#668 Annie Wertz: How Children Learn About Plants; Core Knowledge, and Human Universals
RECORDED ON JUNE 15th 2022.
Dr. Annie Wertz is Research Group Leader of the MPRG Naturalistic Social Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Her research investigates how infants and young children think about and learn from other people in naturalistic circumstances. Her work provided the first evidence that human infants do indeed possess behavioral and social learning strategies that are selective to plants (e.g., infants avoid plant dangers and selectively learn that some plants are edible). Her research provides a window into the complex interplay of evolutionary and developmental factors that allow human beings to learn from others and accumulate cultural knowledge.
In this episode, we talk about how infants acquire information about plants. We discuss why we have evolved this capacity, and how people categorize plants. We talk about core knowledge, and the domain of folk biology. We get into the developmental aspects of it, and discuss innateness and human universals. We also go through more general questions, having to do with how this connects to other aspects of human cognition, the interplay between evolutionary and developmental psychology, the relationship between evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory, and how cultural knowledge becomes cumulative.
Time Links:
Intro
Why have we evolved selective social learning strategies to acquire information about plants?
How people categorize plants
Core knowledge, and folk biology
Cross-cultural differences
At what age children start acquiring information about plants?
Innateness
How infants acquire information from others
Do infants experiment with plants?
Studying human universals
Is the human mind adapted to dealing with plants?
How infants learn about animals, people, and objects
The interplay between evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology
Evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory
Cultural knowledge
Follow Dr. Wertz’s work!
Follow Dr. Wertz’s work:
University page: https://bit.ly/3jnvgcc
Works on ResearchGate: https://bit.ly/3sXxlyS
Twitter handle: @AnnieWertz