Human Cognitive Development Research Articles

Developing Artificial Human-Like Arithmetical Intelligence (and Why)

Why would we want to develop artificial human-like arithmetical intelligence, when computers already outperform humans in arithmetical calculations? Aside from arithmetic consisting of much more than mere calculations, one suggested reason is that AI research can help us explain the development of human arithmetical cognition. Here I argue that this question needs to be studied already in the context of basic, non-symbolic, numerical cognition. Analyzing recent machine learning research on artificial neural networks, I show how AI studies could potentially shed light on the development of human numerical abilities, from the proto-arithmetical abilities of subitizing and estimating to counting procedures. Although the current results are far from conclusive and much more work is needed, I argue that AI research should be included in the interdisciplinary toolbox when we try to explain the development and character of numerical cognition and arithmetical intelligence. This makes it relevant also for the epistemology of mathematics.

Visual Episodic Memory-based Exploration

In humans, intrinsic motivation is an important mechanism for open-ended cognitive development; in robots, it has been shown to be valuable for exploration. An important aspect of human cognitive development is episodic memory which enables both the recollection of events from the past and the projection of subjective future. This paper explores the use of visual episodic memory as a source of intrinsic motivation for robotic exploration problems. Using a convolutional recurrent neural network autoencoder, the agent learns an efficient representation for spatiotemporal features such that accurate sequence prediction can only happen once spatiotemporal features have been learned. Structural similarity between ground truth and autoencoder generated images is used as an intrinsic motivation signal to guide exploration. Our proposed episodic memory model also implicitly accounts for the agent's actions, motivating the robot to seek new interactive experiences rather than just areas that are visually dissimilar. When guiding robotic exploration, our proposed method outperforms the Curiosity-driven Variational Autoencoder (CVAE) at finding dynamic anomalies.

A Debate in Need of Change

This paper discusses the realism-antirealism problem in philosophy of science and the stalemate we see with respect to solving this problem. The thesis is that both realism and antirealism rest on a priori arguments, which the other part does not accept. The suggested solution is to avoid a priori arguments and focus on epistemic naturalism, which embraces theories about human cognitive evolution and relies on empirical analyses in its account of scientific knowledge.

The NuRD Complex in Neurodevelopment and Disease: A Case of Sliding Doors.

The Nucleosome Remodelling and Deacetylase (NuRD) complex represents one of the major chromatin remodelling complexes in mammalian cells, uniquely coupling the ability to "open" the chromatin by inducing nucleosome sliding with histone deacetylase activity. At the core of the NuRD complex are a family of ATPases named CHDs that utilise the energy produced by the hydrolysis of the ATP to induce chromatin structural changes. Recent studies have highlighted the prominent role played by the NuRD in regulating gene expression during brain development and in maintaining neuronal circuitry in the adult cerebellum. Importantly, components of the NuRD complex have been found to carry mutations that profoundly affect neurological and cognitive development in humans. Here, we discuss recent literature concerning the molecular structure of NuRD complexes and how the subunit composition and numerous permutations greatly determine their functions in the nervous system. We will also discuss the role of the CHD family members in an array of neurodevelopmental disorders. Special emphasis will be given to the mechanisms that regulate the NuRD complex composition and assembly in the cortex and how subtle mutations may result in profound defects of brain development and the adult nervous system.

Social cognition and human aesthetic niche—the evolving human cognition as a participant of human niche construction

Aesthetic phenomena have been intertwined with the life of humans to a significant degree that is not observed in non-human animals. The complexity and subtlety of it have long been regarded as one symbol of human’s exceptional cognitive power. This power can sometimes be misrepresented by a view that regards human aesthetic behaviours as innate/encoded and automated settings that are brought along with the human brain. In scenarios like this, the naturally selected brain takes up a role as some super explanator—by appealing to the configurations of the neural connectivity as reasons/causations for observed phenotypic traits. Therefore, this line of thinking can sometimes obscure the role played by the sociocultural background in affecting those configurations. By drawing upon the notion of niche construction, I will propose a nature-nurture coevolving framework for understanding human cognitive evolution. It will be argued that the evolutionary trajectory of human cognition is heavily defined by and is, therefore, better understood through the lens of a human cultural niche and of contextualised/context-dependent expressions of human behavioural traits. This view will be delivered by highlighting the dynamics between selective pressures and the differential expression of human phenotypic traits and acknowledging the evolutionary causal role of human cultural behaviours and practices. Finally, I argue that a major evolution of social cognition was brought about through an aesthetic tradition of the Acheulean and conclude by briefly proposing a potential subject for future study. The basic research method applied in this article is theoretical deduction. Specifically, a restricted interdisciplinary investigation that concerns academic literature from relevant fields (centring on the topic of niche construction) of archaeology, evolutionary biology and human cognition was used. Furthermore, through a process of assessing and identifying of plausible evidence, the abovementioned arguments of this study are generated.

The University and Democracy: A Response to “Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University”

The University and Democracy: A Response to “Dewey, Implementation, and Creating a Democratic Civic University”

The spectral profile of cortical activation during a visuospatial mental rotation task and its correlation with working memory.

The search for a cortical signature of intelligent behavior has been a longtime motivation in Neuroscience. One noticeable characteristic of intelligence is its association with visuospatial skills. This has led to a steady focus on the functional and structural characteristics of the frontoparietal network (FPN) of areas involved with higher cognition and spatial behavior in humans, including the question of whether intelligence is correlated with larger or smaller activity in this important cortical circuit. This question has broad significance, including speculations about the evolution of human cognition. One way to indirectly measure cortical activity with millisecond precision is to evaluate the event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) of alpha power (alpha ERSP) during cognitive tasks. Mental rotation, or the ability to transform a mental representation of an object to accurately predict how the object would look from a different angle, is an important feature of everyday activities and has been shown in previous work by our group to be positively correlated with intelligence. In the present work, we evaluate whether alpha ERSP recorded over the parietal, frontal, temporal, and occipital regions of adolescents performing easy and difficult trials of the Shepard-Metzler's mental rotation task, correlates or are predicted by intelligence measures of the Weschler's intelligence scale. We used a database obtained from a previous study of intellectually gifted (N = 15) and average intelligence (N = 15) adolescents. Our findings suggest that in challenging task conditions, there is a notable difference in the prominence of alpha event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) activity between various cortical regions. Specifically, we found that alpha ERSP in the parietal region was less prominent relative to those in the frontal, temporal and occipital regions. Working memory scores predict alpha ERSP values in the frontal and parietal regions. In the frontal cortex, alpha ERSP of difficult trials was negatively correlated with working memory scores. Thus, our results suggest that even though the FPN is task-relevant during mental rotation tasks, only the frontal alpha ERSP is correlated with working memory score in mental rotation tasks.

Observation of Piaget's sensorimotor substages in three gorillas

Piaget's theory of human cognitive development was applied to three gorillas at the Oklahoma City Zoo by operationalizing sensorimotor intelligence. The gorillas were of different ages, ranging from one to five years old. Previous research has shown that non-human primates complete Piaget's stages in the same order as humans, albeit not until later ages. These studies were conducted to determine how the cognitive development of non-human primates compares to that of humans, which is important in exploring how humans evolved their level of cognition. Two hypotheses were tested: 1) The gorillas will achieve Piaget's six substages of sensorimotor intelligence in the same order as humans; and 2) The gorillas will exhibit a slower rate of cognitive development as defined in Piaget's theory compared to humans. Observational behavioral data were collected via 30-m focal continuous samples for a total of 17 h, and their behaviors were categorized. Chi-square analysis revealed the gorillas generally completed the substages in the order predicted by Piaget's model (one-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 20, p = 0.00125; three-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 13.706, p = 0.018; five-year-old gorilla: df = 5, x = 11.444, p = 0.043). The gorillas also exhibited slower achievement of the substages, not achieving each substage until later ages compared to humans. Thus, the null hypothesis that there was no significant difference in the number of substages achieved by each gorilla was rejected.

A biphasic relational approach to the evolution of human consciousness

Background/objectiveHuman consciousness is arguably unique, and its features are hard to explain. Continuous and discrete accounts of consciousness are commonly viewed as incompatible, but both have limitations. Continuous accounts cannot readily account for what appears to be unique about human consciousness; discrete accounts have a hard time explaining how human consciousness could have evolved. The present position paper shows how both continuous and discontinuously elements can be combined. MethodA biphasic model is constructed by unifying complex systems theory, the evolution of symbolic reasoning as a relational extension of human cooperation, and evolutionary science. The application of this approach to modern views of consciousness is then explored. ResultsOur analysis suggests that human consciousness may be viewed as a discontinuous event, that emerged from continuous foundations. This biphasic account contains processes that can be targeted clinically. For example, developmentally delayed children with problems in consciousness may be helped by targeting the processes the present account suggests are important at different levels of complexity. ConclusionsThis biphasic relational approach fits with the evolutionary record and with data on human cognitive development. It may be useful in guiding clinical intervention.

Matrescence: lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain.

Profound environmental, hormonal, and neurobiological changes mark the transition to motherhood as a major biosocial life event. Despite the ubiquity of motherhood, the enduring impact of caregiving on cognition and the brain across the lifespan is not well characterized and represents a unique window of opportunity to investigate human neural and cognitive development. By integrating insights from the human and animal maternal brain literatures with theories of cognitive ageing, we outline a framework for understanding maternal neural and cognitive changes across the lifespan. We suggest that the increased cognitive load of motherhood provides an initial challenge during the peripartum period, requiring continuous adaptation; yet when these demands are sustained across the lifespan, they result in increased late-life cognitive reserve.

Bees in folk belief and practices before and now

The article traces changes in human cognitive and social development using the example of the domesticated insect, the bee. From the 13th to the 20th century, forest bee-keeping spread, using live trees as beehives, and later also log hives on the ground. The ways of keeping bees changed fundamentally in the 19th century with the introduction of new types of hives, and they also consolidated beliefs in relation to bees. Bees had numerous special names, euphemisms were used when talking about them and in incantations, in which bees were called men/workers or other kinship terms were used, and they were also called domestic animals of the guardian fairies. The article presents beliefs about bees as soul animals and various legends that were associated with the journey of the soul, as well as the popular belief about the connection between the death of the owner and the bees. While earlier on honey denoted an abundant and ideal life in the minds of people, the bee represented a hardworking, loyal person, and bees were the epitome of the motherland in texts expressing national identity.

The co-evolution of cooperation and communication: Alternative accounts.

We challenge the proposal that partner-choice ecology explains the evolutionary emergence of ostensive communication in humans. The good fit between these domains might be because of the opposite relation (ostensive communication promotes the evolution of cooperation) or because of the dependence of both these human-specific traits on a more ancient contributor to human cognitive evolution: the use of technology.

Are there disciplinary boundaries in the comparative study of primate cognition?

A view continues to gain momentum that regards investigation of the cognition of great apes in captive settings as affording us a model for human cognitive evolution. Researchers from disciplines such as comparative psychology, anthropology, and even archaeology, seem eager to put their theories to the test by using great apes as their chosen experimental model. Questions addressed currently by comparative psychologists have long been the object of attention by neurophysiologists, psychobiologists and neuroscientists, who, however, often use rodents and monkeys as the species of choice. Whereas comparative psychology has been influenced greatly by ethology, much neuroscience has developed against a background of physiology and medicine. This separation of the intellectual contexts wherein they have arisen and flourished has impeded the development of fluid interaction between comparative psychologists and researchers in the other disciplines. We feel that it would be beneficial for comparative psychologists and neuroscientists to combine research endeavours far more often, in order to address common questions of interest related to cognition. We regard interdisciplinary cross-pollination to be particularly desirable, even if many comparative psychologists lack deep expertise about the workings of the brain, and even if many neuroscientists lack expert knowledge about the behaviour of different species. Furthermore, we believe that anthropology, archaeology, human evolutionary studies, and related disciplines, may well provide us with significant contextual knowledge about the physical and temporal background to the evolution in humans of specific cognitive skills. To that end, we urge researchers to dismantle methodological, conceptual and historical disciplinary boundaries, in order to strengthen cross-disciplinary cooperation in order to broaden and deepen our insights into the cognition of nonhuman and human primates.

‘Shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods’: Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy and the meaning of life

This paper argues that comedy is the essence of the human condition. In setting out my case I draw on the work of French process philosopher, Henri Bergson. Here I present an exploration of Bergson’s work showing how his theory of comedy, set out in Laughter (1900), influenced his later writings, notably Creative Evolution (1907). In Laughter, Bergson explores the social purpose of laughter and argues that it is ‘rigidity’ that in all cases brings about our downfall and gives rise to laughter as a social corrective. This is expressed in his famous apothegm ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’. Here I show how these ideas are relevant to a central theme of Creative Evolution, the development of human intelligence. Though intelligence, through invention, fits us to our environment it results in what Bergson calls a ‘mechanistic habit of mind’ which produces irony as the fundamental human condition.

An ever-evolving mind.

Experimental evolution of human cognition helps us understand ourselves.

Technics and signs: anthropogenesis in Vygotsky, Leroi-Gourhan, and Stiegler.

This paper reconstructs L.S. Vygotsky's account of anthropogenesis with respect to the work of anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan and late philosopher Bernard Stiegler, situating Vygotsky as a forerunner to recent theories that posit cultural scaffolding and niche construction as the main drivers of human cognitive evolution. One might think there is an immediate affinity between Vygotsky and the techno-centric accounts of Leroi-Gourhan and Stiegler. Following Leroi-Gourhan, Stiegler argues that "technics" is the main driver in the anthropogenic development of "reflective consciousness." Vygotsky likewise claims that "psychological tools" are responsible for the development of uniquely human forms of consciousness. However, closer inspection reveals deep disparities between Vygotsky and the French thinkers. In Stiegler's philosophical redeployment of Leroi-Gourhan's anthropology, "reflective" cognition is the product of a prehistorical rupture in which some threshold of technical-cortical complexification is breached. For Vygotsky, on the other hand, the inverse scenario obtains. Technical development initially proceeds in tandem with the complexification of biologically based signaling behavior until the introduction of signs, which then radically restructure the cognitive apparatus. Due to inconsistencies regarding the equivalency of the technical and semiotic in Stiegler and Leroi-Gourhan, I advance a Vygotskian account where anthropogenesis is the result of semiotic rather than technical intervention. This aims to establish Vygotsky's "Cultural Historical" approach, and the Marxian-dialectical tradition from which he draws, as not only presaging recent naturalistic accounts of development, but offering a relevant theoretical program that may continue to inspire contemporary enculturated accounts of anthropogenesis.

Association Between Secure Attachment Style and Subjective Well-being: Examining the sequential mediation effects

Attachments are an integral element of the human experience from birth to death. Early experiences with caregiver and adult attachments are crucial for human emotional and cognitive development and it is a strong basis for mental health and psychological adjustment. Despite this, little research on the relationship of these attachments has been undertaken on subjective well-being. This study intended to investigate the relation of secure attachment style with subjective well-being through serial mediation effect of self-esteem and emotional intelligence. Process macro version 3.4 in SPSS 23 and AMOS 21.0 were used to evaluate survey data of 266 respondents. The findings of the study revealed that secure attachment style play a significant role in enhancing the subjective well-being of people and a positive significant relation was found between them. Also, this relationship was mediated by both self-esteem and emotional intelligence which supports the serial mediation model. Hence, the results exhibit that secure attachment style predicts self-esteem and emotional intelligence, which in turn influences the subjective well-being of persons. Furthermore, both direct and indirect effects were statistically significant. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed based on the findings of the study.

Rituals of Coexistence: Bodies and Technology during Pandemics

Pandemics not only challenge health systems and the economy, they also deeply transform our everyday lives and the ways in which we coexist. People have to find new definitions of what it means to be close to one another, to show empathy and to comfort each other. With social distancing, we must learn how to use digital technologies to create novel forms of closeness. Viruses becomes the new other, alien forces that invisibly permeate social life. They find hosts predominantly in the places where humans get close to each other. Rituals such as eating, drinking, and dancing are the links that hold an otherwise largely disembodied culture together. I will combine a perspective on human cognitive evolution as an embodied process, the hedonist drive towards bodily encounter in Sigmund Freud’s sense and the development of technology and the current tendency toward a culture of disembodiment. The article asks what the role of bodily ritual is in public space. Here I will argue that this is a vital role because it is the only way to create feelings of resonance and connectedness amongst larger groups of people. The pandemic prohibits these rituals, so we need to ask further: Does the pandemic lead to new forms of being together? This is closely linked to the accelerated development of technology. The more precise question is: Does technology afford new forms of embodiment? My aim is to introduce ideas of philosophical posthumanism to think in a productive way about incorporating technology in order to satisfy human needs for contact and resonance.

Factors Related to the Nutritional Status of Children Under Five in the Working Area of the Billa Cenge Public Health Center Southwest Sumba Regency

Nutritional status is the state of the body as a result of food consumption and use of nutrients. Nutrition is also one of the capitals in determining the quality of resources that can increase physical growth and the development of human intelligence. Based on the health profile of Southwest Sumba Regency in 2019, namely in June, children under five who experienced malnutrition had reached 100 cases, while cases of malnutrition were 348 cases. The Billa Cenge Health Center is one of the health centers located in North Kodi District, Southwest Sumba Regency. The Billa Cenge Health Center is one of the health centers that have nutritional status problems with a total of 50 cases. The purpose of this study was to analyze the factors related to the nutritional status of children under five in the work area of the Billa Cenge Health Center, Southwest Sumba Regency. The type of research used is a survey research with a cross sectional design. The location and time of this research is in the Work Area of the Billa Cenge Health Center, Southwest Sumba Regency, in October 2021. The sample used in this study was 97 toddlers. The data obtained were analyzed using chi-square with a significance level of =0.05. The results showed that there were six variables that had a relationship and one variable that did not have a relationship with the status of children under five, namely the level of knowledge of maternal nutrition (p-value= 0.001), mother's education (p-value= 0.000), maternal nutritional behavior (p-value= 0.001), family income (p-value= 0,004) and number of family members (p-value=0,006). Therefore, the communities, especially mothers who have children under five, are expected to seek information about the handling of nutritional status problems in children under five and participate in socialization activities on how to process good food ingredients for toddlers.

Molecular archaeology of human cognitive traits.

The brains and minds of our human ancestors remain inaccessible for experimental exploration. Therefore, we reconstructed human cognitive evolution by projecting nonsynonymous/synonymous rate ratios (ω values) in mammalian phylogeny onto the anatomically modern human (AMH) brain. This atlas retraces human neurogenetic selection and allows imputation of ancestral evolution in task-related functional networks (FNs). Adaptive evolution (high ω values) is associated with excitatory neurons and synaptic function. It shifted from FNs for motor control in anthropoid ancestry (60-41 mya) to attention in ancient hominoids (26-19 mya) and hominids (19-7.4 mya). Selection in FNs for language emerged with an early hominin ancestor (7.4-1.7 mya) and was later accompanied by adaptive evolution in FNs for strategic thinking during recent (0.8 mya-present) speciation of AMHs. This pattern mirrors increasingly complex cognitive demands and suggests that co-selection for language alongside strategic thinking may have separated AMHs from their archaic Denisovan and Neanderthal relatives.