Evolution, Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology and Human...
Transcript of Evolution, Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology and Human...
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Evolution, Psychology, Evolutionary
Psychology and Human Uniqueness
MSc Psychological Research Methods
PSYC073P
Epistemology and Philosophy of Science
December 12th 2006
Stephen Walker
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Overview
• There will inevitably be some overlap with
nature/nurture issues (Dec 5th)
• There is also a a contrast between
evolutionary or biological psychology and
social constructionist or psychosocial social constructionist or psychosocial
approaches (Nov 28th)
• At least two kinds of reductionism will be
illustrated: explaining behaviours as
adaptations, and explaining behaviours in
terms of neural circuits that control them.
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Outline
• I will start off by looking at animal
behaviour, where evolution has relevance.
• “Evolutionary Psychology” is based on the
claim that human psychology is strongly
determined by human evolution.determined by human evolution.
• The evidence for these claims is often
extremely weak, but I will look at a few
recent examples.
• I will also look briefly at the evidence
concerning the course of human evolution.
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Paper Handout
• *NB* the paper handout includes only a small
fraction of the slides in this presentation: a pdf of
most of the slides will be available on the intranet
• The paper handout includes a list of alternative
books on human evolution which are in BK library books on human evolution which are in BK library
on page 6
• Any pieces of work mentioned in the presentation
should have its citation listed on pages 7 & 8 of
the handout.
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Fossils versus Genomics
• There are epistemological difficulties in studying human evolution.
• The difficulties are in inferring the past course of human evolution from a limited number of fossil human evolution from a limited number of fossil finds.
• But in the last 10 or 15 years technologies have become available allowing geneticists to pinpoint where and when the human genome has undergone significant changes.
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Evolution and DNA
There is a huge amount of
information pertinent to
evolution produced by
recent technologies: these
are citations for the paper by
Altschul et al. (1990) about Altschul et al. (1990) about
a search tool for DNA and
protein sequence databases
Wikipedia says this was the most widely cited of all
scientific papers published in the 1990s
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Genomics and Bioinformatics
• DNA sequencing, inc human and chimpanzee
• Gene splicing and genetic engineering
• Gene expression data from ‘Microarrays’
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The Darwinian Theory of Evolution −
“Descent with Modification”
� There are inherited differences between
individuals
� These include random variations
� Resources are not unlimited� Resources are not unlimited
� Some individuals will flourish more than
others and produce more offspring
� Natural selection occurs if a population
changes over generations because of this
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Evolution — II
• The first point about evolution is that it
connects the human species with the rest of
the animal kingdom,
• However, it is also possible and indeed • However, it is also possible and indeed
likely that the course of human evolution
has led to humans being uniquely different
from all other currently living species
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Almost all human
behaviour involves
cultural learning (Tomasello and Razoksky, 2003; Tomasello
et al., 2005)
Almost all animal
behaviour is genetically
pre-programmed (by
evolution) to fit an
ecological niche (Darwin, 1859;
Tinbergen, 1951; Manoli and Baker, 2004)
Human Uniqueness on behavioural grounds
et al., 2005)Tinbergen, 1951; Manoli and Baker, 2004)
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Darwin (1859) The Origin of Species
• Chap VII “Instinct”. Not defined, but three main
examples
• The instinct of the female cuckoo to lay small eggs
in other bird’s nests, and the egg-ejection behavior
of the newly hatched cuckoo chick;
• Slave-making instincts in some • Slave-making instincts in some
species of ant
• The cell-making instinct of the
honeybee
• The behaviors were seen by
Darwin as not necessarily
dependent on anatomical
characteristics
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Darwin on Honey bees
• Darwin thought that the honey comb was “absolutely
perfect in economising labour and wax” on the
grounds of geometry.
• But it also “can be explained by natural selection
having taken advantage of numerous, successive,
slight modifications of simpler instincts”. These were
based on spheres as in bumble bees, with S. American based on spheres as in bumble bees, with S. American
stingless bees intermediate. NB thousands of solitary
bees which do not store honey
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Another of Darwin’s examples:cuckoos
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Another of Darwin’s examples:cuckoos
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Darwin (1859) page 185 function and form
http://darwin-online.org.uk
• “…. the acutest observer by examining the dead body of the water-ouzel would never have suspected its sub-aquatic habits; yet this anomalous member of the strictly terrestrial thrush family wholly subsists by diving,—grasping the stones with its feet and using its wings under water.”water.”
• Actually has some anatomical adaptations: 3rd
eyelid, nostril flaps and oil gland 10 times larger than non-aquatic perching birds.
• But Voelker (2002) agrees that the thrush is the closest relative and suggest that dippers diverged only 4m years bp
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Darwin (1859) page 185
http://darwin-online.org.uk
• And the behavioural adaptation would have come
first −
• Thrushes foraging in streams instead of solid
ground would then find enlarged oil glands useful
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Dipper diet includes aquatic insect larvae
• Caddis fly larvae build themselves cases, in
various ways depending on the species.
• The Darwinian position would be that they inherit
the behaviours required for this task.
• But in fact Stuart and Currie (2002) found that • But in fact Stuart and Currie (2002) found that
there was little relation between the types of
behaviours and the structural end-product across a
variety of species.
• Do species need a ‘genetic blueprint’ for the end-
product?
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Evolution connects the human species with
the rest of the animal kingdom
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Period, begins (Million Years)Era
Quaternary
Holocene 0,01
Pleistocene 1.6
Tertiary
Pliocene 5
Miocene 23
Oligocene 35
Eocene 56
Paleocene 65
Cenozoic Man
DinosaursCretaceous 145
Jura 210
Trias 250
Permian 290
Carboniferous 360
Devonian 410
Silurian 440
Ordovician 505
Cambrian 545
Proterozoic 2500
Archean 3800Precambrian
Paleozoic
Mesozoic
Oldest fossils of complex animals
Creation of extant phyla
Dinosaurs
Reptiles, birds, mammals
(Amniotes)
Primitive fish
First bacteria
First multicellular organisms
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Lappin et al., 2006; standard texts
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EVOLUTIONARILY CONSERVED MOLECULAR GENETIC MECHANISMS FOR
PATTERNING THE EMBRYONIC BRAIN . Reichert, H., & Simeone, A. (2001)
Fly mutant
restored
with human
gene
Fly mutant
restored with
mouse gene
Mouse mutant
restored with
fly gene
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Bishop et al., 2002
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Ethological analyses of animal behaviour
Vitalists believed in the
instincts as mystical…. and
behaviourists were
preoccupied with
learning…the way out was
focussing on the survival focussing on the survival
value of behaviour patterns.
“Behaviour patterns
become explicable when
interpreted as the result of
natural selection, analogous
with anatomical and
physiological
characteristics.”
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Tinbergen
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1951, title and frontispiece
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Genome news network
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Zig-zag dance
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Experimental stimulus variation
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A Study of Instinct
1951
• There is no entry for gene
in the 1951 index
• But instinct and “innate”
are the themes, and refers
to genetics and mutations
in the chapter on “The
Evolution of Behaviour”
• Tinbergen included some • Tinbergen included some
ill-advised evolutionary
psychology
• But there is a case that
explanations for
stickleback and human
behaviour should be
fundamentally different.
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Instinct - 2
• Tinbergen (1951) stressed two key concepts
• 1. “sign stimuli” e.g. redness for
sticklebacks.
• 2. The “innate releasing mechanism”, by
which particular sign stimuli release which particular sign stimuli release
particular instinctive behaviour patterns
• He believed these concepts applied to
mammals
• But the evidence is much clearer with lower
vertebrates and invertebrates
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E.g. Spiders
The orb web A first attempt
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e.g. spiders 2
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Darwin’s comment on spiders
“Thus everywhere in nature are battle, craft, and
ingenuity, all following the merciless law of
egoism, in order to maintain their own lives and to
destroy those of others” Charles Darwin writing
in Animal Intelligence by G.J. Romanes (1882),
commenting on wolf and trapdoor spiders, p. 213commenting on wolf and trapdoor spiders, p. 213
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Innate behaviours e.g. fruitfly courtship
Kimura, K. I., Ote, M., Tazawa, T., & Yamamoto, D. (2005).
Fruitless specifies sexually dimorphic neural circuitry in the
Drosophila brain. Nature, 438(7065), 229-233.
“…..we identify a subset of fru-expressing interneurons in
the brain that show marked sexual dimorphism in their
number and projection pattern……. Fru expression can number and projection pattern……. Fru expression can
produce a male-specific neural circuit,”
“Throughout the animal kingdom the innate nature of basic
behaviour routines suggests that the underlying neuronal
substrates necessary for their execution are genetically
determined and developmentally programmed” Manoli &
Baker (2004).
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e.g. fruitfly aggression
Vrontou et al., (2006) fruitless regulates aggression and
dominance in Drosophila Nature Neuroscience, 9,(01 Dec 2006), 1469 - 1471
When competing for resources, two flies of the same sex
fight each other. Males and females fight with distinctly
different styles, and males but not females establish
dominance relationships. Here we show that sex-specific
splicing of the fruitless gene plays a critical role in splicing of the fruitless gene plays a critical role in
determining who and how a fly fights, and whether a
dominance relationship forms.
“our data indicate that aggressive behaviors are
hardwired into the fly’s nervous system”
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also vertbrates e.g. zebrafish
Gahtan, E., Tanger, P., & Baier, H. (2005). Visual prey
capture in larval zebrafish is controlled by identified
(four of them) reticulospinal neurons downstream of the
tectum. Journal of Neuroscience, 25(40), 9294-9303.
“Many vertebrates are efficient hunters and recognize
their prey by innate neural mechanisms. During prey
capture, the internal representation of the prey's
location must be constantly updated and made available location must be constantly updated and made available
to premotor neurons that convey the information to
spinal motor circuits.”
“Seven-day-old zebrafish oriented toward, chased,
and consumed paramecia with high accuracy.”
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Also birds
e.g. Dilger
(1961)
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Also for mammals
Choi et al. (2005) Lhx6 delineates a pathway mediating
innate reproductive behaviors from the amygdala to the
hypothalamus, Neuron, 46(4), 647-660 (in embryonic and adult mice)
“Virtually all metazoan organisms exhibit innate
reproductive and defensive behaviors that are triggered reproductive and defensive behaviors that are triggered
by signals sensed from conspecifics or predators. ….
The stereotypical nature of these behaviors suggests
that their underlying neural circuits are likely to be
genetically ‘hard-wired’.”
“In mammals, innate reproductive and defensive
behaviors are mediated by anatomically segregated
connections between the amygdala and hypothalamus.”
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Slide 4 from the 2004 Nobel Lecture: Linda Buck
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Contrasts
• there remain very contrasting positions within
contemporary psychology particularly relating to
how much emphasis is given to broadly biological
as opposed to psychosocial evidence and theory.
• The contrasts are less stark if we use “horses for • The contrasts are less stark if we use “horses for
courses”: explaining how the olfactory system
works in mice is different from theorising about
voting intentions in the Ukraine (2004) or the Tory
leadership election (2005) or political events in
Lebanon (2006)
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Evolutionary Psychology
• Attempts to explain human psychology as a
series of specialized adaptations
• Driven in part by Chomskyan linguistics
(see last week’s lectures): Pinker has
written several more general books, most written several more general books, most
recently “The Blank Slate” (2002) as well
as “The Language Instinct (1994)
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Adaptations
• Williams (1966) defined an adaptation as “a
characteristic that has arisen through and
been shaped by natural and/or sexual
selection.
• It regularly develops in members of the • It regularly develops in members of the
same species because it helped to solve
problems of survival and reproduction in
the evolutionary ancestry of the organism.
• Consequently it can be expected to have a
genetic basis ensuring that the adaptation is
passed through the generations”.
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Spandrels
Gould and Lewontin, 1979; Gould, 1997
“An adaptationist programme has dominated
evolutionary thought in England and the United States
during the past forty years. It is based on faith in the
power of natural selection as an optimizing agent.”
We fault the adaptationist programme for its
unwillingness to consider alternatives tounwillingness to consider alternatives to
adaptive stories……..”
spandrels and
exaptations are
side effects of
natural selection
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Evolutionary psychology, originally on the fringe of
academic psychology.., has gained respectability
Bjorklund, D. F., & Smith, P. K. (2003). Evolutionary developmental
psychology: Introduction to the special issue. Journal of Experimental
Child Psychology, 85(3), 195-198
Evolutionary Psychology
academic psychology.., has gained respectability
within the last decade. Articles written from an
evolutionary psychological perspective are found in
the field’s most prestigious outlets; it has
professional societies and journals of its own;
college courses and textbooks are devoted to it; and
there are academic positions specifically designated
for evolutionary psychologists.
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Tooby and Cosmides
• Cosmides, L. (1989). The logic of social
exchange: has natural selection shaped how
humans reason? Studies with the Wason
selection task. Cognition, 31: 187 - 276.
• Duchaine, B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. • Duchaine, B., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J.
(2001). Evolutionary psychology and the brain.
Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 11(2), 225-
230.
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Swiss Army Knife
Cosmides: The Swiss Army knife is a flexible tool. Its
flexibility is not the result of having just one tool that is
applied to all problems. Instead, it is a bundle of tools,
each well-designed for solving a different problem –.
Similarly, the human mind does not have just one
blunt tool for solving all problems – and if it did, we blunt tool for solving all problems – and if it did, we
would be very limited indeed..
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Cosmides (1989)
• Logic: If P then Q is only violated by P & ~Q
• Typically participants do not use this logic in the Wason 4 card test (if vowel, theneven number on back)
• A. if you have a bus pass, then you travel by bus• A. if you have a bus pass, then you travel by bus
• B. if you travel by bus, then you have a bus pass
• Cosmides used many more elaborate scenarios, and found a strong bias towards “detecting cheaters” in that participants get A wrong, but B right.
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• But there is widespread disagreement, both
with the specific claims made about
reasoning and the Wason card-turning test,
• And with the general claims about highly • And with the general claims about highly
specialized mental tools for solving specific
problems
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Examples• However, a few examples follow of papers
firmly in the field of evolutionary psychology in
recent issues of reputable journals.
• Catatonia, Anorexia Nervosa and depression are
proposed as adaptations,
• there is a fairly general theory about individual
decision rules interacting with group dynamics,decision rules interacting with group dynamics,
• a paper proposing an evolutionary account of
human facial expression of pain,
• and a paper arguing that a human “innate
releasing mechanism” for understanding agency
is a key feature of religious concepts of the
supernatural.
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Moskowitz, A. K. (2004). “Scared stiff”:
Catatonia as an evolutionary-based fear
response. Psychological Review, 111(4), 984-
1002.
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Guisinger, S. (2003). Adapted to flee famine: Adding an
evolutionary perspective on anorexia nervosa.
Psychological Review, 110(4), 745-761.
Anorexia nervosa (AN) is ..attributed to
psychological conflicts, attempts to be fashionably slender,
neuroendocrine dysfunction, ……. Considerable research
reveals these theories to be incomplete…..
This article presents evidence that AN's distinctive
symptoms of restricting food, denial of starvation, and symptoms of restricting food, denial of starvation, and
hyperactivity are likely to be evolved adaptive
mechanisms that facilitated ancestral nomadic foragers
leaving depleted environments; genetically susceptible
individuals who lose too much weight may trigger these
archaic adaptations. This hypothesis accounts for the
occurrence of AN- like syndromes in both humans and
animals and is consistent with changes observed in the
physiology, cognitions, and behavior of patients with AN.
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Guisinger table
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Depression
• Allen, N. B., & Badcock, P. B. T. (2006). Darwinian
models of depression: A review of evolutionary accounts of mood and
mood disorders. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry, 30(5), 815-826.
• According to the social risk hypothesis, depression
represents an adaptive response to the threat of
exclusion from social relationships that, over the
course of evolution, have been critical to maintaining course of evolution, have been critical to maintaining
an individual's fitness prospects
• in the ancestral environment, depression induced: (i)
sensitivity to social risk/threat; (ii) signaling
behaviours that elicit social support; and (iii) a
reduction in risky behaviours
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Kenrick, D. T., Li, N. P., & Butner, J. (2003). Dynamical evolutionary
psychology: Individual decision rules and emergent social norms.
Psychological Review, 110(1), 3-28.
• Following evolutionary models, psychological mechanisms are conceived as conditional decision rules designed to address fundamental problems confronted by human ancestors,
• A new theory integrating evolutionary and • A new theory integrating evolutionary and dynamical approaches is proposed.
• Three series of simulations examining trade-offs in cooperation and mating decisions illustrate how individual decision mechanisms and group dynamics mutually constrain one another, and offer insights about gene-culture interactions.
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Kenrick and Butner, 2004
“At the most general level, evolutionary
psychology can be defined as the study of
cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms as
the solutions to recurrent adaptive problems.”
“Along with the morphological features designed “Along with the morphological features designed
by natural selection, organisms also inherit central
nervous systems……The behavioural
inclinations of a bat would not work well in
the body of a dolphin or giraffe and vice-
versa.”
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Kenrick and Buttner wrong
• over a period of 35 years in Sweden (1965-
1999), there was no overall over-
representation of stepchildren as victims.
• Temrin, Nordlund, & Sterner, H. (2004)
• In families with both stepchildren and • In families with both stepchildren and
children genetically related to the offender,
genetic children tended to be more likely to
be victims.
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Williams, A. C. D. (2002). Facial expression of pain: An evolutionary account. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25(4), 439-+.
• This paper proposes that human expression of pain ..,, arises from evolved propensities.
• The function of pain is to demand attention and prioritise escape, recovery, and healing; where others can help …, a distinct and specific facial expression of pain from infancy to old age, consistent across stimuli, and recognizable as pain by observers. and recognizable as pain by observers.
• ……..there has been skepticism about the presence or extent of pain, judgments of malingering, and sometimes the withholding of caregiving and help.
• … an evolutionary account can generate improved assessment of pain and reactions to it.
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Darwin’s “The expression of the emotions in
man and animals” (1872)
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Peleg et al. (2006). Hereditary family signature of
facial expression. PNAS 103(43), 15921-15926
• Correlated facial expressions in congenitally blind subjects and their seeing relatives, anticipates genes.
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Further examples
• Rhodes, G. (2006). The evolutionary psychology
of facial beauty. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 199-226.
• face preferences may be adaptations for mate
choice because attractive traits signal important
aspects of mate quality, such as health
• Averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism
are good candidates for biologically based are good candidates for biologically based
standards of beauty
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Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion's evolutionary landscape:
Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and
Brain Sciences, 27(06), 713-730.
• Religion is not an evolutionary adaptation per se,
• but a recurring cultural by-product of the complex
evolutionary landscape
• A key feature of the supernatural agent concepts
common to all religions is the triggering of an
“Innate Releasing Mechanism,” or “agency “Innate Releasing Mechanism,” or “agency
detector,”
• whose proper (naturally selected) domain
encompasses objects relevant to hominid survival
– such as predators, – but which actually extends
to moving dots on computer screens, voices in
wind, and faces on clouds.
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Domain General and Domain Specific
• The “Swiss army knife” idea is more formally
expressed in terms of domain specific or
modular capacities.
• The next paper argues that general intelligence • The next paper argues that general intelligence
is also domain-specific
• This is dangerous for Evolutionary Psychology,
since it opens the door to the idea that human
evolution ended up by providing us with very
open-ended and general purpose psychological
capacities.
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Kanazawa, S. (2004). General intelligence as a domain-
specific adaptation. Psychological Review, 111(2), 512-523
• General intelligence (g) poses a problem for evolutionary psychology's modular view of the human brain. The author …. argues that general intelligence evolved as a domain-specific adaptation for the originally limited sphere of evolutionary novelty in the ancestral environment…environment…
• It has accidentally become universally important merely because we now live in an evolutionarily novel world
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Kanisawa, Psych Review 2004
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More Domain General ideas
Atkinson, A. P., & Wheeler, M. (2004). The grain of
domains: The evolutionary-psychological case against domain-general cognition. Mind & Language, 19(2), 147-176.
..evolutionary psychologists have argued that our innate psychological endowment consists of numerous domain- specific cognitive resources, rather than a few domain-general ones. … We rather than a few domain-general ones. … We conclude (a) that the fundamental logic of Darwinism,….. does not entail that the innate mind consists exclusively, or even massively, of domain-specific features, and (b) that a mixed innate cognitive economy of domain-specific and domain-general resources remains a genuine conceptual possibility.
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Human Ancestors
• “psychological mechanisms are
conceived as conditional decision rules
designed to address fundamental
problems confronted by human
ancestors” (Kenrick and Butner, 2004)ancestors” (Kenrick and Butner, 2004)
• This is a typical claim in evolutionary
psychology, but there seems little
detailed interest in what human
ancestors might have done.
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Human Evolution
• The epistemology of human evolution is
necessarily difficult, since it relies on
fossils, but fossil evidence has a
reasonable track record in other areas,
and human artefacts, in particular stone and human artefacts, in particular stone
tools, provide another source of
evidence
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Human evolution, summarised on p. 6 of handout
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Millions
top
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Family Tree
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A new early fossil (2006)
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Alemseged, Z., et al. (2006). A juvenile early hominin
skeleton from Dikika, Ethiopia. Nature, 443(7109), 296-301
Dikika is only 4km from where ‘Lucy’ was found (Australopithecus afarensis )
The Dikika specimen, from 3.3m yrs ago was about 3yrs old and probably female.about 3yrs old and probably female.
The legs were human-like for bi-pedal walking, but the arms and hands ape-like. The hyoid bone (for the larynx) was also ape-like
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New Neanderthal data: Green et al., (2006)
• Suggests common ancestor ~450,000 yrs ago
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Human uniqueness
• The human brain is uniquely large
• It is also functionally lateralized in a way which differs from chimpanzees
• It may be metabolically enhanced • It may be metabolically enhanced Cacares et al (2003)
• It may include different physiological components (Allman et al., 2005)
• It may be organized uniquely, e.g. large frontal lobes (Deacon, 1997)
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Number of neurons in the nervous system
1,000,000,000,000
350,000,000,000
100,000,000,000
500,000,000
300,000,000
• Homo sapiens (maybe 1014)
• Chimpanzee
• Rhesus monkey
• Mouse
• Octopus300,000,000
50,000,000
850,000
250,000
20,000
381
302
• Octopus
• Stickleback
• Honey bee
• Fruitfly
• Sea slug
• Thread worm male
• Thread worm
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In Striedter, G. F. (2006). Precis of Principles of brain evolution.
Striedter brain szie
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Dorus, S., et al. (2004).
Accelerated evolution
of nervous system
genes in the origin of
Homo sapiens. Cell,
119(7), 1027-1040
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Human, chimp, organg, Rhesus
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primary microcephaly
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Ponting and Jackson, 2005
• …….recent advances from the cloning of two human disease genes promise to make inroads in the area .. of brain size evolution.
• Microcephalin (MCPH1) and Abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated (ASPM) are genes mutated in primary microcephaly.
• In this, the brain is of a size comparable with that of early hominids. hominids.
• It has been proposed that these genes evolved adaptively with increasing primate brain size. ….both genes have undergone positive selection during great ape evolution.
• the evolutionary patterns of all four presently known primary microcephaly genes are consistent with the hypothesis that genes regulating brain size during development might also play a role in brain evolution in primates and especially humans (Evans, 2006)
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More on brain size genes
• Evans et al., (2005) claim the microcephalin
has continued to evolve adaptively in
modern humans
• They say one genetic variant of
microcephalin appeared as recently as microcephalin appeared as recently as
37,000 years ago.
• The same team (Merkel-Bobrov et al, 2005)
say that APSM, another gene regulating
brain size, had a new variant only 5,800
years ago
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Huxley’s
comparisons
“So far as cerebral structure goes
therefore, it is clear that man differs less
from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than
these do even from the monkeys, and that
the difference between the brains of the
Chimpanzee and of Man is almost
insignificant, when compared with that
between the Chimpanzee brain and that of
a Lemur. “(Darwin, 1874/1901, p. 312)
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semendeferi1
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The Semendeferi et al., (2002) table Semendeferi table
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• Schoenemann et al.(2005) recently suggested
that prefrontal white matter is
disproportionately larger in humans than in
other primates
• but Sherwood et al. (2005) countered that a)
Brain re-organization: expansion of the
frontal lobesThe sherwood 2005
• but Sherwood et al. (2005) countered that a)
the boundary between prefrontal and other
cortex is not well defined; and b) that in any
case, although the data showed humans having
more white matter than the average primate,
they did not show a difference between humans
and great apes.
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Allman et al 2005
• Von Economo neurons (VENs) are a
recently evolved cell type which may be
involved in the fast intuitive assessment of
complex situations.
• As such, they could be part of the circuitry
supporting human social networks.supporting human social networks.
• We propose that the VENs relay an output
of fronto-insular and anterior cingulate
cortex to the parts of frontal and temporal
cortex associated with theory-of-mind
• We propose that in autism spectrum
disorders the VENs fail to develop normally
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Allman et
al., 2005
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Hutsler, 2003
7 autopsies:
50-97 yrs of
age.
Human Brain Asymmetries
age.
No
chimpanzees
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Sun, T., & Walsh, C. A. (2006). Molecular approaches to brain asymmetry and handedness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7(8), 655-662
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Sun, T., & Walsh, C. A. (2006). Molecular approaches to brain asymmetry and handedness.
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Elevated neuronal activity?
• Caceres et al. (2003) applied a variety of genetic techniques to the cortical tissue (removed post-mortem) of humans, chimpanzees and rhesus macaques.
• These suggested that humans and chimpanzees are more similar to each other than to the macaques, which is as expected,
• but also that there were dozens of genes that were • but also that there were dozens of genes that were expressed very differently in human and chimpanzee cortex, with 90% of these being expressed more actively in humans than in chimpanzees, which suggested that
• The human is brain is characterized by “elevated levels of neuronal activity”.
• As a contrast, comparing gene expressing in the human and chimpanzee heart and liver revealed very little difference of this kind.
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• the human glia-neuron ratio in the prefrontal region did not differ significantly from predictions based on brain size.
• Further analyses of glia-neuron ratios across frontal areas in a humans, chimpanzees, and macaque monkeys showed that regions involved in specialized human cognitive functions, such as "theory of mind" (area 32) and language (area 44) have not evolved differentially higher requirements for metabolic support.
• …greater metabolic consumption of human neocortical
neurons relates to the energetic costs of maintaining
Sherwood, C. C., et al. (2006). Evolution of increased glia-neuron ratios in the human
frontal cortex. PNAS, 103(37), 13606-13611.
neurons relates to the energetic costs of maintaining
expansive dendritic arbors and long-range projecting
axons in the context of an enlarged brain.
• “Sherwood et al. (1) provide support for the
idea that the human brain is more or less
a large hominoid (ape) brain and can be understood in that context.”
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• Enard et al., (2002) did cross-species comparisons of the DNA for FoxP2, which when mutated gives rise to articulatory disorders in humans. Although it is “highly conserved” their data suggested that “this gene has been the target of selection during recent human evolution.
• Watakabe et al., (2006) review gene expression profiling of postnatal rhesus neocortex. Although profiling of postnatal rhesus neocortex. Although there is overall homogeneity of gene expression across different cortical areas, a few genes show marked area-specific patterns, e.g. genes specific to visual cortex and to association cortex.
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More genetic suggestions for human uniqueness
• Prabhakar et al, (2006) found many human-specific changes in regulatory sequences of DNA with almost no overlap with chimpanzee equivalents and suggest that these may have contributed to uniquely human features of brain development.
• Pollard et al., (2006) found a particular regulatory gene expressed especially in certain neurons in human neocortex from 7 to 9 gestational weeks and say that this and similar “human accelerated regions provide new candidates in the search for uniquely human biology”
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Paleontological evidence from human
evolution
• Stone tools provide the main currently
available clues to human evolution
• But partly because they survive only
periods of geological time
• Other artifacts made from wood and
bone may have been important, even if
nothing now survives
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Psychologist
cover
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Oldowan tools >2m years
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Acheulian
tools
1,4 m – 0.5 m
yrs, mainly
Homo erectus
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Size of Handaxes
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Neanderthal
tools, 400k yrs
ago – 100k
(Mousterian)
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Approx 25 k
years ago,
modern homo
sapiens
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Delagnes & Roche (2005)
• Even 2.34m years ago there was a highly
controlled technology for producing stone flakes
following constant technical rules and resulting in
high productivity.
• Their data consists of reconstructions of cobble
reduction sequences --- putting the flakes back reduction sequences --- putting the flakes back
together, e.g.
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Delagnes & Roche (2005) 2.34m years ago
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The hand and tools
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The hand and tools
• Some apes from around the time of the last common ancestor seemed to have hands like early hominids (Moya-Sola et al, 2005; Alba et al., 2003)Alba et al., 2003)
• Since modern apes show some evidence of tool use it is likely that the hands became adaptively useful from the very earliest stages of bipedalism.
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Chimpanzee tools
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The hand and tools: Castiello 2005
Findings from patients
with brain damage who
have difficulty in
grasping objects are
difficult to reconcile with
neurophysiological neurophysiological
findings, ……….
……as the patients' lesions are confined to regions that,
in monkeys, do not seem to be involved in grasping-
related visuomotor transformations ---
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Napier (1980)
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Napier infants
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Napier, ape
hands
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Napier, power
and precision
grips
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Napier – Screwtop
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The hand and tools: conclusion
• The consequence of evolution is that
humans have domain-general potential for
manual skill
• The hands can be used for anything
anatomically possibleanatomically possible
• There is no evidence for completely
steretotyped movements, even for the
precision grip (Wong and Whishaw, 2004)
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Wong, Y. J., & Whishaw, I. Q. (2004). Precision grasps of children and young
and old adults: individual differences in digit contact strategy, purchase pattern,
and digit posture. Behavioural Brain Research, 154(1), 113-123.
The grasping patterns of male and female young
adults, older adults and children were examined as
they reached (with both left and right hand) for five they reached (with both left and right hand) for five
small beads (3-16 mm diameter).
Frame-by-frame analysis of grasping indicated a high
degree of variability in digit contact strategies,
purchase patterns and digit posture both within and
between subjects.
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Other technologies: Neanderthal hut
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Mammoth remains
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Other technologies: Cave
paintings, Southern France
and Spain, 31,000 to 8,000
year before present
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Chauvet (31k) bison with active legs
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Detail of horses at Chauvet (31k)
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Hand at Chauvet (31k)
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Lamp at Lascaux
(13k)
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Bull at Lascaux
(13k)
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Functional differences: cultural learning
and invention• Tomasello & Rakoczy (2003) have argued that there are
two (initial) stages of uniquely human social cognition.
• The first stage is observable in one year olds, who have
an understanding of other persons as intentional agents,
• This enables them to take part in pretend play, and is
important as a prerequisite for shared attention and early
social and linguistic learning.
• The second stage is the “Theory of Mind” belief-desire • The second stage is the “Theory of Mind” belief-desire
psychology which normally starts around 4 years of age,
but which is dependent on several years of linguistic
communication.
• These early stages of uniquely human social cognition
enable the cultural “ratchet” of social and
technological innovation (Tomasello et al., 2005)
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“And so if we imagine a human child born onto a
desert island, somehow magically kept alive by
itself until adulthood, it is possible that this itself until adulthood, it is possible that this
adult’s cognitive skills would not differ very
much – perhaps a little – but not very much, from
those of other great apes.” (121) T and rakoczy
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Understanding and sharing intentions
Tomasello et al., 2005
• a species-unique motivation to share
emotions, experience, and activities with
other persons.. Leading to ..
• “species-unique forms of cultural cognition
and evolution”and evolution”
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Almost all human
behaviour involves
cultural learning (Tomasello and Razoksky, 2003; Tomasello
et al., 2005)
Almost all animal
behaviour is genetically
pre-programmed (by
evolution) to fit an
ecological niche (Darwin, 1859;
Tinbergen, 1951)
Human Uniqueness on behavioural grounds
et al., 2005)Tinbergen, 1951)
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Reading
• As last week for nature/nurture
• Any of the papers quoted.
• Or a debate initiated by Lickliter, R., &
Honeycutt, H. (2003). Developmental
dynamics: Toward a biologically plausible dynamics: Toward a biologically plausible
evolutionary psychology. Psychological
Bulletin, 129(6), 819-835.
• Or take a brief look at one of the books on
human evolution listed in the handout.
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Books on Human Evolution (alternatives)
Bradshaw, J. L. (1997). Human Evolution: A
Neuropsychological Perspective. Hove: Psychology
Press. BK lib 599.935BRA.
Johanson, Donald C., and Edgar, Blake (2001) From
Lucy to Language. London: Cassell paperbacks. 2 Lucy to Language. London: Cassell paperbacks. 2
copies in Main Birkbeck Library, classmark=599.938
JOH
Jones, S., Martin, R. D., & Pilbeam, D. R. (1992). The
Cambridge encyclopedia of human evolution. Cambridge
[England] ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University
Press, BK lib 599.9 CAM, 3 copies
Richards, G. (1987) Human Evolution. Routledge:
London. (Bk Lib GYW, N [Ric])
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Conclusions
• Evolutionary theory is essential for many areas
of animal behaviour, and rapid advances in
molecular genetics may impinge on
knowledge of the physiological underpinnings
of human capacities
• But a crucial outcome of human evolution was • But a crucial outcome of human evolution was
a fairly open aptitude for cultural and
technological invention
• The human brain may not be equivalent to a
blank slate, but it has large areas of free space
for cultural and historical changes — the blank
parts may be the most important.