By Topic
| Culture & social learning
| Social cognition & shared intentionality
| Great ape cognition & sociality
| Cooperation & morality
| Communication
| Agency
Culture & Social Learning
Tomasello, M., Kruger, A., & Ratner, H. (1993). Cultural learning. Target Article for Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 16, 495-552. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (1996). Do apes ape? In J. Galef & C. Heyes (Eds.), Social Learning in Animals: The Roots of Culture. Academic Press.
Tennie, C., Call, J., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Ratcheting up the ratchet: On the evolution of cumulative culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B. 364, 2405-15. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2011). Human culture in evolutionary perspective. In M. Gelfand (Ed.), Advances in Culture and Psychology. Oxford U. Press. [pdf]
Callaghan, T., Moll, H., Rakoczy, H., Warneken, F, Liszkowski, U. Behne, T. & Tomasello, M. (2011). Early social cognition in three cultural contexts. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 76, no. 2, p. 1-142. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2016). The ontogeny of cultural learning. Current Opinion in Psychology,8, 1-4. [pdf]
O’Madagain, C. & Tomasello, M. (2022). Shared intentionality, reason-giving, and the evolution of human culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Special issue on The Emergence of Collective Knowledge and Cumulative Culture, 377, 20200320. [pdf]
Social Cognition & Shared Intentionality
Tomasello, M. (1995). Joint attention as social cognition. In C. Moore & P. Dunham (Eds.), Joint Attention: Its Origins and Role in Development. Lawrence Erlbaum, 103-130.
Carpenter, M., Nagell, K., Tomasello, M. (1998). Social cognition, joint attention, and communicative competence from 9 to 15 months of age. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, i-174. [pdf]
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., Call, J., Behne, T., & Moll, H. (2005). Understanding and sharing intentions: The origins of cultural cognition. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 675 – 691. [pdf]
Tomasello, M., & Carpenter, M. (2007). Shared intentionality. Developmental Science, 10, 121-125. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2014). The ultra-social animal. Invited Horizon article for The European Journal of Social Psychology, 44, 187-94. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2016). Precís of A Natural History of Human Thinking. Journal of Social Ontology, 2. 59-64. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2018). How children come to understand false beliefs: A shared intentionality account. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115, 8491-8498. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2020). The ontogenetic foundations of epistemic norms. Episteme, 19, 301 – 315 [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2020). The role of roles in uniquely human cognition and sociality. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 50, 2-19. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2020). The adaptive origins of uniquely human sociality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 375, 20190493. [pdf]
O’Madagain, C. & Tomasello, M. (2021). Joint attention to mental content and the social origin of reasoning. Synthese, 198, 4057–4078. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2023). Differences in the social motivations and emotions of humans and other great apes. Human Nature, 34, 588–604. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. & Gonzalez-Cabrera, I. (2025). How to build a normative creature. In C. Peacock & P. Boghossian (Eds.), Normative realism. Oxford University Press. [pdf]
Wolf, W. & Tomasello, M. (2024). A shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Perspectives on Psychological Science. 17456916231201795. [pdf]
Great Ape Cognition & Sociality
Tomasello, M. (1994). The question of chimpanzee culture. In R. Wrangham, W. McGrew, F. de Waal, & P. Heltne (Eds.), Chimpanzee Cultures. Harvard University Press, 301-317.
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (2003). Chimpanzees understand psychological states–the question is which ones and to what extent. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7(4), 153-156. [pdf]
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Hobson, R. P. (2005). The emergence of social cognition in three young chimpanzees. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child development, i-152. [pdf]
Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 439-444. [pdf]
Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (2008). Do chimpanzees have a theory of mind: 30 years later. Trends in Cognitive Science, 12, 187-192. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. & Herrmann, E. (2010). Ape and human cognition: What’s the difference? Current Directions in Psychological Research, 19, 3-8. [pdf]
Tomasello, M., & Call, J. (2019). Thirty years of great ape gestures. Special Issue of Animal Cognition, 22, 461-469. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2022). What is it like to be a chimpanzee? Synthese, 200:102. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2022). The coordination of attention and action in great apes and humans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B. Special issue on Joint Action Coordination in Humans and Animals.: 377, 20210093. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2023). Social cognition and metacognition in great apes: a theory. Invited paper for special 25th anniversary issue of Animal Cognition. 26, 25–35. [pdf]
Cooperation & Morality
Moll, H., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Cooperation and human cognition: the Vygotskian intelligence hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362(1480), 639-648. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2007). Co-operation and communication in the second year of life. Child Development Perspectives, 1, 8 – 12. [pdf]
Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Varieties of altruism in children and chimpanzees. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(9), 397-402. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2011). Precís of Why We Cooperate. Montreal Review, September, 2011.
Tomasello, M., Melis, A., Tennie, C., & Herrmann, E. (2012). Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation: The interdependence hypothesis. Current Anthropology, 56, 1-20. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of human cooperation and morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 231–55. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2018). Precís of A Natural History of Human Morality. Philosophical Psychology, 31, 661-668. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2018). The normative turn in early moral development. Human Development, 61(4-5), 248-263. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2020). The moral psychology of obligation. Target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 43, e56: 1–58. [pdf]
Hepach, R. & Tomasello, M. (2025). Instrumental helping motivations of children and chimpanzees. Child Development Perspectives. 19, 72-79. [pdf]
Wolf, W. & Tomasello, M. (2025). A shared intentionality account of uniquely human social bonding. Perspectives on Psychological Science. [pdf]
Communication
Tomasello, M. (1998). Cognitive linguistics. In W. Bechtel & G. Graham (Eds.), A Companion to Cognitive Science. Basil Blackwell. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2000). The social-pragmatic theory of word learning. Pragmatics, 10, 401-14. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2000). The item-based nature of children’s early syntactic development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 156-163. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2000). First steps toward a usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 61-82. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2001). Perceiving intentions and learning words in the second year of life. In M. Bowerman & S. Levinson (Eds.), Language Acquisition and Conceptual Development. Cambridge University Press. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2006). Acquiring linguistic constructions. In D. Kuhn & R. Siegler (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology. New York: Wiley. [pdf]
Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child Development, 78(3), 705-722. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2009). The usage-based theory of language acquisition. In E. Bavin (Ed.), Handbook of Child Language. Cambridge U. Press. [pdf]
Koymen, B., & Tomasello, M. (2020). The early ontogeny of reason-giving. Child Development Perspectives, 14, 215 – 220. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2025). The evolutionary psychology of syntax. Mind & Language, 40, 344-364. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2025). The evolutionary psychology of the human pointing gesture. Mind and Language. [pdf]
Agency
Tomasello, M. (2024). An agency-based model of executive and metacognitive regulation. Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, 2:1367381. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2025). How to make artificial agents more like natural agents. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 29, 783-86. [pdf]
Tomasello, M. (2025). Agency and intentionality. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 62, 101501. [pdf]
