Chapter 5

Cognitive Development and Innateness

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

Evolution of the Human Brain

• Domain general– Pattern recognizer– Flexible

• Domain specific– Innate modules– Task dependent

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.”

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

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

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

O Fortuna

• Misheard lyrics

Fodor (1983)

• “Modularity of mind”– Different brain systems work only with certain

kinds of data– Other data available, but not utilized– Module impenetrability

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

Geometric Module

• Ken Cheng

• Ignore salient landmarks

• Use overall spatial geometry of environment

Transformations

18

61

0

Training

18

6 1

0

180° Rotation

18

6

1

0

90° Rotation

Testing

Geometry

long

short

long

short

Short to left, Long to rightShort to left, Long to rightShort to right, Long to leftShort to right, Long to left

180° Rotation

S to l, L to rS to l, L to rS to r, L to lS to r, L to l

90° Rotation

S to r, L to lS to r, L to lS to l, L to rS to l, L to r

same

different

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

Criticisms

• No flexibility– Only capable of dealing with previously

evolved problems• Recent developments?

• Interaction?– What regulates the separate modules?

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

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

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

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

Social Cognition

• Language, culture, politics, etc.

• Cognition interacting with decision making

• Humans– Highest level of functioning

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.

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.

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

ToM Developmental Benchmarks

• <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

Machiavellian Intelligence

• Social living

• Deception and manipulation

• Understanding of your own and others’ intentions

• Excel and prosper

Comparisons for Understanding

• Normal to abnormal

• Gross morphological brain damage

• “Subtle” neurophysiological deficits

Autism

• 0.05% of children

• No obvious neurological damage

• Language, cognitive, social impairment

• ToM

False Belief Test

• 4 year old• Normal and Down’s

syndrome• Autistic• Not intelligence or

cognitive

100

50

Pas

sing

(%

)normal Down’s autistic

Subjects

• 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

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

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

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

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

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