Michael Tomasello
Learning through others
Learning is a biological adaptation.
The majority of organisms on Earth
learn little or nothing during their in-
dividual lifetimes. Por otro lado,
many mammals are born in a highly
immature state and so they must indi-
vidually learn things crucial for their
survival. In order to ½nd food reliably,
youngsters of foraging species must
learn the spatial layouts of their local
entornos. In order to distinguish
friends from enemies, youngsters of
social species must learn to recognize
the individuals who make up their
social groups.
For several decades, behaviorists at-
tempted to ½nd the laws of learning that
applied equally to all species, for any and
all tasks, and that did not involve to any
Michael Tomasello is codirector of the Max
Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
and honorary professor of psychology at the
University of Leipzig and at Manchester Univer-
sity. His publications include “The Cultural Ori-
gins of Human Cognition” (1999), “The New
Psychology of Language: Cognitive and Func-
tional Approaches to Language Structure” (1998),
and “First Verbs: A Case Study of Early Gram-
matical Development” (1992).
© 2004 by the American Academy of Art
& Ciencias
signi½cant degree processes of cogni-
ción. But the modern view that learning
assumes diverse forms in different spe-
cies and behavioral domains, and oper-
ates in concert with cognitive processes
that may be speci½c to particular species
or domains, has for the most part sus-
pended that search.
For social species such as humans and
other mammals, an especially important
form of learning is social learning. Ob-
serving the activities of others and learn-
ing about the world from or through
them enables individuals to acquire in-
formation with less effort and risk than
if they were forced to learn on their own.
Por ejemplo, many species of rats learn
which foods to eat and which to avoid
by observing what other rats eat and
then seeing what happens to them sub-
sequently–clearly a safer strategy than
always trying out new foods for oneself.1
Despite an overall similarity in the
function of learning in the lives of differ-
ent species of mammals, social learning,
like individual learning, comes in many
different forms. In our empirical work
over the past ½fteen years, we have in-
vestigated forms of social learning that
1 Bennett G. Galef, Jr., “Social Influences in
Food Choices of Norway Rats and Mate Choic-
es of Japanese Quail,” International Journal of
Comparative Psychology 14 (1–2) (2001): 1–24.
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Miguel
Tomasello
en
aprendiendo
human beings share with other primate
species, as well as forms that are unique-
ly human. The unique forms mostly
derive, we believe, from some social-
cognitive processes that only humans
possess.2
In brief, because human beings per-
ceive the behavior of others in intention-
al terms–that is, because they perceive
a person ‘cleaning the table’ or ‘opening
the drawer,’ rather than simply moving
her limbs in a particular way–they learn
from the behavior of others in unique
maneras. We have called this process ‘cul-
tural learning’ to distinguish it from
processes of social learning in general,
and also to highlight the crucial role of
culture in the acquisition of many hu-
man skills. My colleagues and I have dis-
tinguished three kinds of cultural learn-
En g: imitative learning, instructed learn-
En g, and collaborative learning.3 The
ability of individuals to imagine them-
selves in the ‘mental shoes’ of other peo-
por ejemplo, to understand conspeci½cs as beings
like themselves who have intentional
and mental lives like themselves, enables
these types of cultural learning. Most of
our empirical work has focused on only
one type of cultural learning–imitation
in children before about two years of
edad. So that will be my focus here.
The recognition of others as intentional
beings like oneself is crucial in human
2 Michael Tomasello, Ann C. Kruger, y
Hillary H. Ratner, “Cultural Learning,” Be-
havioral and Brain Sciences 16 (1993): 495–552;
Michael Tomasello, “Do Apes Ape?” in Cecilia
METRO. Heyes and Bennett G. Galef, Jr., editores., Social
Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture (san
diego, California: Prensa académica, 1996); Miguel
Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cogni-
ción (Cambridge, Masa.: Harvard University
Prensa, 1999).
aprendiendo, most importantly because arti-
facts and practices–exempli½ed proto-
typically by the use of tools and linguis-
tic symbols–invariably point beyond
themselves to the phenomena for which
they have been designed. To learn the
conventional use of a tool or a symbol,
an individual must therefore come to
understand why, toward what outside
end, another individual is using it.4
Chimpanzees, humans’ nearest pri-
mate relatives, do not learn from one
another in this same way. En 1996, I re-
viewed all of the experimental studies
of chimpanzee tool use, and I concluded
that chimpanzees are very good at learn-
ing from others about the dynamic af-
fordances of objects, but are not skillful
at learning from others new behavioral
strategies or intentional activities per
se.5 For example, if a mother rolls over
a log and eats the insects underneath,
her child will very likely follow suit.
From her mother’s act the child has
learned that there are insects under
this particular log–but she did not
learn from her mother how to roll
over a log or how to eat insects; she
could have learned these on her own.
Thus the youngster would have learned
the same thing if the wind, en vez de
her mother, had exposed the ants under
the log. This is an instance of ‘emulation
aprendiendo,’ which concerns changes of
state in the environment rather than a
conspeci½c’s intentional activity or
behavioral strategy.
In some circumstances, emulation
learning is a more adaptive strategy
than learning by imitation. Por ejemplo,
Kathy Nagell, Kelly Olguin, and I pre-
sented chimpanzees and two-year-old
human children with a rake-like tool and
4 Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human
Cognición.
3 Tomasello, Kruger, and Ratner, “Cultural
Learning.”
5 Tomasello, “Do Apes Ape?"
52
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Aprendiendo
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an out-of-reach object.6 The tool could
be used in either of two ways leading to
the same end result of obtaining the ob-
ject. Within each species, one group of
subjects observed a demonstrator em-
ploy a relatively inef½cient method of
tool use, while another group observed
a more ef½cient method of tool use. El
resultado: human children in general copied
the method of the assigned demonstra-
colina (imitative learning), while chimpan-
zees used the same methods to obtain
the object no matter which demonstra-
tion they observed (emulation learning).
The interesting point is that many chil-
dren insisted on reproducing adult be-
havior even if it seemed inef½cient–
leading to a less successful performance
than that of the chimpanzees. Imitation
is thus not a ‘higher’ or ‘more intelli-
gent’ learning strategy than emulation;
it is simply a more culturally mediated
strategy–which, en algunas circunstancias
and for some behaviors, has some ad-
vantages.
Chimpanzees are very creative in using
herramientas, and intelligent about understand-
ing changes in the environment brought
about by the tool use of others. But they
do not seem to understand the instru-
mental behavior of conspeci½cs in the
same way as humans do. Humans per-
ceive the demonstrator’s apparent inten-
tion as centrally important, and they un-
derstand this goal as something separate
from the various behavioral means that
may be used to accomplish it. In the ab-
sence of this ability to understand goal
and behavioral means as separable in the
actions of others, chimpanzees focus on
the changes of state (including changes
in the spatial position) of the objects
6 Katherine Nagell, Raquel Olguin, and Mi-
chael Tomasello, “Processes of Social Learning
in the Tool Use of Chimpanzees (Pan troglo-
dytes) and Human Children (Homo sapiens),"
Journal of Comparative Psychology 107 (1993):
174–186.
during the demonstration, perceiving
the actions of the demonstrator just, en
efecto, as other physical motions. El
intentional states of the demonstrator,
and thus her behavioral methods as dis-
tinct entities, are simply not a part of
their experience.
A similar story may be told about the
gestural communication of chimpan-
zees. In a series of studies, we explored
whether youngsters acquire their gestur-
al signals by imitative learning or by a
process of ontogenetic ritualization.7 In
ontogenetic ritualization, two organisms
devise a communicatory signal through
repeated instances of a social interac-
ción. Por ejemplo, an infant may initiate
nursing by going directly for the moth-
er’s nipple, perhaps grabbing and mov-
ing her mother’s arm in the process. So
in some future encounter the mother
might sense, and respond to, her in-
fant’s hunger at the ½rst touch of her
arm, leading the infant to abbreviate
her signal for hunger even further the
next time. This is presumably analo-
gous to the way that most human in-
fants learn the ‘arms over head’ gesture
to request that adults pick them up–
½rst as a direct attempt to crawl up the
7 Michael Tomasello, Barbara George, Ann
C. Kruger, Jeff Farrar, and Andrea Evans, "El
Development of Gestural Communication in
Young Chimpanzees,” Journal of Human Evolu-
tion” 14 (1985): 175–186; Michael Tomasello,
Deborah Gust, and Thomas Frost, “A Longi-
tudinal Investigation of Gestural Communi-
cation in Young Chimpanzees,” Primates 30
(1989): 35–50; Michael Tomasello, Josep Call,
Katherine Nagell, Raquel Olguin, and Malinda
Carpintero, “The Learning and Use of Gestural
Signals by Young Chimpanzees: A Trans-
generational Study,” Primates 37 (1994): 137–
154; Michael Tomasello, Josep Call, Jennifer
Warren, Thomas Frost, Malinda Carpenter,
and Katherine Nagell, “The Ontogeny of Chim-
panzee Gestural Signals: A Comparison Across
Groups and Generations,” Evolution of Commu-
nication 1 (1997): 223–253.
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Miguel
Tomasello
en
aprendiendo
adult’s body, y luego, as the adult
anticipates the baby’s desire and picks
her up, as an abbreviated, ritualized ver-
sion of this crawling activity performed
for communicative purposes only.8
All available evidence suggests that
ontogenetic ritualization, not imitative
aprendiendo, is responsible for chimpanzees’
acquisition of communicative gestures.
Individual chimpanzees use a number
of idiosyncratic signals that must have
been individually invented and ritual-
ized–a ½nding that longitudinal analy-
ses have con½rmed.9 Signi½cantly, gorra-
tive youngsters raised in peer groups
that have no opportunity to observe
older conspeci½cs frequently use many
of the same gestures that are common
among other chimpanzee youngsters. En
an experimental study, colleagues and I
removed an individual from the group
and taught her two different arbitrary
gestures she could use to obtain desired
food from a human.10 When she re-
turned to her group and used these sig-
nals to obtain food from a human, no
even one chimpanzee reproduced either
of the new gestures–even though all of
the other individuals observed the ges-
turer and were highly motivated for the
alimento.
Chimpanzee youngsters thus acquire
the majority, if not the totality, de ellos
gestures by individually ritualizing them
with one another. The explanation for
this learning process is analogous to the
8 Andrew Lock, “The Emergence of Language,"
in Andrew Lock, ed., Acción, Gesture, and Sym-
bol: The Emergence of Language (Nueva York: Aca-
demic Press, 1978).
9 See Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe:
Patterns of Behavior (Cambridge, Masa.: Har-
vard University Press, 1986).
10 Tomasello, Call, Warren, Frost, Carpintero,
and Nagell, “The Ontogeny of Chimpanzee
Gestural Signals.”
explanation for emulation learning in
the case of tool use. Like emulation
aprendiendo, ontogenetic ritualization does
not require individuals to analyze the
behavior of others in terms of ends and
means in the same way as does imitative
aprendiendo. Imitatively learning an arm
touch as a solicitation for nursing would
require that an infant observe another
infant using an arm touch and under-
stand that other infant’s goal. Ritualiz-
ing the arm touch, por otro lado,
only requires the infant to anticipate the
future behavior of a conspeci½c in a con-
text in which the infant already has the
goal of nursing. Ontogenetic ritualiza-
tion is thus, like emulation learning, a
very useful learning process that is im-
portant in all social species–but it is not
a learning process by which individuals
attempt to reproduce the intentional
activities or behavioral strategies of oth-
ers; it is not cultural learning the way
humans practice it.
Human beings begin to learn through
imitation at around the ½rst birthday.
But it takes clever experimentation to
distinguish the unique features of this
form of learning from those of another.
Por ejemplo, if an adult takes the top off
of a pen and a child then does the same,
there are many possible explanations,
including emulation and mimicking
(copying movements without knowing
what they are for). Researchers have
therefore devised ingenious techniques
for analyzing the different components
of what the child perceives, understands,
and reproduces in a demonstrated act.
Por ejemplo, according to the tech-
nique Andy Meltzoff devised, fourteen-
month-old infants saw an adult illumi-
nate a box by bending down and touch-
ing her head to the top of it.11 Although
11 Andrew Meltzoff, “Infant Imitation After a
One-Week Delay: Long-Term Memory for
54
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infants could more easily have solved
this task by emulation (p.ej., by touching
the box with their hand), they instead
chose to use the same means as the
adult, unusual as it was. These infants
could have been mimicking the adult’s
unusual action without understanding
the goal of turning on the light. But if
they had been copying this action with
the same goal in mind, Su comportamiento
would have been an instance of imitative
aprendiendo.
In order to determine which of these
two mechanisms was at work, Malinda
Carpintero, Nagell, and I tested nine- a
½fteen-month-old infants on a modi½ed
version of this task: we delayed the illu-
mination of the light after the infants’
reproduction of the action, and noted
whether they looked in anticipation
to the light.12 We found that infants
twelve-months and older looked to the
light in anticipation before it came on.
If the light did not come on, they often
repeated their action or looked quizzi-
cally to the people in the room. Esta sugerencia-
gests that they were adopting the adult’s
means in order to achieve the same goal
of turning on the light. Infants thus were
not just mimicking the adult’s action,
but were engaging in imitative learning
of a novel means to achieve a perceived
end.
In another experiment, infants were
shown identical actions that produced
resultados idénticos, but with different
expressed intentions. Carpintero, Na-
meera Akhtar, and I showed fourteen-
to eighteen-month-olds a series of two
Novel Acts and Multiple Stimuli,” Developmen-
tal Psychology 24 (1988): 470–476.
12 Malinda Carpenter, Katherine Nagell, y
Michael Tomasello, “Social Cognition, Joint
Atención, and Communicative Competence
de 9 a 15 Months of Age,” Monographs of
the Society for Research in Child Development 63
(4) (1998).
actions on objects.13 For each object, el
pair of actions was followed by a striking
result–the sudden illumination of col-
ored lights, Por ejemplo. In the key ex-
perimento, one of the demonstrator’s
paired actions was marked verbally as
intentional (“There!") while the other
was marked verbally as accidental
(“Woops!"), but otherwise the actions
looked very similar. Instead of mimick-
ing both of the actions they observed,
even the youngest infants reproduced
the action marked as intentional signi½-
cantly more often than the one marked
as accidental.
Another study demonstrated that in-
fants were able to imagine the goal to-
ward which the adult was acting, incluso
though they never actually saw any con-
crete results. en un 1995 experimento,
Meltzoff showed eighteen-month-olds
an adult either successfully completing
una tarea (pulling apart two halves of a
dumbbell) or trying but failing to do so
(because the adult’s hands slipped off
the ends of the dumbbell). Infants were
able to complete the task whether or not
they had seen an adult successfully com-
plete it. Yet these eighteen-month-olds
were not able to achieve the same result
when they watched a machine either
successfully completing the same task
or trying, or failing, to do so. Francesca
Bellagamba and I replicated the basic
½ndings of this study with twelve- y
eighteen-month-old infants, but we
found that twelve-month-olds could
not reproduce the adult’s intended
action when they only saw her trying
unsuccessfully to perform it.14
13 Malinda Carpenter, Nameera Akhtar, y
Michael Tomasello, “Sixteen-Month-Old In-
fants Differentially Imitate Intentional and
Accidental Actions,” Infant Behavior and Develop-
mento 21 (1998): 315–330.
14 Francesca Bellagamba and Michael Toma-
sello, “Reenacting Intended Acts: Comparing
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Miguel
Tomasello
en
aprendiendo
Other studies have manipulated the
social learning context in an effort to
influence what behavior children repro-
duce and so gain insight into what they
interpret as intentional action. Usando
Meltzoff’s study as a starting point,
George Gergely, Harold Bekkering, y
Ilday Király showed fourteen-month-
olds an adult touching her head to the
top of a box to turn on a light.15 In their
estudiar, half of the infants saw the adult
turn on the light while her hands were
occupied (she was holding a blanket
around her shoulders), and half saw
her turn it on while her hands were
gratis. Infants who saw the hands-free
demonstration touched the box with
their heads signi½cantly more often
than infants who saw the hands-
occupied demonstration. Infants thus
used the context of the situation to in-
terpret the adult’s behavior, appearing
to assume that if the adult’s hands were
free and she still chose to use her head,
then there must be a good reason for this
choice. Mientras tanto, the infants who saw
the other demonstration apparently in-
terpreted the use of her head as neces-
sary given her circumstances (y entonces
as an inessential part of her intention),
and thus did not reproduce this action.
These infants’ interpretation of the
adult’s goal thus differed across condi-
ciones: in the hands-occupied condition
her apparent goal was ‘turn on the light’;
in the hands-free condition it was ‘turn
on the light with your head.’ By fourteen
meses, infants thus evidence a very
deep understanding of intentional ac-
ción, of how it relates to the surrounding
contexto, and of what this means for their
12- and 18-Month-Olds,” Infant Behavior and
Desarrollo 22 (1999): 277–282.
15 György Gergely, Harold Bekkering, y
Ildikó Király, “Rational Imitation in Preverbal
Infants," Naturaleza 415 (2002): 755.
own choice of a behavioral means in
similar or different circumstances.
A series of studies of older children
extends these ½ndings. Por ejemplo,
Bekkering and his colleagues showed
tres- to six-year-old children an exper-
imenter touching a table in one of two
locations.16 In one condition there were
dots on the table in those locations, y
in another condition there were no dots.
In the no-dot condition, children usual-
ly matched the adult’s behavior exactly,
even copying her crossed or straight
arm positions–presumably because
there was no other apparent goal to
her actions than these arm movements.
In the dot condition, sin embargo, niños
touched the same locations as the exper-
imenter, but often did not match her ex-
act arm positions. This is presumably
because when there were dots they in-
terpreted the adult’s goal as ‘touching
the dots,’ whereas when there were no
dots the only possible goal seemed to
be ‘moving one’s arms like this.’ Bek-
kering and his colleagues concluded that
young children’s imitation is guided by
their understanding of adults’ goals and
of the hierarchy of those goals, y eso
children imitate what they perceive the
adults’ main goal to be.
Subsequent studies have con½rmed
that children use context to interpret
adults’ actions, and that this influences
what they learn. In one study, an adult
demonstrated to ½ve groups of children
how to pull out a pin and open a box.17
16 Harold Bekkering, Andrew W. Wohlschlaeg-
es, and Merideth Gattis, “Imitation of Ges-
tures in Children is Goal-directed,” Quarterly
Journal of Experimental Psychology 53A (1) (2000):
153–164.
17 Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call, y miguel
Tomasello, “Understanding Others’ Prior
Intentions Enables 2-Year-Olds to Imitatively
Learn a Complex Task,” Child Development 73
(2002): 1431–1442.
56
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What differed among the groups was
what the children experienced just prior
to this demonstration. One group of
children received information about
the adult’s goal ahead of time; otro
group received none; the three other
groups received varying amounts of
information about the adult’s goal.
In the demonstration, the adult either
tugged unsuccessfully on the door of the
box, or showed the box already open, o
visited and opened three different boxes
before demonstrating how to open the
test box. Thus all of the children in all of
these conditions saw a full demonstra-
tion of how to open the box, but only the
children in the three prior-information
conditions could know what the adult
was about to do before she began this
demonstration. Two- and two-and-a-
half-year-old children were signi½cant-
ly better at opening the box themselves
when they knew the adult’s goal ahead
of time. en este estudio, entonces, niños
interpreted the exact same behavior
differently depending on whether they
knew the adult’s goal ahead of time–
with no concurrent cues in adult emo-
tional expression or the like. En otra
palabras, in the control conditions the
children were not able to provide an in-
tentional description of ‘what the adult
is doing,’ whereas in the prior informa-
tion conditions they were able to under-
stand the behavior as the intentional
action ‘trying to open the box.’
There are some kinds of actions that
children observe and attempt to imitate
that have a special structure because
they involve people having goals toward
one another reciprocally. Por ejemplo, a
mother might blow a raspberry along
her child’s arm; if the child wants to im-
itate this behavior, she is faced with a
choice that depends on how she inter-
prets her mother’s action. De este modo, she
might blow a raspberry along her own
arm, in exactly the same place her moth-
er did, or alternatively, she might blow a
raspberry along her mother’s arm–in-
terpreting the behavior in this case
reciprocally as ‘blowing on the partner’s
arm.’ I have called this ‘role reversal imi-
tation.’ In an ongoing study, my col-
leagues and I have found that eighteen-
month-olds are more likely to employ
this reciprocal interpretation than are
twelve-month-olds. At both ages, chil-
dren are more likely to reciprocate in the
situation where the adult, Por ejemplo,
pats her own head (and the child pats his
own), than in the case where the two
partners act on one another.
A similar process occurs in the learn-
ing of language, since learning to use lin-
guistic symbols is also reciprocal. De este modo,
when an adult uses a linguistic symbol
in a communicative act, she directs the
child to attend to something. Consecuencia-
frecuentemente, to learn to use a symbol as the
adult does, the child must learn to direct
the adult’s attention as the adult had
directed the child’s.18
Curiosamente, my colleagues and I have
recently offered evidence that some-
thing similar goes on in children’s early
symbolic play. Before two years of age,
by watching adults children imitatively
learn symbolic behaviors with objects, en
much the same way that they learn
instrumental actions with artifacts. Como
they grow older, they look to the adult
more often, and in some cases smile
more often, when producing the sym-
bolic behaviors. This is evidence that
children of this age are reproducing a
special kind of intentionality–a kind
of mutually reciprocal intentionality in
which for the moment the child and the
adult agree, Por ejemplo, to treat a pencil
as if it were a horse.
18 Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human
Cognición.
Dédalo Invierno 2004
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meek a different character themselves,
children performed the action that the
adult had marked as intentional.
Like the studies of actions on objects,
these word learning studies provide evi-
dence that at a very early age children
come to understand intentional action.
And human learning is what it is–name-
ly, cultural learning–because human
beings, even when quite young, son
able to understand the intentional and
mental states of other human beings.
Through this understanding, cultural
processes take human cognition in some
directions not possible in other species–
and make human cognition an essential-
ly collective enterprise.
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Miguel
Tomasello
en
aprendiendo
Given the general ability to learn a
symbol through role reversal imitation,
it is still the case that in learning particu-
lar words on particular occasions chil-
dren often need to read the adults inten-
tions in order to connect the word ap-
propriately to its intended referent.
Several language acquisition studies
show that children as young as eighteen
months can combine all of the types of
intention reading we have discussed
above while imitatively learning nov-
el words. Por ejemplo, in a study of
twenty-four-month-olds, an adult an-
nounced her (previo) intention to ½nd a
target object by saying, “Let’s go ½nd the
toma.”19 She searched through several
buckets, extracting and rejecting with a
scowl the novel objects inside. She then
extracted another novel object with an
excited expression and stopped search-
En g. In a later comprehension test, cuando
asked to go get the toma themselves,
children chose the object the adult had
identi½ed as ful½lling her intention. Este
experiment used a modi½ed procedure
to show that twenty-four-month-old
children could identify the intended ref-
erent even when the adult was unable to
open the container with the target object
inside–that is, when she had an unful-
½lled intention. Another study investi-
gated children’s use of their understand-
ing of intentional versus accidental ac-
tions when learning novel words. en un
study of twenty-four-month-olds, el
adult announced her (previo) intention to
perform a target action by saying, “I’m
going to meek Big Bird!” She then per-
formed, in counterbalanced order, uno
accidental action, which she verbalized
by saying “Woops!” and one intentional
acción, which she indicated by saying
“There!” Later, when they were asked to
19 Michael Tomasello and Michelle Barton,
“Learning Words in Non-ostensive Contexts,"
Developmental Psychology 30 (1994): 639–650.
58
Dédalo Invierno 2004
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