Lecture 1 Flashcards
1
Q
What is intelligence?
A
- Ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills
- Applied flexibly and fast imaginatively
- not just performance of IQ tests
- focusing and learning on socio-ecologically important knowledge
- use it to solve problems to do with survival and reproduction
2
Q
What is phenotype plasticity?
A
Ability of an organism to change its behaviour
Outward expression of the underlying genes or genotype
3
Q
what have the studies on children who are street vendors show?
A
solve fairly complicated mathematical problems (often in dangerous environments) without any formal schooling
4
Q
Corvid family?
A
- share many characteristics of human intelligence
5
Q
what behaviours are intelligence in this environment?
A
executive functioning - cognitive abilities that help to plan and execute complex behaviours (hallmark of intelligence)
inhibition and shifting
6
Q
what is intelligence in dangerous and poor urban cities?
A
- being street wise - common sense, ability to assess environment to behaviour –> social intelligence
- executive functioning - set of processes that all have to do with managing yourself and resources in order to achieve a goal
- more productive to work in opportunist way in environment - people may not live long anyway
7
Q
human example: cognition in different environments
A
- developmental psychologists have noted poverty is detrimental for intelligence - having relationships with low IQs and poorer performance in executive functioning
- research show childhood environment has powerful influence on type of tasks people are good at
- those with stressful childhood - worse at inhibiting responses
- beneficial if live in harsh environment where you have to grasp moment in order to gain benefits
8
Q
What did Mittal, 2015 find?
A
- childhood poverty had an association with ability to shift attention between tasks
- findings indicate that poverty may enhance some cognitive functions when facing uncertain environments
- crucial to look at intelligence within ecological context - see what behaviours are adaptive
9
Q
Colobus monkeys vs. apes
A
- monkeys without developed cognitive skills give out an alarm call when cultures come close - make more noticeable to poachers – become extinct can’t adapt to changing hunting methods
- gorillas - when vultures come - keep quiet - stops poachers finding them –> adapted quickly in past 20 years - rely less on genes and more on social learning
10
Q
four areas of biology
A
Proximate
- explains how organisms work by describing structures and mechanisms and their ontogeny
Evolutionary
- explains why organisms are way they are - describe how selection shaped current forms and phylogeny
- Developmental/historical
explanation of current form
- Single form
11
Q
What is ontogeny?
A
- description of organisms development from DNA code to the forms of different life stages
developmental explanations for changes in individuals life span
12
Q
what is phylogeny ?
A
- description of history of species as reconstructed from fossil precursors and DNA evidence
phylogenetic explanations for sequential changes in species across time
13
Q
what is mechanism?
A
- description of an organism structure and how mechanisms work
mechanistic explanations for what organisms structures are like and how they work
14
Q
what is adaptation ?
A
- explanation of characteristic of species based on their selective advantage
evolutionary explanations for why an organism is way it is
15
Q
What is proximate and developmental/historical
A
Ontogeny
16
Q
what is proximate and single form?
A
- mechanism
17
Q
what is evolutionary and developmental ?
A
- phylogeny
18
Q
what is evolutionary and single form?
A
adaptation
19
Q
Evolution briefly
A
- works on selecting features of organisms that help them survive and reproduce (many of features i.e. phenotypes from individuals are products from natural/sexual selection)
- useful for ancestors and they were more successful in passing on their genes - good evolutionary fitness
- features became more prominent in population
- some phenotypes better at surviving than others - variations as generations go
20
Q
Types of selection
A
Natural - refers to features that directly help individual to survive e.g. beak size - feeding adaption
Sexual - features that help individual reproduce e.g. risk taking in males
evolution doesn’t care about life span - as long as they reproduce
21
Q
what is micro evolution
A
- change in allele frequencies that occurs over time within population
- change due to mutation, selection, gene flow, gene migration and genetic drift
22
Q
what is Macro evolution
A
- major evolutionary change e.g. completely new species within new species
23
Q
phylogeny: brain evolution
A
- brain size and structure closely linked
- brain size, structure and neuronal connections of individual reflect type of problems solved by individual ancestors
- researchers suggest social living was one of driving forces behind evolution –> more complex brains
- led to ‘social brain’ or machiavellian intelligence’ hypothesis
- hard to establish relationship between brain and evolution
one measure used ‘encephalisation’ - brain size after the body size has been taken into account - other indicators number of neurones in different parts of the brain or how fast neurons are connected to each other
24
Q
Neocortex
A
- new layer of the brain in mammals
- involved in higher functions as perception, motor commands, spatial reasoning, thinking and language
- most of cerebral cortex consists of neocortex
- maintaining is costly in terms of metabolism - evolutionary pressures driving emergence of new structure
25
Hominid brain phylogeny
- human brain has almost trebled in size
- have largest brain size in comparison to body weight
- costs to having large brain - painful and dangerous childbirth associated with large brains and bipedal locomotion - need highly nutritious diet to feed brain, long period of infant dependency
- evolutionary benefits of evolving large brain must have been big enough to outweigh associated costs
- neocortex is newest evolutionary part of brain associated with many intelligent behaviours
- early hominids - same size brain as apes --> implies bipedal locomotion evolved before brain started expanding
- brain size increases as environment changes e.g. huge brain size change when fire introduced
- brains must be product of evolution
26
example of convergent evolution - are corvids as intelligent as apes
- birds dont have neocortex but have nidopallium 'avian prefrontal cortex'
- corvids have large brains for body size - comparable to size of chimp brains - densely packed neurons
- similar intelligence evolved in very different species
- tell us more about what kinds of pressures may lead to evolution of flexible intelligence
- divergent brain evolution - different brains produce similar intelligence
- interesting to look at distantly related species and their cognitive capabilities --if similar means social or environmental pressure have led to similar kinds of features
27
example of convergent evolution - are corvids as intelligent as apes - continued
- corvids and humans distantly related sharing last common ancestor - 350 million years ago
- brains have different brain structures to that of humans e.g. dont have neocortex - thought to be requirements for intelligence
- independently evolved similar structure 'nidopallium' - thinking part of the brain
- evidence of convergent cognitive evolution and divergent brain evolution between apes and corvids
28
adaptionist theories of intelligence and brain evolution
- evolutionary theories are trying to explain what reproductive and survival problems the expanding brain of ancestors helped to resolve
- species do not evolve a large brain just because they can - costs associated with the brain
- brain and intelligence must been something that increased fitness of ancestors
- ultimate driver for evolution of ecological in nature
- social species live in groups because of ecological pressures
29
adaptionist theories of intelligence and brain evolution - continued
- social grouping may have evolved because groups are better in defence - ecological pressure for group formation
- foraging and social theories differ - although ecological factors as ultimate driver the foraging theories suggest intelligence was needed to solve problems in physical environment
social theories that intelligence was needed in order to solve problems in social environment
30
evolution of social brain: Dunbar's number
- major current ideas behind human intelligence and brain evolution is that brain evolved larger in order to solve problems in social environment
- social species face the dilemmas of competition and collaboration with group members for different resources (mates, allies, food, shelter)
- a lot of human cognition is about how to resolve complex social issues
31
The social Cortex
- comparative brain studies = comparing a feature across number of different species
- investigating relationship between group size, brain size, and frequency of different social behaviours
- studies have shown that within primates when social size increases so does relative size of neocortex
- group size can be predicted from relative brain size
- empirical evidence suggests its true - average group size 150
- small bands of hunter-gathers operates in network of 150 people - companies often have same max number of personnel
- 150 - DUNBARS NUMBER
32
research for Dunbar's number: twitter relationships
- researched analysed the social networks in twitter conversation of 1.7 million people found stable relationships could be maintained with max of 200 people
- suggests even in social media - number of conversation partners constrained by brain capacity
33
Is dunbars number up?
- Barry Wellman - criticised idea
- social network evidence for much larger numbers in the US
- 250-1500 individuals
- possible our brains do not constraint ability to maintain social relationships as previously thought
34
evidence for social brain hypothesis in other species
- group size and brain size correlate with socially intelligent behaviours in a number of primate species (depection, cooperation, social learning, social play)
- brain size also correlates with tool use and other ecological variables
- Reader and Laland (2002) - too much emphasis on looking at social or ecological pressures -- could be important
35
Heider-simmel (1944) animation
- humans are unique species
- intensely social and attribute emotions and intention to everything around us
- animation been studied widely to attributing intention and emotions to inanimate objects
- research found individuals who have problems in social cognition e.g. those with autism do not see triangles and squares behaving like creatures
36
Hyper-active agency detective (Justin Barrett)
- demands posed by social life been crucial during human evolution - named Hyper-active agency detection device (HADD)
- we have tendency to think that everything around us has agency
- related to theory of mind
- HADD could be reason we believe in god - religiosity could be by-product of sociability and HADD
37
Proximate: how does the social brain work (THEORY OF MIND)
- hallmarks of social intelligence called theory of mind - ability to understand others have emotions, intention and thoughts not the same as our own
- also called 'mind reading' - fully developed by age of 4
- individuals on autism spectre may have impaired or non existent ToM
- animals may have some components of it
- demands imposed by living in groups is responsible for evolution of ToM
- some other species e.g apes, dolphins, elephants --> show indication of incipient capacity to understand mental states of others
- could be example of convergent evolution --> important in finding kind of selective pressures lead to evolution of social brain
- humans dont respond to behaviour of other- try to infer on other peoples problems - ToM
dont have direct access to other peoples thoughts and intention -- can construct theory of what feelings, knowledge and intentions other have
38
is ToM an adaptation?
seems to be because:
- modular - impaired autism - developmental disorder that spares other parts of cognition
- other disorders characterised by functioning ToM - impairment of other cognitive capacities
- universal - follows a developmental sequence
- innate and automatic
- stereotypical developmental pattern
- brain areas - certain states
39
building blocks for ToM
- self recognition
- imitation
- pretence play
- joint attention
- present in species other than humans as well
