Learning through Others

The theory of natural pedagogy provides a model of social learning based on the direct communicative ostensive relation and aimed to the transfer of generic cultural knowledge. The pedagogical transmission of information originates from an explicit manifestation of teaching made by knowledgeable adults, who are naturally inclined to manifestly provide their cultural baggage to naïve conspecifics. The domain of transferable knowledge encompasses artifact functions, novel means actions, first words, gestural symbols, social practices, and rituals. This teaching process can be fast and efficient in virtue of a natural inclination possessed by infants to seek information and decode signals of ostensive communication.
In this sense, the natural pedagogy represents, as the two proponents – György Gergey and Gergely Csibra – claim, «a communicative system of mutual design specialized for the fast and efficient transfer of new and relevant cultural knowledge from knowledgeable to ignorant conspecifics». This book suggests that natural pedagogy utilises early belief attribution competences, which are employed by infants in a variety of contexts to approach and navigate the social world. Therefore, the natural pedagogy, in cooperation with the early mindreading system, may represent one of the most efficient adaptive strategies to firmly create that deep wittgensteinian «nest of propositions» which build cultural shared beliefs structures to be relied upon and followed.