--- abstract: 'Considering the close relation between language and theory of mind in development and their tight connection in social behavior, it is no big leap to claim that the two capacities have been related in evolution as well. But what is the exact relation between them? This paper attempts to clear a path toward an answer. I consider several possible relations between the two faculties, bring conceptual arguments and empirical evidence to bear on them, and end up arguing for a version of co-evolution. To model this co-evolution, we must distinguish between different stages or levels of language and theory of mind, which fueled each other’s evolution in a protracted escalation process. ' altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Malle given: Bertram F. honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2002 date_type: published datestamp: 2003-12-16 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/33/17 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: - family: Givón given: Talmy honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Malle given: Bertram F. honourific: '' lineage: '' eprint_status: archive eprintid: 3317 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/3317/1/Evol_of_language_%26_ToM.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'Theory of mind, Folk psychology, Evolution, Social Cognition, Language, Protolanguage' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:24 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: ~ pagerange: 265-284 pubdom: FALSE publication: The evolution of language from pre-language publisher: John Benjamins refereed: FALSE referencetext: | Abry, & Laboissiere, R. (2000, April). Who’s afraid of the co-evolution of medial and lateral cortices for speech? Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the evolution of language. Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France. (Retrieved from http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes01.html). Baird, J. A. (2000). Young children’s understanding of the relation between actions and intentions. Unpublished dissertation, University of Oregon, Eugene. Baldwin, D. A. (1991). Infants’ contribution to the achievement of joint reference. Child Development, 62, 875-890. Baldwin, D. A. (1993). Early referential understanding: Infants’ ability to recognize referential acts for what they are. Developmental Psychology, 29, 832-843. Baldwin, D. A, & Tomasello, M. (1998). Word learning: A window on early pragmatic understanding. In E. V. Clark (Ed), The proceedings of the twenty-ninth annual child language research forum (pp. 3-23). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Baldwin, D. A., Baird, J. A., Saylor, M. M., & Clark, M. A. (2001). Infants parse dynamic action. Child Development, 72, 708-717. Baron-Cohen, S. (1999). The evolution of a theory of mind. In M. C. Corballis & S. E. G. Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: Psychological perspectives on hominid evolution (pp. 261-277). New York: Oxford University Press. Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Baron-Cohen, S., Baldwin, D. A, & Crowson, M. (1997). Do children with autism use the speaker’s direction of gaze strategy to crack the code of language? Child Development, 68, 48-57. Bartsch, K., & Wellman, H. M. (1995). Children talk about the mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Bickerton, D. (1990). Language and species. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Bickerton, D. (2000, April). Foraging versus social intelligence in the evolution of protolanguage. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the evolution of language. Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France. (Retrieved from http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes05.html). Blakemore, S., & Decety, J. (2001). From the perception of action to the understanding of intention. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 561-567. Bogdan, R. J. (2000). Minding minds: Evolving a reflexive mind by interpreting others. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss. New York: Basic Books. Carpenter, M., Akhtar, N., & Tomasello, M. (1998). Fourteen- through 18-month-old infants differentially imitate intentional and accidental actions. Infant Behavior and Development, 21, 315-330. Carpenter, M., & Tomasello, M. (2000). Joint attention, cultural learning, and language acquisition: Implications for children with autism. In A. M. Wetherby & B. M. Prizant (Eds.), Autism spectrum disorders: A transactional developmental perspective (pp. 31-54). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing. Carruthers, P. (1998). Thinking in language? Evolution and a modularist possibility. In P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (Eds.), Language and thought: Interdisciplinary themes (pp. 94-119). New York: Cambridge University Press. Cheng, P. W., & Novick, L. R. (1990). A probabilistic contrast model of causal induction. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 58, 545-567. Churchland, P. M. (1988). Matter and consciousness: A contemporary introduction to the philosophy of mind (Rev. ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive adaptations for social exchange. In J. H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, & J. Tooby (Eds.), The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture (pp. 163-228). New York: Oxford University Press. Deacon, T. (1997). The symbolic species: The coevolution of language and the brain. W.W. Norton: New York. De Boer, B. (2000). Emergence of sound systems through self-organization. In C. Knight, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & J. R. Hurford (Eds.), The Evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form (pp. 177-198). New York : Cambridge University Press. De Villiers, J. (2000). Language and theory of mind: What are the developmental relationships? In S. Baron-Cohen, H. Tager-Flusberg, & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Understanding other minds: Perspectives from developmental cognitive neuroscience (2nd ed., pp. 83-123). New York: Oxford University Press. Donald, M. (1998). Mimesis and the excessive suite: Missing links in language evolution. In J. R. Hurford, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & C. Knight (Eds.), Approaches to the evolution of language: Social and cognitive bases (pp. 44-67). New York: Cambridge University Press. Farroni, T., Johnson, M. H, Brockbank, M., & Simion, F. (2000). Infants’ use of gaze direction to cue attention: The importance of perceived motion. Visual Cognition, 7, 705-718. Gallese, V., & Goldman, A. (1998). Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 493-501. Gergely, G., Nádasdy, Z., Csibra, G., & Bíró, S. (1995). Taking the intentional stance at 12 months of age. Cognition, 56, 165-193. Gilovich, T., Savitsky, K., & Medvec, V. H. (1998). The illusion of transparency: Biased assessments of others’ ability to read one’s emotional states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 332-346. Goldman, A. I. (1989). Interpretation psychologized. Mind and Language, 4, 161-185. Goldman, A. I. (2001). Desire, intention, and the simulation theory. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 207-225). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Gordon, R. M. (1986). Folk psychology as simulation. Mind and Language, 1, 158-71. Grice, H. P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 64, 377-388. Harris, P. (1996). Desires, beliefs, and language. In P. Carruthers and P. K. Smith (Eds.), Theories of theories of mind (pp. 200-220). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243-259. Hilton, D. J. (1990). Conversational processes and causal explanation. Psychological Bulletin, 107, 65-81 Hobson, R. P. (2000). The grounding of symbols: A social-developmental account. In P. Mitchell & K. J. Riggs (Eds.), Children’s reasoning and the mind (pp. 11-35). Hove: Psychology Press. Humphrey, N. (2000). The privatization of sensation. In C. Heyes & L. Huber (Eds.), The evolution of cognition (pp. 241-252). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hurford, J. R. (2000, April). The roles of communication and representation in language evolution. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the evolution of language. Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France. (Retrieved from http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes37.html). Ickes, W. (1993). Empathic accuracy. Journal of Personality, 61, 587-610. Kant, I. (1998/1787). Critique of Pure Reason. (Translated and edited by Paul Guyer, Allen W. Wood). New York: Cambridge University Press. Keysar, B. (1994). The illusory transparency of intention: Linguistic perspective taking in text. Cognitive Psychology, 26, 165-208. Kidd, R. F., Amabile, T. M. (1981). Causal explanations in social interaction: Some dialogues on dialogue. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 3, pp. 307-328). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Krauss, R. M., & Fussell, S. R. (1991). Constructing shared communicative environments. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 172-200). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Malle, B. F. (1999). How people explain behavior: A new theoretical framework. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 23-48. Malle, B. F. (in press). The folk theory of mind: Conceptual foundations for social cognition. In R. Hassin, J. Uleman, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The new unconscious. New York: Oxford University Press. Malle, B. F. (2002). Verbs of interpersonal causality and the folk theory of mind and behavior. In M. Shibatani (Ed.), The grammar of causation and interpersonal manipulation (pp. 57-83). Amsterdam: Benjamins. Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997a). The folk concept of intentionality. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 33, 101-121. Malle, B. F., & Knobe, J. (1997b). Which behaviors do people explain? A basic actor-observer asymmetry. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 288-304. Malle, B. F., Knobe, J., O’Laughlin, M., Pearce, G. E., & Nelson, S. E. (2000). Conceptual structure and social functions of behavior explanations: Beyond person–situation attributions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 309-326. Meltzoff, A. N. (1995). Understanding the intentions of others: Re-enactment of intended acts by 18-month-old children. Developmental Psychology, 31, 838-850. Meltzoff, A. N., & Brooks, R. (2001). “Like me” as a building block for understanding other minds: Bodily acts, attention, and intention. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 171-191). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1977). Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science, 198, 75-78. Meltzoff, A. N., & Moore, M. K. (1989). Imitation in newborn infants: Exploring the range of gestures imitated and the underlying mechanisms. Developmental Psychology, 25, 954-962. Mithen, S. (1996). The prehistory of the mind. London: Thames and Hudson. Origgi, G. & Sperber, D. (2000). Evolution, communication and the proper function of language. In P. Carruthers & A. Chamberlain (Eds.), Evolution and the human mind: Modularity, language and meta-cognition (pp. 140-169). New York: Cambridge University Press. Perner, J. (1991). Understanding the representational mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Povinelli, D. M. (2001). On the possibilities of detecting intentions prior to understanding them. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 225-248). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Premack, D. (1990). The infant’s theory of self-propelled objects. Cognition, 36, 1-16. Sacks, O. (1995). An anthropologist on Mars. In O. Sacks, An anthropologist on Mars (pp. 244-296). New York: Vintage Books. Senghas, A. (2000, April). Evolution of Grammar: The Grammaticization of Nicaraguan Sign Language by Sequential Iterations of Native Acquisition. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the evolution of language. Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France. (See http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes64.html). Sharon, T., & Wynn, K. (1998). Individuation of actions from continuous motion. Psychological Science, 9, 357-362. Sigman, M. D, Kasari, C., Kwon, J., & Yirmiya, N. (1992). Responses to the negative emotions of others by autistic, mentally retarded, and normal children. Child Development, 63, 796-807. Smith, P. K. (1996). Language and the evolution of mind-reading. In P. Carruthers and P. K. Smith (Eds.), Theories of theories of mind (pp. 344-354). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sperber, D. (2000). Metarepresentations in an evolutionary perspective. In D. Sperber (Ed.), Metarepresentations: A multidisciplinary perspective (pp. 117-137). New York: Oxford University Press. Studdert-Kennedy, M. (2000a.) Evolutionary implications of the particulate principle: Imitation and the dissociation of phonetic form from semantic function. In C. Knight, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & J. R. Hurford (Eds.), The Evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form (pp. 161-176). New York : Cambridge University Press. Studdert-Kennedy, M. (2000b). Introduction: The emergence of phonetic structure. In C. Knight, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & J. R. Hurford (Eds.), The Evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form (pp. 123-129). New York : Cambridge University Press. Tomasello, M. (1996). The cultural roots of language. In B. M. Velichkovsky & D. M. Rumbaugh (Eds.), Communicating meaning: The evolution and development of language (pp. 275-307). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Tomasello, M. (1998). Reference: Intending that others jointly attend. Pragmatics and Cognition, 6, 229-243. Vaas, R. (2000, April). Evolving language, I-consciousness and free will. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the evolution of language. Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France. (See http://www.infres.enst.fr/confs/evolang/actes/_actes73.html). Van Overwalle, F. (1998). Causal explanation as constraint satisfaction: A critique and a feed-forward connectionist alternative. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 312-328. Wellman, H. (1990). The child’s theory of mind. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Wellman, H. W., & Phillips, A. T. (2001). Developing intentional understandings. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 125-148). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Whiten, A. (1999). The evolution of deep social mind in humans. In M. C. Corballis & S. E. G. Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: Psychological perspectives on hominid evolution (pp. 173-193). New York: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations. (G. E. M. Anscombe, Transl.). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Woodward, A. L., Sommervile, J. A., & Guajardo, J. J. (2001). How infants make sense of intentional action. In B. F. Malle, L. J. Moses, & D. A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 149-170). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wray, A. (2000). Holistic utterances n protolanguage: The link from primates to humans. In C. Knight, M. Studdert-Kennedy, & J. R. Hurford (Eds.), The Evolutionary emergence of language: Social function and the origins of linguistic form (pp. 285-302). New York : Cambridge University Press. relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:49:50 subjects: - phil-lang - evol-psy - ling-prag - soc-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: | The relation between language and theory of mind in development and evolution type: bookchapter userid: 4548 volume: ~