Download Psychology 4145 -- Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive Evolution I
Evolutionary Perspectives On Cognition
Darwin
The Descent of Man
The Evolution of Emotions in Animals and Men
Cosmides & Tooby
Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer
Pinker’s
The Language Instinct
How The Mind Works
Dunbar’s
Grooming, Gossip, and The Evolution of Language
Merlin Donald
The Origins of the Modern Mind
A Mind So Rare
Michael Tomasello
The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition
Many Others….
Anderson’s Rational Analysis
Page 1 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Cosmides and Tooby:
Evolutionary Psychology
Human minds have a standard collection of reasoning and
regulatory circuits that are
Functionally specialized
Frequently, domain-specific
Modules that are analogous to organs
Design by evolution
Designed to solve problems faced by our huntergatherer ancestors
Vision
Hearing
Motor Control
Memory Systems
Language
Concept Formation and Reasoning
Physical causation
About plants and animals (natural kinds)
About artifacts
Page 2 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Species Unique Human Behaviors
Tomasello (1999, p 510)
Creation and Use of Symbols
Proto Languages?????
Spoken and Written Language
Mathematics, etc
Creation and Use of Complex Tools
Starting 50,000 years ago
Only very basic stone tools for 1st 2 million years
Creating and Participation in Complex Social Organizations
and Institutions
Political Organizations (From Diamond)
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)
Page 3 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
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
T0 little time for the evolution to have generated big
differences in ape and human cognition
Find small difference that generates huge differences in
behavior
Page 4 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Human Evolution Mapped Onto a Year
1 year ago: Hominid line and chimpanzee line split from a
common ancestor
10 months ago: Oldest known autralopithecines
5 months ago: Oldest known habilines
4 months ago: Home erectus
22 days ago: archaic sapient humans
4 days ago: Fully modern humans
less than 1 hour: modern civilization
Page 5 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
What Are The Big Issues
The Nature of Evolutionary Arguments
Environments
Random Variation
Adaptive Advantages
Natural Selection
What Drove the Evolution of Cognition?
Changes in the Environment (Jungle to Savanna)
Challenges Defined by Hunter-Gatherer Life Style
Within Group Social Processes
Coalition Formation and Maintenance
Reciprocal Altruism
Child Rearing
Sexual Competition
Hunting
Competition Between Bands
Competition Between Different Species of Homo
Page 6 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
What Are The Big Issues (Cont.)
What Were the Major Steps
Common ancestor, autralopithecines, homo erectus, ...
brain size
range
culture
social organization
tools
evidence for proto-languages
THE BIG ISSUES:
Culture
Vast body of knowledge and skills, e.g. language
Mechanism that enable cultural transmission
Language
costs, benefits
intermediate steps(?)
relationships between language and cognition
Page 7 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Starting Points
(Pinker)
Miocene Apes
A Visual Animal
Arboreal, Fruit Eaters
Depth Perception
Color Vision
A World Filled With Movable Objects
Savanna Environment
Social Animals
Cognitive Demands of Group Living (Dunbar)
Coalition Formation and Maintenance
Sexual Competition
Reciprocal Altruism
Child Rearing
Protection Against Predators
Foraging and Hunting
Savanna Environment
Page 8 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Starting Points (Cont.)
Bipedalism and The Hand
Upright Posture
Freeing of the hands for carrying and manipulating
Thermoregulation
More efficient locomotion
Better vision
The Hand
Carrying and manipulating
Tools
Hunting
Nutritional advantage of meat
Nutritional requirements of our large brain
Social consequences
Driver for development of tools
Page 9 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Approximate Time-Line For The
Succession Of Hominids, In Years
Before Present
(Donald, 1991)
5-6 million years ago: Hominid line and chimpanzee line split
from a common ancestor
• tool use
• social organization/group size
• learning by imitation(?)
• precursors of language (?)
4 million years: Oldest known autralopithecines
• erect posture
• shared food
• division of labor
• nuclear family structure
• larger number of children
• long weaning period
2 million year ago: Oldest known habilines
• as above, with crude stone-cutting tools
• variable but larger brain size
Page 10 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Time Line (Continued)
1.5 million years ago: Home erectus
• much larger brain
• more complex social organization
• hunting large animals(?)
• more elaborate tools
• migration out of Africa
• use of fire, shelters
Page 11 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Time Line (Continued)
300,000 years ago: archaic sapient humans
• second major increase in brain size
• anatomy of vocal tract starts to assume modern form
• tools: very similar to erectus
• social organization: very similar to erectus
150 – 200,000 years ago: modern humans
mitochondrial Ev
Page 12 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Time Line (Continued)
40 – 50,000 years ago: Fully modern humans
Language
• high-speed vocal communication system
• large lexicon containing thousands of entries.
Complex oral cultures
• myth, religion, and social ritual
• specialize, complex, multi-component tools and
weapons
• sewn clothing
• cave painting, jewelry
• modern hunter-gatherer cultures
10,000 years ago: Domestication of plants and animals
More….
Page 13 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
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(s) and adaptive advantage of trait(s)
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
Page 14 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Multilevel Evolutionary Theories
Other levels where selection can occur
(e.g. chromosomes, individuals, groups).
Dual inheritance (Culture and genes)
Boyd and Richardson
Tomasello
Page 15 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Inclusive Fitness (Evolutionary
Psychology)
The “Hardliners”
Sociobiology
Adaptation
Dawkins, Dennett, Cosmides and Tooby, Pinker, …
Genes and their transmission from generation to
generation,
i.e. helping kin can increase fitness of a gene at
the expense of the individual (Hamilton, 1964)
Environment and development are secondary factors
Very controversial
See review of Dennett’s ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea
Steven J. Gould
Gene’s eye view of evolution (selfish genes)
Page 16 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Inclusive Fitness (Cont)
Many Evolutionary Psychology Hypotheses Have Been
Reevaluated and Questioned or Rejected
Mating preferences
Women as gold diggers and Men sowing their
wild oats (Buss 1987)
Role of culture, gender equality
Scientific Explanation Verses Retelling of Well Known
Cultural Stereotypes
Very narrow view of genetic causation
Page 17 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
Examples of Empirical Results Supporting
Evolutionary Psychology
Facial Expressions
Color Naming
Detecting Violations of Rules
Probabilistic Reasoning
Language
Chomsky: Universal Grammer
“Poverty of the simulus”
Human languages have such a complex structure that
they cannot be learned just from the information
available to a child
Page 18 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
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
Page 19 of 21
younger that 21
Cognitive Evolution I
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?
Gerd Gigerenzer
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Group (1999).
Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Probabilities verses Frequencies
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.
Page 20 of 21
Cognitive Evolution I
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.
Page 21 of 21