Want to know what books Helene Guldberg recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Helene Guldberg's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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This book is a critique of the experiments of recent years that tried to teach language to apes. The achievements of these animals are compared with the natural development of language, both spoken and signed forms, in children. It is argued that the apes in these studies acquired merely crude simulations of language rather than language itself and that there is no good evidence that apes can acquire a language. A survey of the communication systems of apes and monkeys in nature finds that these systems differ from language in profound ways--language is a uniquely human attribute. more This book is a critique of the experiments of recent years that tried to teach language to apes. The achievements of these animals are compared with the natural development of language, both spoken and signed forms, in children. It is argued that the apes in these studies acquired merely crude simulations of language rather than language itself and that there is no good evidence that apes can acquire a language. A survey of the communication systems of apes and monkeys in nature finds that these systems differ from language in profound ways--language is a uniquely human attribute. less 
Helene GuldbergJoel Wallman’s book is very important because it shows, really convincingly, that animals do not have language, and that language is unique to human beings. He looks in detail at all of the ape language studies and analyses their methods and conclusions and all the published data and he concludes that, despite years and years of tutelage on the part of very dedicated individuals – trying to teach... (Source)
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This volume presents a psychologist's insight into how infants learn to think. It argues that thinking arises from the nature and quality of the relationship between parent and child in the first 18 months of life and draws on 20 years of clinical experience, case histories and research. more This volume presents a psychologist's insight into how infants learn to think. It argues that thinking arises from the nature and quality of the relationship between parent and child in the first 18 months of life and draws on 20 years of clinical experience, case histories and research. less Helene GuldbergYes. Hobson tries to make sense of how an infant becomes transformed from an instinctive being at birth into a social, conscious being and how this really powerful ability to learn from each other emerges in infants. He looks at a lot of experimental studies and explores all the exchanges that happen before language emerges. He shows that even in really early infancy, children have the capacity... (Source)
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Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from.
Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive... more Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from.
Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive capacities that emerge early in human ontogeny. These include capacities for sharing attention with other persons; for understanding that others have intentions of their own; and for imitating, not just what someone else does, but what someone else has intended to do. In his discussions of language, symbolic representation, and cognitive development, Tomasello describes with authority and ingenuity the "ratchet effect" of these capacities working over evolutionary and historical time to create the kind of cultural artifacts and settings within which each new generation of children develops. He also proposes a novel hypothesis, based on processes of social cognition and cultural evolution, about what makes the cognitive representations of humans different from those of other primates.
Lucid, erudite, and passionate, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition will be essential reading for developmental psychology, animal behavior, and cultural psychology. less Helene GuldbergThis book I am equally or even more persuaded by. Tomasello argues that evolution must have endowed us with something uniquely powerful. He says the only possible solution to the puzzle of this explosion in creativity, the only biological mechanism that could have brought about these changes in such a short period of time, is a new capacity for social and cultural transmission. In other words,... (Source)
Joe HenrichHe is interested in something he calls the ‘ratchet’ effect. This is something we only see in humans. (Source)
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Here is an exhilarating intellectual performance, in the tradition of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. On the way to showing how the world of our ancient ancestors shaped our modern modular mind, Steven Mithen shares one provocative insight after another as he answers a series of fascinating questions:
Were our brains hard-wired in the Pleistocene Era by the needs of hunter-gatherers?
When did religious beliefs first emerge?
Why were the first paintings made by humankind so technically accomplished and... more Here is an exhilarating intellectual performance, in the tradition of Roger Penrose's The Emperor's New Mind and Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. On the way to showing how the world of our ancient ancestors shaped our modern modular mind, Steven Mithen shares one provocative insight after another as he answers a series of fascinating questions:
Were our brains hard-wired in the Pleistocene Era by the needs of hunter-gatherers?
When did religious beliefs first emerge?
Why were the first paintings made by humankind so technically accomplished and expressive?
What can the sexual habits of chimpanzees tell us about the prehistory of the modern mind?
This is the first archaeological account to support the new modular concept of the mind. The concept, promulgated by cognitive and evolutionary psychologists, views the mind as a collection of specialized intelligences or "cognitive domains," somewhat like a Swiss army knife with its specialized blades and tools. Arguing that only archaeology can answer many of the key questions raised by the new concept, Mithen delineates a three-phase sequence for the mind's evolution over six million years—from early Homo in Africa to the ice-age Neanderthals to our modern modular minds. The Prehistory of the Mind is an intriguing and challenging explanation of what it means to be human, a bold new theory about the origins and nature of the mind. less Helene GuldbergYes, these two books really go quite far in trying to understand the emergence of our unique human abilities through evolution. Steven Mithen starts off by saying, ‘We’ve got a real conundrum here.’ Around 100,000 years ago there is some evidence among homo sapiens of novel tool-making, such as bone artefacts. But he points out that the tools that were used and made then were not that much more... (Source)
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Available in this first-ever English translation, this study by the well-known Russian psychologists demonstrates that the behavior of modern man is a product of three different lines of development: evolutionary, historical, and ontogenetic. This edition contains reproductions of the artwork from their original manuscript, including rare photographs. more Available in this first-ever English translation, this study by the well-known Russian psychologists demonstrates that the behavior of modern man is a product of three different lines of development: evolutionary, historical, and ontogenetic. This edition contains reproductions of the artwork from their original manuscript, including rare photographs. less Helene GuldbergIn Ape, Primitive Man and Child, Luria and Vygotsky put forward a theoretical framework for explaining what makes us human. They argue that there are three principal lines in the development of the creation of our uniquely human abilities: the evolutionary line, the historical line and the ontogenetic line. In order to understand who we are as human beings, we need to understand that we’re the... (Source)
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