Foundations in Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience {ReadingNotes}

Foundations in Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience edited by Steven M. Platek and Todd K. Shackelford - ISBN 9780511507274 - Cambridge University Press 2009

Motivation

(more precise than just interest in cognitive science and the evolution of language)

Reading

• 1 Introduction to evolutionary psychology: A Darwinian approach to human behavior and cognition by Aaron T. Goetz, Todd K. Shackelford, and Steven M. Platek
  • "introduction to evolution by natural selection and its modern application to the study of human behavior and cognition." (p1)
  • The mechanisms of natural and sexual selection
    • "Evolution by natural selection is the resultant process when
      • (a) individuals of a population vary in their characteristics,
      • (b) much of the variation is heritable, and
      • (c) resources are limited so that individuals reproduce differentially" (p2)
    • "Sexual selection is the process that favors an increase in the frequency of alleles associated with reproduction" (p3)
      • "intrasexual competition (competition between members of the same sex for sexual access to members of the opposite sex)" (p3)
      • "intersexual selection (differential mate choice of members of the opposite sex)" (p3)
  • After Darwin: the Modern Synthesis and Hamilton’s inclusive fitness theory
    • "selection could operate through classical fitness (i.e., the sum of an individual’s own reproductive success) and inclusive fitness, which includes the effects of an individual’s actions on the reproductive success of genetic relatives." (p4)
  • The products and byproducts of evolution: adaptations, byproducts, and noise
    • "natural selection designs adaptations that solve adaptive problems [reguarities encountered by ancestors in their environment] associated with survival and reproduction" (p5)
    • "Adaptations are the product of natural selection and are functionally organized features that contribute to a species’ reproductive success, however indirectly. Byproducts and noise do not solve adaptive problems and are not subject to natural selection themselves." (p5)
      • the notion of "noise" induces a potential "trap of interpretation"
  • Evolutionary psychology
    • Psychological mechanisms as information-processing modules
      • "Evolved psychological mechanisms are understood in terms of their specific input, decision rules, and output" (p6)
    • Psychological mechanisms and domain specificity
      • "Practitioners of EP concede that relatively domain-general mechanisms may exist, but the vast majority of mechanisms are presumed to be domain-specific." (p8)
      • "although working memory is used in all domains, it is problem specific (and therefore domain specific) because it solves a single adaptive problem." (p8)
    • Evolutionary time lags and the environment of evolutionary adaptedness
      • "modern behavior is best understood when placed in the context of our environment of evolutionary adaptedness." (EEA) (p9)
      • "environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) is not a place or time in history but a statistical composite of the selection pressures (i.e., the enduring properties, components, and elements) of a species’, more specifically the adaptations that characterize a species’, ancestral past" (p9)
        • to link with a manifold in information geometry?
      • "Although our evolutionary past is not available for direct observation, the discovery and description of adaptations allows us to make inferences about our evolutionary past" (p9)
        • but thus can not be used to validate the hypothesis on the mechanisms, more discussion on method follows
      • "Evolutionary psychology is not post hoc storytelling; its practitioners typically use a deductive approach, moving from theory to data." (p10)
    • Ultimate and proximate explanations
      • "evolutionary and non-evolutionary [(e.g., sociological or cultural)] approaches operate at different levels of analysis" (p10)
    • Evolutionary psychology’s relationship with sociobiology
      • fields sharing the evolutionary framework
    • Discovering new topics and rethinking old topics
      • discussion on integration reproduction duplication of biological strategies (example of sperm competition) and psycological equivalent (leading to jealousy) as adaptations
      • principles of EP lead to potentially solving the paradox of self-deception (through many information-processing mechanisms)
        • "self-deception mechanism could evolve if the mechanisms responsible for conscious experience were unconnected to the mechanisms responsible for ultimate intentions" (p14)
    • Evolutionary psychology’s future
      • emergence of evolutionary development psychology
        • "how natural selection might have influenced human psychology and behavior at all stages of development" (p15)
• 2 The evolution of general fluid intelligence by David C. Geary
  • The evolution of general fluid intelligence
    • "The central theme that cuts across generations and theories is that
      • the core of intelligence is the ability to anticipate and predict variation and novelty and to devise strategies to cope with this novelty." (p22)
    • "The core issue that divides theorists is
      • the source of novelty; specifically, whether the primary source of this variation is due to
        • climatic change,
        • the vagaries and nuances of hunting other species, or from
        • the dynamics of competition within and between human groups." (p22)
  • Brain evolution
    • Brain volume and organization
      • consistant increase
    • Encephalization quotient
      • EQ, volume should be measured against organism size
    • Selection pressures and brain evolution
      • role of the different pressures evoqued earlier, mainly ecological and social. Repetitive usage of "would" and "could"
    • "an ecological-dominance-social-competition model accommodates most of the core features of the climatic and ecological theories of human brain evolution" (p32)
  • Empirical studies of fluid intelligence
    • Psychometric research
      • "function or group of functions general intelligence or g" (p33)
      • "crystallized intelligence (Gc) [...] manifested as the result of experience, schooling, and acculturation and is referenced by over-learned skills and knowledge, such as vocabulary" (p34)
      • "fluid intelligence (Gf) [...] biologically based ability to acquire skills and knowledge" (p34)
      • "the ability to anticipate and cope with novelty and change - adaptation to new situations - that are central to models of human brain and cognitive evolution is reliably assessed by tests of Gf" (p34)
    • Cognitive research
      • "speed of information processing and working memory as core components of Gf" (p34)
        • works on Speed of processing of, page 34, could be studied with the recently discovered concept of dromology
      • "The attentional system that controls the explicit manipulation of information during problem solving" (p35)
      • "Intelligent individuals identify, process, and bind together bits of social and ecological information more easily and quickly than do other people." (p35)
      • "If evolved or learned heuristics are available for responding to the situation,
        • then intelligent people will be able to execute these responses more quickly and consistently (across situations requiring the same response) than other people.
      • If evolved or learned heuristics are not available,
        • there is an automatic shifting of attention to the novel or rapidly changing information represented in short-term memory. Once attention is focused, intelligent people are able to represent more information in working memory than are other people and have an enhanced ability to consciously manipulate this information." (p35)
    • Neuroscience research
      • "novelty and conflict result in automatic attentional shifts [...] The central executive does not activate itself, but rather is automatically activated when heuristic-based processes are not sufficient for dealing with current information patterns or tasks" (p38)
    • Integration
      • "speed of processing may be important for the synchronization process, because faster speed of processing would enable more accurate adjustments in synchronization per feedback cycle" (p39)
  • Integrated model: the motivation to control
    • General theory
      • "the brain and mind of all species evolved to process the forms of information (e.g., facial expressions, movement patterns of predators) that covaried with survival and reproductive prospects during the species’ evolutionary history. These systems operate implicitly and bias the organism to behavior in ways that result in attempts to gain control of these outcomes" (p39-40)
      • "The supporting brain systems, such as the amygdala, are predicted to function in part to amplify attention to evolutionarily significant forms of information and produce emotions, feelings, and corresponding behavioral biases that are likely to automatically reproduce outcomes that have covaried with survival or reproduction during hominid evolution" (p44)
  • Conclusion
    • "My proposal is that the evolved function of these mental models is to generate a self-centered simulation of the <<perfect>> world, one in which other people behave in ways consistent with one’s best interest, and biological and physical resources are under one’s control.
      • The function of mental simulations is to create and rehearse strategies that can be used to reduce the difference between this perfect world and current conditions.
      • The cognitive systems that evolved to support the use of these self-centered mental models are known as working memory and attentional control, that is, the core cognitive components of general fluid intelligence." (p46)
    • General fluid intelligence
• 3 The role of a general cognitive factor in the evolution of human intelligence by James J . Lee
  • Introduction
    • "The aim of this chapter with respect to this underdevelopment is twofold:
      • (1) to propose possible resolutions to problematic issues that may to some extent be responsible for this relative neglect [quantitative differences among individuals along dimensions of cognitive abilities and changes in the distributions of the traits represented by these dimensions over the course of evolutionary time], and
      • (2) to discuss future prospects for the integration of differential psychology into human evolutionary studies." (p57)
    • presentation of the plan of the article
  • The relationship between domain-specific modules and broad dimensions of individual differences
    • origin of modularity in Chomsky's critic of Skinner then later on with Fodor's book The Modularity of Mind
      • "invariant illusoriness suggests to Fodor that the lower levels of visual processing giving rise to the illusion are sealed off from the part of the mind where the subject’s knowledge of the world resides" (p59)
      • strict modularity sounds a bit like computer programming paradigms that forbid side-effects, a la Haskell
    • factor loadings : "If the scores on a test could be regressed on the unobserved factor scores, the resulting regression coefficients would represent the sensitivity of each test as a measure of the respective factors." (p62)
    • discussion around g as a single values, as a subsets of values, as group factors and as hierarchised group factors
      • see figure 3.1 page 64 presenting the factor model as g as a path diagram
  • The genetics and evolution of g
    • Table 3.3 Familial correlations for IQ (p73)
    • "there is reason to believe that directional selection can sometimes act as a force to increase genetic variation" (p81)
    • "We conjecture that directional selection for increased g in the human lineage is responsible for the high heritability of this trait." (p81)
      • as read previously in Mitter's book TheMatingMind
  • Empirical prospects
    • "the g factor of cognitive abilities within the human species and the general factor posited by Deaner’s group both arise from a set of quantitative properties of the brain whose genotypic distributions have shown a rightward evolutionary trend in the lineage leading to Homo sapiens." (p85)
    • overall normative, at least highly suggestive, regarding researchs to conduct or what "should become an urgent research priority" (p88)
  • Conclusion
    • "if the arguments given here have weakened the apparent a-priori considerations against including the g factor among the phenomena to be encompassed by a complete account of human cognitive evolution, then this chapter will have succeeded in its avowedly negative goals." (p89)
• 4 Where there is an adaptation, there is a domain: The form-function fit in information processing by H. Clark Barrett
  • Introduction
    • "study of domain specificity is the study of the fit between the properties of information processing systems and the properties of information that they process " (p97)
    • "inevitable relationship:
      • every information processing system does something systematic with information, and that, in turn, delineates a domain [...]
      • what kind of information a system operates on therefore depends critically on what it does with that information, which in turn depends on its function." (p97)
  • The processes that shape organismic architecture
    • "There are many processes [...] that shape the course of evolutionary history. Only one process, however, is a designing process: natural selection." (p98)
    • "To answer the question of what underlying adaptation or adaptations are involved - and what their domain is - we must go deeper into questions of design and the relationship between information-processing design and information structure." (p99)
  • Adaptations imply domains
    • two conceptually distinct ways
      • "The first sense of domain defined domains in a causal-historical sense, by referring to the set of circumstances that shaped design." (p100)
      • "The second sense of domain defines it in terms of present properties." (p100)
    • example of the fin of a dolphin and its sea environment (p99) referring explicitely to Dawkins yet very similar to Munz's book PhilosophicalDarwinism in which he also uses and example of a fish being a model of its environment (and Jakob von Uexküll's Umwelt)
  • Proper vs. actual domains
    • "The proper domain of an evolved mechanism is the domain of information that the mechanism was designed, by selection, to process." (p101)
    • "The actual domain of an evolved mechanism is the domain of information that the mechanism will actually process." (p101)
    • "The design features of a mechanism entail that it will process some kinds of information that it was not designed to process. This is an inevitable consequence of the causal nature of computational devices: their actual domains will be broader than their proper domains." (p101)
  • Content domains and formal domains
  • Are there domain-general adaptations?
    • "The nature of specialization, then, is heterogeneous. Different adaptations are specialized in different ways, some of which cause them to deal with <<broad>> swaths of information, and others narrower, depending on what kinds of problems they are designed to solve." (p106)
    • "Problem space has high dimensionality, and the dimensions of specialization of different systems are often orthogonal rather than overlapping. Only when there is a shared dimension does it really make sense, conceptually, to talk about broader or narrower domains." (p106)
  • Reconciling flexibility with domain specificity
    • "A system evolved with at least two properties:
      • first, it leveraged the common features of faces to be able to detect them, and
      • second, it leveraged the dimensions along which faces vary to build a system that could use the relevant dimensions of variation to learn to discriminate between individual faces." (p108)
    • "If a learning system is capable of learning the <<right>> thing in an evolutionarily novel circumstance, it is because the structure of that learning environment matches the structure of ancestral learning environments along the relevant dimensions." (p109)
  • Directions for future research
    • "Expanding our catalog of the specialized information-processing adaptations of which the brain is comprised should therefore be a major goal for future research." (p111)
    • "actual domain that is more poorly understood" (p111)
    • "elucidate not only the formal description of the input domain of a system, but also a complete formal description of its procedures, or what it does with the information that is being processed." (p112)
    • "By studying in tandem both the input domains and procedures of evolved mechanisms, we will come much closer to a fuller understanding of the form-function fit in cognition." (p112)
  • Conclusions
• 5 Invention and community in the emergence of language: Insights from new sign languages by Michael A. Arbib
  • Conceptual frameworks
    • "Understanding the tradeoff between innate capabilities and social influences in the emergence of NSL and ABSL will ground an understanding of how these modern social influences may differ from those available to early humans at the dawn of language." (p117)
    • "mirror system hypothesis (MSH) is a specific theory of the evolution of the human <<language-ready brain.>> It is informed by the view that language is a multimodal system of production and performance that involves voice, hands, and face." (p117)
    • "it suggests that the brain mechanisms which support language evolved atop a mirror system for grasping (i.e., a brain system active both when the subject is grasping and when the subject observes another grasping) which is similar in the brains of monkeys, apes, and humans." (p118)
    • "it was gesture, rather than vocalization (Seyfarth et al., 2005), that created the opening for greatly expanded communication once complex imitation had evolved for practical manual skills" (p119)
    • "Two of Hockett’s features are discreteness and combinatorial patterning" (p121)
    • "recursion in language is a corollary of the essentially recursive nature of action and perception once symbolization becomes compositional." (p122-123)
  • Being deaf
    • importance of the impact of the Deaf community (hence the capital D) vs "home sign" as a less sucessful strategy
  • Two new sign languages
    • Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) developed in about 25 years
    • Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) developed in about 70 years (Negev region of Israel)
    • "the key to the transition from home sign to language was the creation of a community in which children could learn the creations of others and begin to build an expanding vocabulary and shared set of constructions." (p128-129)
    • "The existence of a community provides more opportunities to use signs and choose signs, so that some get lost to the community while others gain power by being widely shared. <<Natural selection by learning.>>" (p134)
    • "Since knowledge of another language is possessed by some members of the community, they seek to translate this knowledge into the new medium (as is proven for the lexicon), but few attempts to capture a given property will become widespread in the community." (p134)
  • The emergence of the Nicaraguan Deaf community
    • social importance, interaction with other communities, including the Swedish one
  • The influences of culture and community
    • "the sign language in Nicaragua did not develop in a vacuum, but owes a debt to multiple influences. The language and the community appear to have grown in tandem, and they grew most rapidly among a group that was not composed of children, but of those looking toward adulthood." (p141)
  • Challenges for future research
    • "analysis of the role of the caregiver in the child’s construction of home sign" (p146)
    • "the interplay of mechanisms for action and sign" (p146)
    • developp an "<<epidemiology>> of where novel signs and constructions arise and how they spread through the population and become transformed as they do so." (p146)
      • sounds like applied memetics
  • related work was cited by Elizabeth S. Spelke in her ENS talks, Conferences Jean Nico 2009?
• 6 Origins of the language: Correlation between brain evolution and language development by Alfredo Ardila
  • "The purpose of this paper is not to further review and discuss the historical origins of language, but to relate what is known (or supposed) on the origins of language, with contemporary neurology and neuropsychology data, particularly with the area of aphasia." (p153)
  • two basic linguistic operations (p154)
    • selecting (language as paradigm)
    • sequencing (language as syntagm)
  • "each [two basic types of aphasia syndromes] related to the disturbance of one of these two basic language elements (lexical/semantic and grammatical)." (p154)
    • paradigmatic axis : similarity disorder
    • syntagmatic axis : contiguity disorder
  • Linguistic and anthropological data: three stages in language development
    • (1) "Initial communication systems using sounds and other types of information - such as gestures, etc., similar to the communication systems observed in other animals, including nonhuman primates." (p158)
    • (2) "Primitive language systems using combined sounds (words) but without a grammar (language as paradigm)" (p158)
    • (3) "Communication systems using grammar (language as syntagm)" (p158)
  • "there is not convincing evidence that chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates can learn language syntax (language as syntagm) even after intensive and controlled training" (p159)
  • 8 famous hypothesis as "attempt to explain the origin of language from the lexical point of view" (p160)
  • Conclusions
    • "Both language systems [lexical/semantic system and as a grammatical system] not only depend upon different brain areas (temporal and frontal) but also upon different types of learning (declarative and procedural) supported by different neuroanatomical circuitries." (p168)
    • "Grammar is correlated with the ability to represent and use actions. This is an ability that depends on the so-called Broca’s area and related brain circuits, but also depends, is correlated, and likely appeared simultaneously in human history with the ability to rapidly sequence articulatory movements (speech praxis)." (p168)
• 7 The evolutionary cognitive neuropsychology of face preferences by Anthony C. Little and Benedict C. Jones
  • Introduction
    • "If in our evolutionary past, information was present about a person’s value (e.g., genetic quality) in any way, then an advantage would accrue to those who utilized these signs and those individuals would leave more genes behind in the next generation." (p175)
    • objectives of the paper
      • study facial attractiveness as well as discussing reward and face processing brain mechanisms
      • behavioral cognitive work which links to how beauty is processed in the brain
  • Part A: Brain mechanisms of reward and face perception
    • Reward in the brain
      • detailing different studies regarding the brain regions involved in liking, wanting, positive emotions
      • Figure 7.1 - Components of the reward system (p177) including Prefrontal cortex, Nucleus accumbens, Ventral pallidum, Ventral tegmentum, Amygdala
    • General face processing by the brain
      • Figure 7.2 - The distributed human neural system for face perception (p179)
    • Current data on face preferences and the human brain
      • brief review of neurobiological studies that deal with the perception of attractive faces
      • "studies of brain activation in processing have highlighted the role of involving frontal cortex and the classic component of reward, the nucleus accumbens" (p183)
      • "studies suggest a strong role of the subcortical amygdala and thalamus/hypothalamus, and the orbitofrontal cortex in generating responses to individuals you may be attracted to" (p184)
    • Additions to the distributed model of face perception to process attractiveness
      • proposition of an extended model, see Figure 7.3 (p186)
      • "Overall, the processing of facial beauty appears very closely tied to general reward mechanisms." (p188)
  • Part B: Examples integrating evolution, cognition, and neuropsychology
    • Attraction to specific physical traits: symmetry
      • discussion on Evolution, Cognition and Neuropsychology axis
      • "Symmetry in human faces has been linked to potential heritable fitness because symmetry is a useful measure of the ability of an organism to cope with developmental stress, both genetic and environmental" (p190)
        • as mentioned regarding developmental stability in Chapter 7. Bodies of Evidence, page 229 of The Mating Mind
    • Changeable attraction: Neural tuning influencing the attractiveness of faces
      • discussion on Evolution, Cognition and Neuropsychology axis
      • "For many types of stimuli, including faces, exposure increases attraction even when the exposure is unconscious" (p192)
      • "averageness - how closely they resemble the majority of other faces within a population; nonaverage faces havemore extreme characteristics than the average of a population" (p192)
• 8 Sex differences in the neural correlates of jealousy by Hidehiko Takahashi and Yoshiro Okubo
  • Sexual jealousy and mate retention behaviors
    • "violence in romantic relationships might be associated with mate retention behaviors" (p205)
  • Morbid jealousy
    • "condition of inappropriate or excessive jealousy specific to the sexual partner together with unacceptable or extreme behavior based on a preoccupation with the partner’s unfaithfulness" (p206)
  • Sex differences in jealousy in response to a partner’s infidelity
    • "men have evolved a special sensitivity to cues of sexual infidelity (p206)
    • "women are predicted to be more sensitive to a partner’s emotional infidelity" (p207)
  • Sex differences in brain activations in response to sexual and emotional infidelity
    • experiment "participants read sexual and emotional infidelity scenarios during fMRI scans and then rated the intensity of jealousy and other basic emotions (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, etc.) using the 6-point Likert scale" (p208)
    • is the reference to Berthoz linked to the College de France professor?
  • Conclusion
    • "sex differences in brain activations in response to sexual and emotional infidelities, supporting the view that men and women have different neurocognitive systems to process a partner’s sexual and emotional infidelity" (p211)

See also

• Online Research Laboratory directed by Steven Platek
• earlier studies on Cognitive Archeology
• my related Fundamental Concept Tree
• The Front Shelf mini-reviews, SemiotiX 2010

Overall remarks and questions

• referring to Miller's The Matting Mind 9 years later, how does it confirm or infirm it?
• what are the key experimental methods?
• if "psychological mechanisms" are "information-processing modules" and if "Evolved psychological mechanisms are understood in terms of their specific input, decision rules, and output" (page 6 of chapter 1) how do they differ from recipes of Cookbook.Cognition and to a notion of Seedea:Content/Newconcepts#CognitiveCommons
  • is there a repository of such evolved psychological mechanisms? are they ordered by estimated time of appearance?
• if vocabulary is a key factor in the measure of g (page 65-67 of chapter 3), is the modern equivalent the size of functions>algorithms>models>paradigms repertoire of an individual?
• are those findings used not just in computional linguistic but also in computer languages designing?
  • evolution from Fortan-syntax, Lisp-syntax, ... each, in relation also to their paradigms, with potentially their specific grammar
    • arguably assembly have a minimal grammar (1 operator with 0, 1 or 2 operands) while Python and recent languages have more complex grammars and include, like Javascript iconicity
• why does the title include "neuroscience" when very few data (simulations or imaging) are directly presented in favor of temptative (even if coherent) hypothesis?
  • the analytical framework might be logical, yes the content looks more like philosophy than experimental science

Vocabulary

(:new_vocabulary_start:) ripe excruciatingly cuckoldry gist endocast amenities lulls assays scanty construal swaths to hone paedomorphy dyadic syntagm (:new_vocabulary_end:)

Back to the Menu

Categories

• Neurology

Other read books linking to the Foundations in Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience page :

Back to the Menu