Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans

By Robin I. M. Dunbar. 1993

Subfields: Neuroscience, Cognitive Science & Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Experience Grounds Language (2020, background): “Interpersonal communication is the foundational use case of natural language (Dunbar, 1993).”
Imitating Interactive Intelligence (2020, background): “We often attribute our evolved social and linguistic complexity to our intelligence, but this inverts the story: the shaping forces of large-group interactions selected for these capacities (Dunbar, 1993), and these capacities are much of the material of our intelligence.”
Neural Theory-of-Mind? On the Limits of Social Intelligence in Large LMs (2022, background): “municate about relationships and personal experiences (Clark and Schaefer, 1989; Dunbar, 1993).”
Coevolutionary ecological economics (2010, background): “Crucially, the human mind, cognition and perception seem to have evolved influenced by the cultural context (language, use of tools, etc) (Deacon, 1997;Dunbar, 1993; Laland andBoogert, 2010-this issue).”
The Social Brain and the Shape of the Palaeolithic (2011, background): “In the case of modern humans, as for chimpanzees, social group here refers to the community rather than the overnight camp or band (Dunbar 1993: Korstjens et al. 2008), or any of the other layers in the extended social network identified by Zhou et al. (2005; see also Hamilton et al. 2007).”
Where Next? Group Coordination and Collective Decision Making by Primates (2011, background): “Although evolutionary increase in vocal repertoire size may have preceded or followed increases in levels of sociality, the development of a larger vocal repertoire may nevertheless be one solution to maintain social bonds when group size increases (Aiello and Dunbar 1993).”
Pant hoot chorusing and social bonds in male chimpanzees (2013, background): “More specifically, it has been suggested that in primates vocal interactions play a similar bonding role to grooming (Dunbar 1993; McComb & Semple 2005; Greeno & Semple 2009), which is a well- established bonding behaviour in these animals (Dunbar 1988).”
Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective (2004, background): “The problem for modern humans is that we have a natural group size of about 150 individuals (roughly equiva- lent to the number of individuals one knows personally; Dunbar, 1993; Hill & Dunbar, in press).”
How bad is incoherence (2016, background): “According to evolutionary anthropologists, modern humans lived in groups of approximately 150 members, and these groups depended “on extensive personal knowledge based on face-to-face interaction for their stability and coherence [emphasis added] through time” (Dunbar, 1993, p. 691).”
A Meta-Analysis of Social Networking Online and Social Capital (2016, background): “Dunbar (1993, 1996) noted that primates maintain relationships (in our terms, build social capital) by grooming each other, which is a time-consuming exercise and is limited to one-to-one interactions.”
The First Joke: Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Humor (2006, background): “The similarities between humor and spirituality are certainly intriguing and worthy of further analysis. c) Humor and Group Size Dunbar (1993) has put forward a theory that, in primates, neocortical size is proportional to group size and that language ultimately replaced grooming as the primary…”
Principles of evolutionary educational psychology (2002, background): “The basic premises and principles of evolutionary educational psychology are provided in the second part, along with discussion of related motivational and instructional implications.”