Session: New perspectives on the evolution of human cognition. Chiara Elettra Ferrario, Ivan Dario Gonzalez Cabrera, Laura Desireé Di Paolo

Chimpanzees are able to switch between emulation and imitation in solving goal-directed tasks, depending on the quantity of information available in the environment. Surprisingly, children are not. They stubbornly persist in copying demonstrator's actions, even when these are overtly ineffective or wasteful. Such apparent rigidity, contrasting with the standard of high flexibility observed in human behavior, requires an explanation. Taking our cue from a comparative study of Whiten and colleagues, we propose a different interpretation of their results, drawing from a broader framework on the evolution of human cognition.