Emergence Of Cognitive Abilities Research Articles

Astrocyte-Neuron Interactions during Learning May Occur by Lactate Signaling Rather than Metabolism.

Biology is full of instances of exaptation, the functional shift or co-optation of a trait during evolution (Gould and Vrba, 1982). Exaptation played a critical role in human brain evolution. For example, hominin brain expansion is thought to have happened opportunistically upon food resources rich in brain-selective nutrients (Tattersall, 2010). Prehensile hands and bipedalism were other enabling factors in this process, as both features preceded the expansion of the brain, and notably, the development and utilization of tools (Wood, 2010). Similarly, central and peripheral vocal structures, initially used for a variety of non-linguistic reasons (chewing, larynx protection, size exaggeration), were pre-existing conditions to, and provided the anatomical basis for, the evolution of language (e.g., MacNeilage, 2010). The very emergence of abstract cognitive abilities in humans are hypothesized to have evolved from faculties originally developed for other purposes (Pinker, 2010).

The assessment of cognitive performance in children: considerations for detecting nutritional influences.

The accurate assessment of cognitive performance in children is critical for detecting the effects of micronutrient deficiency or supplementation on the developing brain and its functions. Relatively little attention has been paid to the selection of culturally appropriate measures that are sensitive enough to detect the subtle cognitive changes that could be expected following nutritional intervention. Normal brain development and the emergence of cognitive abilities throughout infancy and childhood is discussed in this paper, followed by a description of the more pertinent and sensitive neuropsychological tests that can be used to assess cognitive performance and investigate the effects of micronutrient deficiency and supplementation on cognitive development among children in a variety of cultures.

A developmental study of proverb comprehension.

Growth in proverb comprehension was hypothesized to result from the gradual emergence of cognitive abilities reflected in a sequence of increasingly complex abilities: story matching, transfer of relations, desymbolization, proverb matching, and paraphrase. Items for these abilities for each of 10 proverbs of two structural types were administered in three test sessions to 438 students in grades three to seven. An analogy subtest was used to measure general intelligence. ANOVA yielded significant main effects for grade, tasks, and proverbs (all p's less than .01). A significant task x proverb interaction (p less than .01) revealed the difficulty of precise control over the language of the items. Proverb structure had no measurable impact on difficulty. Analogy score was a significant factor in performance (p less than .01) but not as potent as age (p less than .01). The sequential order of abilities received only weak confirmation, though tasks did correlate among themselves with medium strength (r's = .50-.70). Individual interviews added a qualitative dimension to the findings. The suitability of cognitive hierarchical models for proverb comprehension was questioned.