The Lemur’s Tale — Story-Telling in Primates and Other Socially Intelligent Agents

Contents

This paper addresses the relationship between social intelligence and narrative intelligence, with a particular emphasis on 1) the phylogenetic origins of primate (narrative) intelligence, and 2) the ontogenetic origin of autobiographical stories. The Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis (NIH) is introduced according to which the evolutionary origin of stories and narrativity was correlated with increasing social dynamics in primate societies, in particular the need to communicate about third-party relationships. Requirements for artificial socially intelligent story-tellers are outlined, and the issue of testing social intelligence is discussed.