The Lawrence Jacobsen Library
Books Received (Primate-Science/PrimateLit)

APES, MONKEYS, CHILDREN, AND THE GROWTH OF MIND (Paperback)

By Juan Carlos Gómez

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What can the study of young monkeys and apes tell us about the minds of young humans? 
In this fascinating introduction to the study of primate minds, Juan Carlos 
Gomez identifies evolutionary resemblances--and differences--between human 
children and other primates. He argues that primate minds are best understood 
not as fixed collections of specialized cognitive capacities, but more 
dynamically, as a range of abilities that can surpass their original 
adaptations. In a lively overview of a distinguished body of cognitive 
developmental research among nonhuman primates, Gomez looks at knowledge of 
the physical world, causal reasoning (including the chimpanzee-like errors 
that human children make), and the contentious subjects of ape language, theory 
of mind, and imitation. Attempts to teach language to chimpanzees, as well as 
studies of the quality of some primate vocal communication in the wild, make a 
powerful case that primates have a natural capacity for relatively sophisticated 
communication, and considerable power to learn when humans teach them. Gomez 
concludes that for all cognitive psychology's interest in perception, 
information-processing, and reasoning, some essential functions of mental life 
are based on ideas that cannot be explicitly articulated. Nonhuman and human 
primates alike rely on implicit knowledge. Studying nonhuman primates helps us 
to understand this perplexing aspect of all primate minds.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Juan Carlos Gomez is Lecturer in Psychology at St. Andrew's University, Scotland



CONTENTS

Preface

1 Hands, Faces, and Infancy: The Origins of Primate Minds

2 Perceiving a World of Objects

3 Practical Intelligence: Doing Things with Objects

4 Understanding Relations Between Objects: Causality

5 The Logic of Object Relations

6 Objects in the World

7 Faces, Gestures, and Calls

8 Understanding Other Subjects

9 Social Learning, Imitation, and Culture

10 Consciousness and Language

11 Learning from Comparisons: The Evolution of Cognitive Developments

References

Index



WHERE TO ORDER

ISBN Number 0-674-02239-4 (Paperback $19.95)

Harvard University Press

79 Garden Street

Cambridge, Mass

02138

Website: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/

Direct link to order online: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/GOMAPE.html 




Posted Date: 09/06/2006