caa a22 4500 605448582 CHVBK 20210128100137.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150301xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10539-014-9462-y doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10539-014-9462-y Stuart-Fox Martin School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of Queensland, 4072, St Lucia, QLD, Australia aut The origins of causal cognition in early hominins [Elektronische Daten] [Martin Stuart-Fox] Studies of primate cognition have conclusively shown that humans and apes share a range of basic cognitive abilities. As a corollary, these same studies have also focussed attention on what makes humans unique, and on when and how specifically human cognitive skills evolved. There is widespread agreement that a major distinguishing feature of the human mind is its capacity for causal reasoning. This paper argues that causal cognition originated with the use made of indirect natural signs by early hominins forced to adapt to variable late Miocene and early Pliocene environments; that early hominins evolved an innate tendency to search for such signs and infer their causes; that causal inference required the existence of incipient working memory; and that causal relationships were stored through being integrated into spatial maps to create increasingly complex causal models of the world. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2014 Hominin evolution nationallicence Causal cognition nationallicence Natural signs nationallicence Cognitive maps nationallicence Working memory nationallicence Overimitation nationallicence Belief nationallicence Biology & Philosophy Springer Netherlands 30/2(2015-03-01), 247-266 0169-3867 30:2<247 2015 30 10539 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9462-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9462-y text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Stuart-Fox Martin School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, The University of Queensland, 4072, St Lucia, QLD, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Biology & Philosophy Springer Netherlands 30/2(2015-03-01), 247-266 0169-3867 30:2<247 2015 30 10539