Michael Tomasello (b. 1950) is an American psychologist known for his ground-breaking experimental studies of communicative development, cultural learning, and cooperation in humans and nonhuman primates. Since 2016, he has been Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University. Tomasello’s program of research has focused on the social-cognitive origins of uniquely human abilities and cultural inventions, such as language, complex tool use, advanced technologies, and social institutions. Several key themes have been emphasized. First, human language and gestural communication are acquired in contexts of social interaction and shared attention. Within these contexts of joint engagement, children are aware of their partner(s) and what they are doing together and can make sensible inferences about what their partner has in mind when communicating via speech or gesture. This ability to infer their partner’s communicative intentions allows children to work out the.
