Chapter 5

1. Chapter 5 Cognitive Development and Innateness

2. Nature/Nurture Debate • British Empiricists vs. Nativists • Ethologists and Behaviorists • Developmental progression • Stage theories • Sudden or gradual transfer? • Epigenetic landscape • Extreme environmental disruption needed to drastically alter general behavioural development

3. Evolution of the Human Brain • Domain general • Pattern recognizer • Flexible • Domain specific • Innate modules • Task dependent

4. Pattern Recognizer • Reverse Speech • David John Oates • What you really mean is spoken backwards • "More energy and money and effort.” • "You're frightened, lean on me.”

5. Remez, Rubin, Pisoni & Carrell (1981) • Speech perception without traditional speech cues • Three tone sinusoid replica • Nothing but sine waves • Priming • Here’s the sine waves again

6. Pareidolia • Phenomenon of perceiving familiar patterns in random or non-relevant structures • Our neurobiology lets us recognize people, process language, identify predators, etc. • Very strong evolutionary selective forces for these abilities • Pareidolia is a byproduct, or spandrel, of selection for our other, useful, neurological pattern recognizing capacity

7. Some Other Examples • The Doors, Break on Through • "Treasures there”, becomes "I am Satan” • But, if you don’t cut the backwards tape off at the right place you really get, "I am Satanschmegel” • Electronic voice phenomena • Alleged ghost voices

8. O Fortuna • Misheard lyrics

9. Fodor (1983) • “Modularity of mind” • Different brain systems work only with certain kinds of data • Other data available, but not utilized • Module impenetrability

10. Fodor’s Modularized Brain • A collection of independent perceptual modules • Each has a specific task • Work independently • Process sensory information rapidly • Central cognitive processes • Non-modularized • Slow

11. Geometric Module • Ken Cheng • Ignore salient landmarks • Use overall spatial geometry of environment

12. Testing 180° Rotation 90° Rotation 6 1 6 0 0 18 18 1 Transformations Training 18 0 1 6

13. long short short Short to left, Long to right Short to left, Long to right Short to right, Long to left Short to right, Long to left S to l, L to r S to l, L to r S to r, L to l S to r, L to l S to r, L to l S to r, L to l S to l, L to r S to l, L to r long 180° Rotation 90° Rotation same different Geometry

14. Massive Modularity • Cosmides & Tooby (1992) • “Swiss army knife” model • An extreme view • Heavy-duty Nativist perspective; innate • Modules for everything, including cognitive processing • Not limited to perceptual modules

15. Criticisms • No flexibility • Only capable of dealing with previously evolved problems • Recent developments? • Interaction? • What regulates the separate modules?

16. Actual and Proper Domains • Actual domain of a module • Anything that satisfies its basic requirements • Proper domain of a module • The stimulus/stimuli that, by activating the module, gives adaptive value

17. Bug Detector • Frogs have cells in visual system that fire when small objects move in particular ways • Causes frog to fire its tongue out • Cells also fire when small stones tossed in front of a frog • Flies are proper domain, stones are actual domain • Toss bits of chopped up meat passed pet frog • Bits of meat are not just actual domain, but also part of proper domain

18. Development • Does modularity preclude developmental change? • Karmiloff-Smith • Predispositions (domain-relevant biases) • Domains: biology, physics, psychology • Focus attention; not modules • With experience, adults develop “modular-like” structures • Representational redescription • Beyond information encapsulation; cross domain • From implicit to abstract representations

19. Face Recognition • A module? • Infants • Respond to faces early • Graded neurological/brain region response • Categorization • Gauthier et al. (1999) • Birds and cars • Same region as face recognition

20. Social Cognition • Language, culture, politics, etc. • Cognition interacting with decision making • Humans • Highest level of functioning

21. Theory of Mind • Descarte • “I think, therefore I am.” • ToM • “I think that you think, and that your thoughts drive your behaviour.” • The content of another’s mental state may differ from our own, and/or from the reality of the situation.

22. Intentionality • States of mind about beliefs and desires • Reflexive hierarchy • First order: belief-desire • I believe. • Second order: ToM • I believe that you suppose. • Third order • I believe that you suppose that I want this.

23. How Far can this Go? • Kinderman et al. (1998) • Higher order intentionality • Vignettes • Questions about: • Mental states of people in vignette • Facts from vignette • Fine up to four orders of intentionality • “I believe that you think that I intend to deceive you.” • Stressing cognitive abilities • Neocortex size • Women perform better than men

24. <18 months Joint attention Intentionality and eye-direction detectors Self and social referencing 18-24 months Pretend play Primary representations Desire psychology Understanding of internal drives 36 months Secondary representation Beliefs about beliefs Deceit 48-56 months False belief task Smarties or Sally-Anne methodology Meta-representational thought ToM Developmental Benchmarks

25. Machiavellian Intelligence • Social living • Deception and manipulation • Understanding of your own and others’ intentions • Excel and prosper

26. Comparisons for Understanding • Normal to abnormal • Gross morphological brain damage • “Subtle” neurophysiological deficits

27. Autism • 0.05% of children • No obvious neurological damage • Language, cognitive, social impairment • ToM

28. False Belief Test • 4 year old • Normal and Down’s syndrome • Autistic • Not intelligence or cognitive 100 Passing (%) 50 normal Down’s autistic Subjects

29. Autistics also fair poorly on true belief task • High-functioning autistics • General rules of thumb • Lack of deep social understanding • Impairment specific to belief states • Do well on false photo (memory) tasks • No joint attention, poor lies, no/limited pretend play, don’t understand desire

30. ToM Module Debate • ToM module deficit • Primary problems • Affective disorders • Secondary problems • Indifference to people, literalists • Dual deficit • ToM • Weak central coherence • Problem organize parts into groups • Illusions, face-recognition, embedded figure • Advantageous in some situations

31. Genetic Component • Fathers of autistics • Better at piecemeal local processing tasks • Physics, engineering, and autism • 4:1 male:female cases of autism • Extreme form of “male brain” • Continuum • Folk physics vs. folk psychology

32. Williams Syndrome • Chromosome 7 gene deficits • Low IQ • Very good language skills and musical ability • Williams and language (4:46-6:29) • Very sociable • Intense interest in people, excellent face-processing skills • Poor social judgment; trouble with friendships • Same impairment on false belief as autistics

33. ToM • Two separate components • Social-cognitive component • Represents mental states of others • Social-perceptual component • Represents the emotional states of others • Tager-Flusberg & Sullivan (2000) • Autistics have impairment in both components • Williams syndrome have less impairment on social-perceptual component

34. Conclusions • Fodarian perceptual modules generally accepted • Most evolutionary psychologists strongly favour existence of at least some higher cognitive modules • Debate as to the impenetrability of cognitive modules • Strong evidence for general-domain system, too