Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture PDF
Preview Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture
Mapping the mind A growing number of researchers now claim that many cognitive abilities are specialized to handle specific types of information. Psychologists with con- cerns ranging from animal learning to emergent theories of mind and folk biology, cognitive scientists exploring problem solving and expertise, anthro- pologists working with color terms and folk taxonomies, psycholinguists in- vestigating auditory perception, and philosophers examining reasoning schemata have concluded - often independently - that humans simply could not learn what they do in a purely domain-neutral fashion. In this important volume bringing together different traditions of research, the contributors examine a number of theoretical questions, including the nature of domain- guided knowledge transfer, the biological and evolutionary nature of domain- specific skills, and the implications of a domain-specific perspective for education. Mapping the mind Domain specificity in cognition and culture Edited by LAWRENCE A. HIRSCHFELD University of Michigan SUSAN A. GELMAN University of Michigan CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1RP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1994 First published 1994 Reprinted 1994 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-52M1966-2 hardback ISBN 0-521 ^2993-5 paperback To Adam, Bruno, Stephanie, and Tessa Contents List of contributors ix Preface xi Part I Overview 1 1 Toward a topography of mind: An introduction to domain specificity 3 Lawrence A. Hirschfeld and Susan A. Gelman Part II The origins of domain knowledge: Biology and evolution 37 2 The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations 39 Dan Sperber 3 The organization of lexical knowledge in the brain: Evidence from category- and modality-specific deficits 68 Alfonso Caramazza, Argye Hillis, Elwyn C. Leek, and Michele Miozzo 4 Origins of domain specificity: The evolution of functional organization 85 Leda Cosmides and John Tooby Part III The origins of domain knowledge: Conceptual approaches 117 5 ToMM, ToBY, and Agency: Core architecture and domain specificity 19 Alan M. Leslie 6 Moral belief: Form versus content 149 David Premack and Ann James Premack 7 Domain-specific knowledge and conceptual change 169 Susan Carey and Elizabeth Spelke 8 Is the acquisition of social categories based on domain- specific competence or on knowledge transfer? 201 Lawrence A. Hirschfeld vii viii Contents 9 The birth and nurturance of concepts by domains: The origins of concepts of living things 234 Frank C. Keil Part IV Are domains theories? 255 10 The theory theory 257 Alison Gopnik and Henry M. Wellman 11 Thinking by children and scientists: False analogies and neglected similarities 294 Paul L. Harris 12 Core domains versus scientific theories: Evidence from systematics and Itza-Maya folkbiology 316 Scott Atran 13 Essentialist beliefs in children: The acquisition of concepts and theories 341 Susan A. Gelman, John D. Coley, and Gail M. Gottfried Part V Domains across cultures and languages 367 14 First principles can support both universal and culture- specific learning about number and music 369 Rochel Gelman and Kimberly Brenneman 15 Cognitive constraints on cultural representations: Natural ontologies and religious ideas 391 Pascal Boyer 16 Universal and culture-specific properties of children's mental models of the earth 412 Stella Vosniadou 17 Cognitive domains and the structure of the lexicon: The case of the emotions 431 Anna Wierzbicka Part VI Implications for education 453 18 Teachers' models of children's minds and learning 455 Sidney Strauss and Tamar Shilony 19 Situated rationalism: Biological and social preparation for learning 474 Lauren B. Resnick Author index 495 Subject index 505 Contributors Scott Atran Leda Cosmides Centre de recherche en Department of Psychology epistemologie appliquee University of California, Santa Ecole Polytechnique/CNRS Barbara Paris, France Santa Barbara, California Pascal Boyer Rochel Gelman Department of Anthropology Department of Psychology Cambridge University University of California, Los Cambridge, England Angeles Los Angeles, California Kimberly Brenneman Department of Psychology Susan A. Gelman University of California Department of Psychology Los Angeles, California University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan Alfonso Caramazza Department of Psychology Alison Gopnik Dartmouth College Department of Psychology Hanover, New Hampshire University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California Susan Carey Department of Brain and Cognitive Gail M. Gottfried Sciences Department of Psychology Massachusetts Institute of University of Michigan Technology Ann Arbor, Michigan Cambridge, Massachusetts Paul L. Harris John D. Coley Department of Experimental Department of Psychology Psychology Northwestern University Oxford University Evanston, Illinois Oxford, England IX
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