Download Evolution of Control-Related Mental Models

The Origins of Mind
Chapter 7:
Evolution of ControlRelated Mental Models
Introduction
 Describes the cognitive and brain systems that
support explicit, controlled problem solving.
 Discusses how the evolution of brain size and
organization relates to the systems that support
controlled problem solving.
 Finally, reviews the research on social selection
pressures and motivation to control.
Cognitive Systems
 Implicit Processes
 Explicit Processes
 Making the Implicit Explicit
 Central Executive
 Slave Systems
 Self-Awareness
Implicit Processes
 Implicit refers to the neural, sensory, perceptual, and
cognitive systems that automatically capture and
process patterns of social or ecological information but
operate below the individual’s awareness.
 Memory Systems
• The most frequently encountered and affectively
salient ecological information is automatically
encoded and stored in long-term memory
 Modular Information Processing Systems
• Attention to and processing of the forms of
information needed to support social discourse and
relationships
Explicit Processes
 Explicit processes are conscious, controlled
understanding of logical, decontextualized, and abstract
representations.
 Controlled problem solving and the ability to engage in
rational analysis are correlated with general
intelligence.
 Inhibition of heuristic-based responding
 Formation of a conscious, explicit representation
Making the Implicit Explicit
 How does one become explicitly aware of
implicitly processed information patterns?
 The mechanisms by which the central executive
creates consciousness results in an attentiondriven amplification of the activated information
and a synchronization of the brain regions that
compose the external executive and the brain
regions that are processing the external
information.
Central Executive
 Allows individuals to focus on goal-relevant
tasks and information and to inhibit irrelevant
information from entering conscious
awareness.
 Working Memory
 The combination of the brain regions that control
attention-driven amplification and the amplified
perceptual and cognitive processes compose
working memory.
 Individual differences in working memory are
related to differences in the ability to focus
attention on the task at hand.
Slave Systems
 Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
 Phonological loop
 Composed of a phonetic buffer that holds acoustic
information in short-term memory and an
articulatory rehearsal mechanism.
 Visuospatial sketch pad
 Engaged when generating mental images and
memories of objects, places, and people.
 Baddeley (2000, 2002)
 Episodic buffer results in the conscious awareness of
experiences that require an integration of
information across space and sometime across time.
Self-Awareness
 Semantic memory refers to the retrieval of
decontextualized facts and information.
 Noetic awareness
 Episodic memory refers to the retrieval of timebased, contextualized memories of one’s life
history.
 Autonoetic awareness is the ability to consciously
consider the self across time, that is, to recall
personal experiences, relate these experiences to
current situations, and project oneself into the
future.
 Autonoetic mental model (discussed later)
Brain Systems
 Executive Control
 Areas of the dorsolateral region of the prefrontal
cortex
 Involved in maintaining the task goal in the mind,
guiding the sequencing of the multiple problemsolving steps, and suppressing the potential
interfering effects of externally or internally
generated distractions
 Anterior cingulate cortex
 Activated when goal achievement requires dealing
with a novelty or conflict (e.g. choosing between
two alternatives)
Brain Systems
Brodmann’s map of the brain
Brain Systems
 Episodic Memory and Autonoetic Awareness
 The right prefrontal cortex is involved in the retrieval
of episodic memories and self-awareness.
 Craik and colleagues (1999)
 PET scans were used to examine brain regions that were
activated during the study.
 It was concluded that processing and retrieval of
information that involved memories of personal
experiences and the person’s self-concept are dependent
on the functioning of the right prefrontal cortex.
Brain Systems
 Episodic Memory and Autonoetic Awareness
continued…
 Brain injuries
 Injuries to the right prefrontal cortex causes there to be an
inability to recall episodes of one’s life, such as in the case
of patient KC.
 KC was also unable to project himself into the future
through mental time travel.
 Other people were also unable to problem solve when it
came to novel situations or situations involving conflict.
Problem Solving and Human
Evolution
 Selection Pressures
 Brain Evolution
 Mental Models and the Motivation to Control
Selection Pressure
 Selection Characteristics
 Time scale of change
 Must be within the limits of a single lifetime, and
should occur repeatedly
 Type of selection pressure
 Needs to drive the evolution of self-awareness
 Coevolutionary arms race
 Favor brain and cognitive evolution
 Forms of selection pressures
 Should be different when comparing humans to
apes and other primates
 Climatic, Ecological, and Social conditions
Selection Pressures
 Climatic Conditions
 Not considered responsible for the
increase in brain volume and EQ or
the apparent changes in brain
organization during human evolution.
 Tend to take longer than the time scale used for working
memory.
 Climatic variation does not fit the conditions normally
associated with an arms race.
 Other hominid and primate species were affected by the same
climate conditions as our ancestors.
Selection Pressures
 Ecological Conditions
 Refers to the ability to extract resources from the
environment and, at the same time, avoid being
extracted by other species
 Tool Development and Use
 Hunting techniques have expanded through the
development of various tools.
 Humans use the executive control when developing tools
because they are project themselves into the situations
in which they would need to use the tools in the future.
 Other animals tend to hunt through opportunity rather
than with the use of mental time travel.
Selection Pressures
 Ecological Conditions
 Contributed to the evolution of the brain and cognitive
processes in humans and it does explain all features of
executive control, especially self-awareness.
 Consistent with the time scale used for working memory and
an coevolutionary arms race
Selection Pressures
 Social Conditions
 The achievement of
ecological dominance shifts
selection pressures to social
competition.
• Consistent with the time scale of working memory.
• Group-level competition and dynamics often require
sustained attention and other features of executive
control.
Selection Pressures
 Social Conditions
 Self-awareness is the ability to understand those
features of the self that others might cue in on and
use in their social interactions and strategies.
 Not only is social competition consistent with a
coevolutionary arms race, but it should also
accelerate the race.
 Sharp population crashes
 Consistent with changes in brain volume and EQ
and potential changes in brain organization
Brain Evolution
 Expansion of the Prefrontal Cortex
 The absolute size of the human prefrontal cortex has
expanded over the course of our evolution, which has
resulted in an increase in the interconnections among
these regions and other regions of the brain.
 The human prefrontal cortex has been shown to be
comparatively larger than in chimpanzees and other
primates.
 This suggests that humans may have an enhanced ability to
integrate information across modalities in comparison to
apes and primates.
Brain Evolution
 Reorganization of the Prefrontal Cortex and Anterior
Cingulate Cortex
 It is almost certain that the human prefrontal cortex
(left and right dorsolateral areas) and the anterior
cingulate cortex have undergone substantive
reorganizations during human evolution.
 The result would be accompanying improvement in the
ability to inhibit evolved heuristic-based responses and
instead internally represent and mentally manipulate
ecological and social information explicitly and
consciously in working memory.
 Neuron only found in the anterior cingulate cortex of
great apes and humans
 Right versus left frontal cortex
Mental Models and the Motivation
to Control
 Conscious-Psychological Evolution
 Autonoetic mental model – the individual creates a
self-centered mental simulation of the “perfect
world,” which is one the individual is able to organize
and control social, biological, and physical resources
in ways that would enhanced the survival or
reproduction options of the individual and kin during
human evolution.
 These models are needed for situations that cannot be
resolved with heuristic-based responses.
 These models enable individuals to anticipate and
mentally simulate potential behavioral strategies to deal
with variations in social dynamics and ecological
conditions.
Mental Models and the Motivation
to Control
 Conscious-Psychological Evolution
**These
models are
experienced
as daydreams
and fantasies.
Mental Models and the Motivation
to Control
 Foci of Conscious-Psychological Control
 The focus of behavioral strategies is gaining access to
and control of social, biological, and physical
resources that covary with survival and reproductive
outcomes during evolution.
 For humans, these resources can be abstract (e.g.
money).
 The foci of conscious-psychological simulations should
be restricted to conditions that also tend to be
variant within lifetimes.
 Support hunting, tool use, and social dynamics
Social Cognition and Folk
Psychology
 Control-Related Conscious-Psychological Mechanisms
 Are there conscious-psychological mechanisms
consistent with an evolved motivation to control?
 Self-efficacy beliefs involve a conscious assessment of
one’s competencies in regard to the desired outcome and
the perceived competencies of other who are attempting
to achieve the same outcome.
 There are conscious-psychological and implicit mechanisms
that maintain self-efficacy and goal directed behavior in
the face of inevitable failures.
 Attribution to external cues (Example: “I failed that test
because the teacher made it too difficult.”)
 Predictable failure (Example: “I knew I was going to fail
that test.”)
Control-Related ConsciousPsychological Mechanisms
 Control-related conscious-psychological
mechanisms can be integrated with other
mechanisms.
 The focus of one’s attempts to achieve control of
personally important outcomes varies with physical,
social, and cognitive competencies
 Example: Decline in physical competencies associated
with terminal illness
 Control-related attributions might be integrated
with models of explicit, controlled problem solving
and with activity of the anterior cingulate cortex
and other brain regions.
 Occur because of discrepancy between one’s desired
outcome and the actual outcome.
Social Cognition
 Social cognition should be focused on the
self, relationships, and inferences about the
behavior and internal states of other
people, and group-level process.
Self
 The self schema is a long-term memory network of
information that links together knowledge about
the self, including positive and negative traits,
episodic memories, and self-efficacy in various
domains.
 Most of the time this knowledge is implicit.
 Self schemas appear to regulate goal-related
behavior.
Self
 When evaluating the competencies of others,
people focus on the attributes that are central
features of their self schema and prefer
relationships with others who seem consistent with
self schema.
 Example: Athletes versus Academics
 Ideal self
 Difference between actual self and ideal self
 Attention is driven to the space between selves and
consciously show that abilities or social strategies
must be modified.
Others
 The person schema is a long-term memory network
that includes representations of the other person’s
physical attributes, memories of specific
behavioral episodes, and more abstract trait
information.
 Theory of mind would include memories and trait
information about how the person typically makes
inferences and responds to social cues and their
social and other goals.
 Usually implicit except when the person’s behavior
is inconsistent with the schema.
Others
 The person schema is also related to the use of
mental simulation—called the simulation heuristic—
to make judgments about how the person might
react in various situations.
 Enables better prediction of other people’s
behavior.
Groups
 Social selection pressures
assist in the formation of
groups that work for
control of survival-related
or reproduction-related
resources.
 Leads to in-group—outgroup psychology and
group identification
Groups
 When resources are threatened, humans tend to
form groups and show favorable bias towards ingroups and negative bias towards out-groups.
 Usually happens for males in order to protect or
obtain the needed resources.
 Sometimes these biases are explicit.
 Other times, these biases are implicit and
unconscious.
 The amygdala is often activated when encountering
the faces of unfamiliar out-group members, which
suggests that they automatically and unconsciously
trigger negative feelings in many people.