7. Evolution of Cognition Flashcards
Natural selection affects frequencies of ____ in a population in response to _______ ______
genes
environmental pressures
How did cognitive psychology view the mind?
As a computer
A valid scientific concept
An information processor
What is the hardware and software in the brain as a computer concept?
The brain is the hardware
The mind is the software
Computational theory of the mind creates…
testable hypotheses
What is the common feature between the mind and the computer?
Processing information
Problems with the computational mind theory
Views mind as an abstract, general-purpose problem-solver
General procedures that could be applied to any information
BUT testing this –> humans were poor at simple abstract problems
Jerry Fodor: The Modularity of the Mind
The mind is a collection of special purpose modules
Cosmides and Tooby
Modules in the mind are domain-specific
Each is designed for a specific task
Why does Fodor disagree with Cosmides and Tooby?
“massive modularity” - 100s of modules
Why is it important to detect cheats?
To be able to recognise and remember them in order to avoid them in the future –> avoid wasting resources
Cheater detection task
Abstract task - computer would solve easily, humans struggled with
Social contract version - humans perform better on this version (90%)
Cheater detection module enables…
reasoning about social contracts
How do we know cheater detection is an evolved trait?
Cheater detection tasks - shows it can be used for all possible social contracts and it is universal among humans (cross cultural findings)
Further evidence for cheater detection
Brain damage patients performed well on abstract versions of Watson task but poor on social contract versions
Individuals high in emotional intelligence quicker at reasoning on social contract tasks
Violations of social contracts elicit anger as the predominant emotion in humans
Cheater detection and face recognition
Faces of cheaters are more important to remember than cooperators
Research - cheaters recognised and remembered better
Individuals involved in social contract scenarios are remembered better than those in hazard management scenarios, & cheaters in both rules remembered better
Adaptive problems
Predator avoidance Mate selection Food selection Forming alliances + friendships Communication Incest avoidance Reading minds Kin selection
Adaptive problems: food selection
Brain size linked to foraging behaviour
Fruit eating species are larger-brained than other diets e.g. leaf eaters
Fruit is more sparsely distributed than leaves –> requires better spatial memory
Frugivores also have larger home and foraging ranges
What is the adaptive value of disgust?
motivation to avoid infected food, contagious individuals and waste material
Disgust leads to activation of the…
amygdala and the insula
The amygdala and insula are important in emotions, particularly…
leaning and remembering emotional events and recognising emotions
The insula…
interprets information coming from outside the body (e.g. tastes, smells)
Insula is activated by…
both disgusting stumilu and observing disgusted facial expressions
Adaptive value of module for ‘activating disgust’?
Important to interpret information relevant for survival quickly
Can be done by interpreting others’ expressions
The internal motivation we have to aversion following feelings of disgust is strong
Amygdala
Role in emotion
Particularly learning and remembering emotional events
Swanson-Petrovich hypothesis
Amygdala is arbitrary grouping of cells, not structural or functions unit
Identifies 4 groups within te amygdala
What is a module in the brain?
A series of connections between different brain areas
TRUE OR FALSE: Evolution produces perfect solutions to problems.
False: It creates adequate solutions
What is base-rate fallacy?
People ignore base-rate information (e.g. mathematical proportions) when presented with other information
What is the conjunction fallacy?
Violating the cannons of logic
What is ecological structure?
Humans have observed statistical regularities e.g. rain often follows thunder
What is ecological rationality?
Evolved mechanisms use this ecological structure for (adaptive) problem solving
Why do we fear snakes but not cars?
Cognitive mechanisms coordinated with the recurring statistical regularities of our ancestral environments
What types of problems are our problem solving strategies adapted for?
evolutionary problems, NOT artificial/novel ones
What types of problems is the world full of?
Arbitrary, logical ones
We have content-specific, evolved ______ that use _______ _______ to solve _______ problems.
modules
ecological structure
adaptive
We’ve evolved to solve problems based on _______
frequencies
The medical diagnosis problem (Casscells et al., 1978)
Question of probability when given prevalence and false positive rate
Only 18% of experts from Harvard Medical school answered correctly
The rest ignored base rate information about false positives
The medical diagnosis problem (Cosmides and Tooby, 1996)
Same question of probability when given prevalence and false positive rate
BUT presented in a more ecologically valid way (no percentages)
76% got it right
Shows humans have better reasoning ability with frequency information rather than probability
What was the effect on results when the medical diagnosis problem was presented visually?
Using squares
Higher percentage of people answered correctly
What is the tall woman fallacy?
People trying to disprove the fact that males on average are taller than females by stating that they know a tall woman
Why do we have difficulty with the Watson selection task?
Because of confirmation bias
What is confirmation bias?
We tend to seek information to confirm our hypotheses/beliefs
