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Knowing Ourselves Together: The Cultural Origins of Metacognition

Citation: Heyes, Cecilia and Bang, Dan and Shea, Nicholas and Frith, Chris and Fleming, Stephen (2020) Knowing Ourselves Together: The Cultural Origins of Metacognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences . ISSN 1364-6613

Heyes_et_al_20_Cultr_origins_metacogn_TICS.pdf

Creative Commons: Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0

Metacognition – the ability to represent, monitor and control ongoing cognitive processes – helps us perform many tasks, both when acting alone and when working with others. While metacognition is adaptive, and found in other animals, we should not assume that all human forms of metacognition are gene-based adaptations. Instead, some forms may have a social origin, including the discrimination, interpretation, and broadcasting of metacognitive representations. There is evidence that each of these abilities depends on cultural learning and therefore that cultural selection might shape human metacognition. The cultural origins hypothesis is a plausible and testable alternative that directs us towards a substantial new programme of research.

Creators: Heyes, Cecilia and Bang, Dan and Shea, Nicholas (0000-0002-2032-5705) and Frith, Chris and Fleming, Stephen and
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.02.007
Subjects: Philosophy
Divisions: Institute of Philosophy
Dates:
  • 18 February 2020 (accepted)

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