Günther Knoblich

Günther Knoblich is Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Social Mind Center at CEU Budapest. He studies how humans act, think, learn, and communicate with each other. Before joining CEU he held a research position at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research in Munich, as well as professorships at Rutgers University, Birmingham University, and the Donders Institute in Nijmegen. He is coordinator of the ERC Synergy Grant ‘Constructing Social Minds: Coordination, Communication, and Cultural Transmission’ (SOMICS). Together with his colleagues Josep Call, György Gergely, and Dan Sperber he explores which features of individual minds make humans unique in their ability to perform actions together and to pass on knowledge between individuals and generations. His presentation will highlight synergies that have arisen in the first two years of their collaborative research. The first study will illustrate how the team has used methods previously applied in human joint action research to study, in chimpanzees, whether the necessity to coordinate actions leads to the emergence of communication. The second study will illustrate how the team compares children’s and apes’ abilities and willingness to teach useful actions to other individuals.