Are we humans simply remodelled apes? Chimps with a tweak? Is the difference between our genomes so minuscule it justifies the argument that our cognition and behaviour must also differ from chimps by barely a whisker? If “chimps are us” should we grant them human rights? Or is this one of the biggest fallacies in the study of evolution? NOT A CHIMP argues that these similarities have been grossly over-exaggerated - we should keep chimps at arm’s length. Are humans cognitively unique after all?
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Babies Share Attention From The Start
We've known or a long time (from the work of Andy Meltzoff, among others) that babies seem tuned to respond to faces almost from birth, and share attention on a third object or person from a matter of months onwards. This ability to share attention, draw a third person in to share attention to an object of interest, for instance, is considered one of the crucial building blocks to eventual full theory of mind. Now Tobias Grossman and Mark Johnson, from Birkbeck College's Babylab, have produced further evidence of attention sharing in babies 5 months old, and that they employ the left prefrontal cortex - as do adults - when they participate in shared attention with an adult.
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