Download Psychology 4145 -- Cognitive Psychology

Issues and Methods 02/27
Evolutionary Psychology and 20th Century
Cognitive Psychology
One Damn Task After Another (Newell, 1972,1990)
Daniel Khaneman and Amos Tversky
Normative Models
Logic, Probability Theory
Decision Theory
Classical Economics
Heuristics and Biases
Bounded Rationality (Simon)
Gerd Gigerenzer
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Group (1999).
Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford
University Press.
http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.todd.html
Fast and frugal heuristics fill part of our mind's "adaptive
toolbox" of decision strategies. Together, these
heuristics produce a rationality which is ecological,
rather than merely logical - decision making that is welladapted to specific environmental settings or domains
and specific classes of problems, rather than being
universally applicable to all situations and problems.
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Examples of Empirical Results Supporting
Evolutionary Psychology
Facial Expressions
Language
Chomsky: Universal Grammar
“Poverty of the stimulus”
Human languages have such a complex structure that
they cannot be learned just from the information
available to a child
Detecting Violations of Rules
Probabilistic Reasoning
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Detecting Violations of Rules
Logic and Reasoning
General Content Free Mechanisms
People are very bad at …
Wason Selection Task
IF a person goes into Boston,
then that person takes the subway
Boston Arlington subway cab
If P, then Q
Test for P(Q?) and ~Q(~P?)
Huge Number of Other Examples
Social Exchange (Reciprocal Altruism)
Cheater detection
If you take benefit B,
then you must satisfy requirement R
Can detect violations of If-Then rules if task is cheater
detection
If you are drinking beer, you must be 21 or older
Beer Coke
21 or over
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younger that 21
Issues and Methods 02/27
Probabilistic Reasoning
Company suspects 2% of its employees use illicit drugs.
Company institutes random drug tests
Drug test is 95% accurate; that is,
P[positive test| drug use] = .95
P[negative test| no drug use] = .95
Mary Jane is selected at random; her test is positive. What
is probability that Mary Jane uses illicit drugs?
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Mary Jane's Probability
Test Says:
"Positive"
"Negative"
Total
Truth
Clean
Drug User
Total
49
19
68
(5% of Col)
(95% of Col)
931
1
(95% of Col)
(5% of Col)
980
20
932
1000
(98% of Total) (2% of Total)
For 1000 employees there would be 68 "positive" test
results.
But 49 of these "positive" tests would be false alarms and
only 19 would be hits.
P[Mary Jane is drug user | "positive" test] = 19/68 = .28
If company fired all employees with "positive" test results, for
every 1000 employees they would fire 49 innocent people
and only 19 guilty people.
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Non Human Primate Culture
Japanese Macaque Potato Washing
Not that unusual
Pattern and slow spread of behavior
Chimpanzee Tool Use
Culture shaped by environment
Not true learning by imitation
Actions of other can cue pre-existing behaviors
Emulation learning (focus on environment rather than
teacher)
Chimps lack of shared attention and of understanding of
actions of others
Emulation learning with learning less efficient strategy
by imitating adult
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Non Human Primate Culture (continued)
Chimpanzee Gestural Communication
Leaf Clipping:
“others learned via emulation to make the same noise (i.e.
they learned the affordances of the leaf). This had
different attention-getting effects on conspecifics in the
different groups, however, and these were then learned
as contingencies.” (521)
Ontogenetic Ritualization
“a communicatory signal is created by two organisms
shaping each other is behavior in repeated instances of
a social interaction”
Tomasello (1997)
Taught chimp single to obtain food reward
Up back in colony where she used signal to get food
Not ONE other chimp learned to make the same signal
Communication signal are idiosyncratic!!!
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Non Human Primate Culture (continued)
Nonhuman Primate Social Learning and Social Cognition
Teaching central part of any human culture
Boesch (1991)
Use of “hammer and anvil” to crack nuts
“Boesch discovered that a mother does a number of
things that serve to facilitate the infants activities with
the tool and nuts, such as leaving the tools idle while
she goes to gather more nuts (which she would not do if
another adult were present).”
Mother’s intentions not clear. Only two ambiguous examples
in several years of observation.
All of the above conflict with data on theory of mind
Distinction between manipulating behavior and
manipulating mental states
Chimps cannot do TRUE imitative learning which is
foundation for cultural transmission
Enculturated Apes and Imitation
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Species Unique Human Behaviors
Creation and Use of Symbols
Creation and Use of Complex Tools
Creating and Participation in Complex Social Organizations
and Institutions
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Issues and Methods 02/27
All This Occurred In A Very Short Time
Span
6 Million Years Ago: Split Between Humans and Apes
Next 4 Million Years: Various Species of Australopithicines
Brain size around 500cc (Ape like)
Bipedal
Last 2 Million Years; Genius Homo
Last 50,000: Clear evidence of human culture
To little time biological evolution to have generated big
differences in ape and human cognition
Find small difference that generates huge differences in
behavior
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Steps to Modern Civilization
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Colonization of the Rest of the World
Australia/New Guinea 40,000 bc
Siberia
20,000 bc
Americas
12,000 bc to 10,000 bc
Hunter Gatherer vs Farmer Life Style
First Domestication of Plants
Fertile Crescent
8,500 bc
China
7,500 bc
Americas
3,500 to 2,500 bc
First Domestication of Animals
All, Dog
10,000 bc
Fertile Crescent
8,000 bc
China
8,000 bc
Americas
3,500 bc
Number of Domesticatable Plants and Animal
In Fertile Crescent
No Large Draft Animals in Americas
Eurasia
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Steps to Modern Civilization (Cont)
Political Organizations
Bands
10s to 150
before 11,000 bc
Tribes
100s
after 11,000 bc
Chiefdoms
1,000s
after 5,500 bc
States
>100,000
3,700 bc (Mesopotamia)
approx. 500 bc (China, Mesoamerica)
Chiefdoms and states have specialization of labor, stratified
societies, food production, ...
Writing
Merlin Donald….
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Development of Writing Systems
Donald
Body decoration
before 200,000 bc
Decoration of tools and weapons
2 and 3 dimensional art
100,000 bc
40,000 bc
Advance painting and drawing skills 23,000 bc
Primitive accounting systems
token, numbers
8,500 bc
Earliest evidence of writing
4,000 bc
Syllabic Script
2,800 bc
Earliest phonetic alphabet
2,000 bc
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Evolution of Writing
Pictograms
Importance of number symbols
Earliest writing were accounting systems
Importance of lists (good, histories, etc.)
Evolution of grammatical conventions (order)
Evolution of Egyptian hieroglyphs in a phonetic writing
system
Unigrams, bigrams, and trigrams (example of m...)
Alphabets....
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Alternative Models of Human Evolution
Linnda R. Caporael
Inclusive Fitness (Evolutionary Psychology)
Cosmides-Tooby, Jones
Gene’s eye view of evolution (selfish genes)
General Selection Theories
Based on Darwinian Principles
Focal Trait and adaptive advantage of this trait
Donald (1991)
Calvin and Brickerton (2000)
Lots of others
Sociality Theories
Dunbar (1993)
Machiavellian intelligence (Byrne & Whiten 1988)
Complexities of group living and social exchange
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Issues and Methods 02/27
Multilevel Evolutionary Theories
Other levels where selection can occur
(e.g. chromosomes, individuals, groups).
Dual inheritance (Culture and genes)
Boyd and Richardson
Tomasello
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