Many of the cognitive psychologists have assumed that human mind is universal, and have inferred that, even if they observe cultural differences, they are the consequences of different cultural stimuli. However, some social psychologists have demonstrated cultural differences in cognition (e.g., Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). They abandon the universality view and proposed an interac...

Frames of reference are coordinate systems used to compute and specify the location of objects with respect to other objects. These have long been thought of as innate concepts, built into our neurocognition. However, recent work shows that the use of such frames in language, cognition and gesture varies cross-culturally, and that children can acquire different systems with comparable ease. We ...

Social cognition is meant to examine the process of meaningful social interaction. Despite the central involvement of language in this process, language has not received the focal attention that it deserves. Conceptualizing meaningful social interaction as the process of construction and exchange of meaning, the authors argue that language can be productively construed as a semiotic tool, a too...

We begin to examine the implications of IR Cohen’s work on immune cognition [1-3] for vaccine strategies when simple elicitation of sterilizing immunity fails, as is the case for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Cohen’s approach takes on a special importance in the context of recent work by Nisbett et al. [4] showing clearly that central nervous system (CNS) cognition is not universal, but rather...

The investigation of cultural phenomena using neuroscientific methods-cultural neuroscience (CN)-is receiving increasing attention. Yet it is unclear whether the integration of cultural study and neuroscience is merely additive, providing additional evidence of neural plasticity in the human brain, or truly synergistic, yielding discoveries that neither discipline could have achieved alone. We ...

The introductory essay to this collection correctly observes that there are many "challenges for rapprochement" between anthropology and (the rest of) cognitive science. Still, the possibilities of fruitful interchanges provide some hope for the parties getting back together, at least on an intermittent basis. This response offers some views concerning the "incompatibility" of psychology and an...

Cultural evolution and cognitive science need each other. Cultural evolution needs cognitive science to find out whether the conditions necessary for Darwinian evolution are met in the cultural domain. Cognitive science needs cultural evolution to explain the origins of distinctively human cognitive processes. Focusing on the first question, I argue that cultural evolutionists can get empirical...

"Cultural systems are coherent patterns of understanding built from the reciprocal relationships among 1) knowledge or beliefs: the shared conceptual understandings of what or how things are; 2) patterns of practice: both the models for doing and the model-guided, habituated actions of everyday practice; 3) 3 tools and artifacts: the means and ends of practical action; and 4) patterns of affect...

Humans are animals that specialize in thinking and knowing, and our extraordinary cognitive abilities have transformed every aspect of our lives. In contrast to our chimpanzee cousins and Stone Age ancestors, we are complex political, economic, scientific and artistic creatures, living in a vast range of habitats, many of which are our own creation. Research on the evolution of human cognition ...