理时间旅行、心智化、执行注意力以及人类起源中的左半球解释器。


整体假说提出，语言只是人类认知与其他动物认知因相互作用而在质量上区别开来的五种认知能力之一。该整体由能够进行心理时间旅行的情景记忆、用于增强社会认知的心智化、用于公开交流的语言、用于控制工作记忆的高级执行注意力以及用于以因果推理形式思考的内部语言组成。这里讨论了这些组件在古人类进化中出现的顺序。有人认为，旧石器时代晚期象征性文物的繁荣是因为所有五个组成部分首次在解剖学上的现代智人中就位并相互作用。