Csibra & Gergely (2011) Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation

-Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2011). Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 366, 1149-1157.

and

Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2009). Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Science, 13, 148-153.

The problem of learning is tough, and often requires lots of statistical sampling over many instances. A unique way to acquire generic knowledge from a single instance of information intake is transmission through human communication.
-Not restricted to linguistic communication, eg., manual demonstration.

Proposal: Human communication is specifically adapted for transmitting generic knowledge between individuals. The most likely beneficiaries of communication of generic knowledge are children (who are always novices w.r.t. the accumulated knowledge of their culture.
Natural pedagogy: the specific aspects of human communication that allow and facilitate the transfer of generic knowledge to novices.

Natural pedagogy as evolutionary adaptation (only part from 2011 paper, rest from 2009):

1. Unique to humans (human-specific). While there are lots of instances of social learning in non-human animals, non seem to be tailored to transmit generic knowledge. 
2. Universal across human cultures. 
3. Data on early hominid technology are most compatible with the assumption of natural pedagogy as an independently selected adaptive cognitive system. 

Humans are sensitive to ostensive signals
Part of communication is the intention of the signaler to convey information to the recipient. Thus, communication is often preceded by ostensive signals to (a) disambiguate that the subsequent action is intended for communication, and (b) specify the addressee.

Referential expectation
Infants follow eye gaze. Also, infants expect to find a referent when they follow someone's gaze, as early as 8 months. When 13 month-olds followed a gaze to an occluded boundary, and the pointer said a word (e.g. "spoon!"), the infant expect to find that object there.

Interpretation bias for generalizability
Empirical results confirm that infants expect ostensive-referential communication from adults. But the natural pedagogy hypothesis proposes that, in addition, children expect to learn something generalizable in these contexts, rather than just about particular episodic facts (in the "here and now").
-When 14-month-olds observe others' ostensive emotion displays about objects, they are more likely to interpret these as containing valence information about the object rather than as expressing the subjective feelings of the communicator toward the object.
-18-month-olds readily generalize the valence information displayed about the referent to other people (i.e., they expect other people will feel the same way about it), as long as it is communicated to them in an ostensive way.