Human minds are so different from those of other animals. We can understand the way the physical world works, to read, to imagine, to think about the future. How do we live so differently? The answer to this question is simple but critical. We, humans, have special cognitive mechanisms that make us different from other animals. We are born with complicated instincts.

Adult humans have majestic pieces of cognitive gadgets that aren't instincts programmed within the genes but are constructed within the course of childhood through social interaction. The way we humans function our minds is the product of biological and social evolution. 

Cognitive gadgets are products of cultural evolution, instead of genetic evolution. At birth, the minds of human babies are only subtly different from the minds of newborn chimpanzees. We are friendlier, our attention is drawn to various things, and that we can find out and remember that outstrips the skills of newborn chimpanzees. 

Using a combination of natural automatic processes and analytical approaches i.e thinking fast and thinking slow respectively, our minds have evolved in such a way that we all think in the same way.

Focusing on the cognitive instincts of human beings Dr. Cecilia Heyes came with a book called Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking released in 2018.

Heyes emphasized the mental characteristics that make humans different from other animals. It is largely the cognitive gadgets that are the product of information passed from generation to generation vial culture and not genes. Cognitive gadgets, as Heyes contrive of them, describe particular ways during which we process information to form a sense of our world. To this note cognitive gadgets might be thought of as “mental technologies”.

As described by cognitive scientists, mind-reading refers to the ability to impute mental states to others based on information derived from their behavior. For example, when we see someone is laughing we immediately understand that the person must have heard something funny and when we see that person crying we imagine that there is something painful or the person is hurt.

Owning this cognitive mechanism is useful because it enables people to realize, describe, and often assume human behavior.

How does this connect to education?

Heyes points out, teaching is a prominent example of where the cognitive gadget of mind reading proves useful.

Teaching is usually described in contrast with other sorts of social learning as a process during which one agent doesn’t merely permit another to watch their behavior but acts to produce an enduring change in the mental states, especially the knowledge states of another. Mind reading enables teachers to illustrate the extent and limit of a student’s current knowledge and, thereby, to theorize at each stage in the learning process what the particular student must be shown or told to defeat ignorance, correct false beliefs, and create his or her body of knowledge. And, harmoniously, mind-reading by students allows them to segregate what the teacher intends them to learn and to focus their efforts on particular aspects of a to-be-learned skill.

Mind reading, then, is a cognitive gadget that helps us impart knowledge from one generation to the next. Few cognitive scientists would quarrel thereupon claim. But Heyes goes further and postulates that the ability to mindread and other mental functions are culturally transmitted, rather than biologically inherited.

A Glimpse to the Future of Gadgets 

If it’s true that cultural evolution dramatically shapes how we expect (and not just what we expect), and if it’s also true that we shape our culture through deliberate choices, then we may change our expectations. Indeed, Heyes says these changes may happen far faster than biological evolution would ever permit. 

The cognitive gadgets theory suggests that distinctively human cognitive mechanisms are light on their feet, constantly changing to satisfy the stress of the latest social and physical environments. Other than taxing an outdated mind, new technologies like social media, robotics, and computer games merely provide the stimulus for the further cultural evolution of the human mind.

This is an optimistic take, yet caution is warranted. It’s exciting to imagine that new technologies will help advance our collective cognitive abilities. It seems plausible, however, that these technologies might spread detrimental cognitive “mutations,” like, for instance, the impulse to troll others on social media. Such mutations wouldn’t necessarily advance humanity’s wellbeing.