Chapter 8: The Evolutionary Approach

Question 1

What is evolutionary psychology?

Answer 1

Psychological approach concerned with how the human mind came into existence.

Question 2

What is evolutionary computing?

Answer 2

It is a collection of computational methods that have been modelled on the principles of biological evolution.

Question 3

What is a theory of Neural Darwinism?

Answer 3

It is a theory which applies the idea of evolutionary processes to neural learning.

Question 4

What is the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA)?

Answer 4

The period of time during which many human psychological mechanisms evolved. (approx. 2 million years ago in Pleistocene era)

Question 5

What is theory of natural selection?

Answer 5

It’s a theory proposed by Charles Darwin that describes the processes by which animal species change over time. It involves species variability, inheritance of traits through reproduction, and selection due to environmental change.

Question 6

What does “variation” mean in context of evolution?

Answer 6

It is the fact that animals differ in their physical traits.

Question 7

What is inheritance?

Answer 7

It’s a process of passing on some of parents’ gene-based characteristics to their offspring.

Question 8

Selection

Answer 8

A change in the environmental conditions that results in differential inheritance of traits.

Question 9

What is sexual selection?

Answer 9

A differential inheritance of traits based on mate selection and competition instead of a change in the environment.

Question 10

What is a general-purpose processor?

Answer 10

The view that the mind can solve any type of the problem equally well. It is based on the notion that a problem is solved by context-independent symbol representation and computation.

Question 11

Evolved Psychological Mechanism

Answer 11

A cognitive process that has evolved to solve a specific adaptive problem.

Question 12

What are the 6 properties of evolved psychological mechanisms (EPM)?

Answer 12

1. EPM exists because it contributed to the solution of a specific problem of survival or reproduction.
2. EPM are designed to take in only narrow band of information (input).
3. The input of an EPM communicates to an organism the particular adaptive problem it’s facing.
4. The input of an EPM is transformed by decision rules (“if-then” statements) into output (If I see a spider then I run).
5. The output of an EPM can be physiological activity, information that will serve as input for other psychological mechanisms, or a behavior.
6. The output of an EPM is directed toward the solution to a specific adaptive problem

Question 13

What is the Typicality effect?

Answer 13

The phenomenon that human participants are faster to judge stereotypical members as belonging to a category.

Question 14

What is the purpose of typicality-based categories?

Answer 14

It allows us to generalize our judgements from what we know to what we don’t know (e.g. eating a plant with purple spots that made you sick will probably prevent you from eating a plant with reddish-purple spots in the future).

Question 15

What is the Wason Selection Task?

Answer 15

It is a task designed to measure a person’s logical thinking ability. It involves applying abstract rules of logic to a specific example.

Question 16

What is cheater-detection?

Answer 16

The ability to detect who has undeservedly received a benefit.

Question 17

What is reciprocal altruism?

Answer 17

It is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism’s fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time.

Question 18

What is a heuristic?

Answer 18

A mental “rule of thumb” or strategy that acts as a fast and easy way of problem solving. Heuristics are right most (but not all) of the time.

Question 19

What is a Fallacy?

Answer 19

A fundamental misunderstanding of a statistical rule that can result from applying a heuristic.

Question 20

Representativeness heuristic

Answer 20

The tendency to judge an item based on its perceived similarity to a category label.

Question 21

Base-rate fallacy

Answer 21

A neglect of the probability that the item belongs to a certain group.

Question 22

Conjunction fallacy

Answer 22

A neglect of the conjunction rule which states that simultanously being a member of two categories is always less probable than the probability of being a member of one of either category alone.

Question 23

The gambler’s fallacy

Answer 23

The belief that probability outcomes are not independent, that the probability of the event can be influenced by how often it occurred in the past.

Question 24

Robin Dunbar (1996) theory of language evolution

Answer 24

Language replaced grooming as a form of social bonding as it became ineffective when the groups became larger. It may have driven the formation of larger groups in early proto-human societies.

Question 25

Sexual division of labor

Answer 25

A division of labor between the sexes that is believed to have existed in early human societies where males huntered and females gathered.

Question 26

Stages of problem solving in evolutionary computing

Answer 26

1. Generation of possible solutions.
2. An evaluation of the fitness of the solutions.
3. A selection of the solutions that have the highest fitness values.
4. The production of a new generation of “offspring” from the solutions with highest fitness values
5. Steps 2-4 are repeated until optimal solution is found.

Question 27

Artificial life (A-life)

Answer 27

The study of human made systems that behave in ways characteristic of natural living systems

Question 28

Exaptation (neutral drift)

Answer 28

Random mutations that produce new genes that have little or no consequence for reproduction. These genes can become disseminated in a population, and at some point may assume a new adaptive function that represents a response to a change in the environment.

Question 29

Molecular drive

Answer 29

Occurs when a copy of a gene mutates and can serve an adaptive function even though it was not selected for.

Question 30

Spandrel

Answer 30

An architectual feature formed by a triangular space between the exterior curve of an arch and the rectangular frame that encloses the arch. In evolution, it is used to designate a byproduct of an adaptation that may serve a useful purpose.
see diagram: https://tinyurl.com/y5oohv4f

Question 31

Reverse engineering

Answer 31

The process of starting with an end-product and analyzing it to determine its intended function.

Question 32

Ecological models of cognition

Answer 32

Models of cognitive processes that are acquired through learning.

Question 33

The mosaic model of development

Answer 33

A model in which brain mechanisms are almost entirely determined by genes, operate quickly, and the parts of the system develop independently

Question 34

The regulatory model of development

Answer 34

The model in which brain mechanisms are only partially determined by genes, operate more slowly, and their parts develop interdependently.