Drop something in front of a two-year-old, and she's likely to pick it up for you. This is not a learned behavior, psychologist Michael Tomasello argues. Through observations of young children in experiments he himself has designed, Tomasello shows that children are naturally--and uniquely--cooperat[...]

This work builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. The author is one of very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. This work identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might [...]

Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. In this much-anticipated book, Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes int[...]

Vi har lätt att uppfatta små barn som självcentrerade varelser, men i själva verket är de påfallande samarbetsvilliga. Tvååringar har betydligt lättare att sinsemellan dela upp någonting åtråvärt ? några bananer, till exempel ? än vad schimpanser har. Det är alltså inte enbart vårt[...]