Orienting Cognitive Science to Evolution and Development

Abstract

Contemporary work in the cognitive sciences frequently suffers from a myopic view of cognition that fails to benefit from the breadth and diversity of work in human evolution and development. Often the goal is to uncover what is basic to information processing and learning across individual minds and situations, to identify micro-level processes that reflect basic cognitive functions in animal as well as human brains. The question remains whether the emergence of human cultural achievements can be adequately explained by looking at the cognitive capacities of individuals. To understand how basic cognitive processes yield complex cultural and uniquely human products requires contributions from both evolutionary anthropology and dynamic systems approaches to human development. As an example, consider the question of the relationship between brain size and cognitive capacities, such as processing speed and working memory capacity. Whereas evolutionary and cognitive psychologists tend to focus on selection for increased capacities (Vaesen, 2012), fossil evidence suggests an opposite direction of causality—linking changes in pelvic anatomy (bipedalism) to prolonged postnatal growth and development, to changes in brain volume, which potentially yielded faster, more efficient information processing (Striedter, 2006). Evolutionary anthropology also points to a discrepancy between the timing of the presumably critical tripling of brain volume, which took place about 500,000 years ago (Rightmire, 2009), and the distinctive expansion of modern human technology, which took place only in the last 100,000–150,000 years (Gamble, 2012). Understanding the emergence of complex human institutions, including tool making and language, requires an understanding of development as fundamentally contextualized (Gamble, 2012). Studies of self-organization in complex cultural systems suggest that