Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Unlike in other animals that might reach full maturity within a few months or years, human cognitive development follows an unusually protracted timeline. In many contemporary societies, people might require several years of scaffolded learning opportunities to develop the full suite of cognitive skills and abilities they are expected to have as adults. This extended period of development reflects our species' unique capacity for cumulative cultural learning: humans have evolved specialized cognitive mechanisms that enable us to learn from, communicate with, and teach others across the lifespan (Csibra & Gergely, 2009; Tomasello, 2016).