The Human Challenge in Understanding Animal Cognition
01 Jan 2020-pp 33-51
TL;DR: The need to better understand what “cognition” is and to perform valid comparisons on chimpanzees is stressed if the authors want to understand the evolution of human cognitive abilities and combine the information about brain plasticity, environmental validity, and population differences to permit cognitive studies to progress.
Abstract: Animal cognition studies have progressively moved themselves to an impasse due to an overemphasis on controlled experiments on captive animals that are completely detached from species-typical socio-ecologies. If progresses in studies on wild-living animals have provided a wealth of detailed observations on sophisticated cognitive achievements, captive experimental studies have concentrated on the “failure” of nonhuman species to demonstrate so-called uniquely human cognitive skills. In the present chapter, I stress the need to better understand what “cognition” is and to perform valid comparisons on chimpanzees if we want to understand the evolution of human cognitive abilities. Cognition is not just an innate property of a species, but an adaptation of individuals to their living conditions. As such, cognitive studies need ecological validity to explore the adaptations to the environments typical to the studied species. New understanding about brain plasticity and the effect of environmental enrichment in different species, including humans, confirm the importance of environment on the development of cognitive abilities. This invalidates the assumption of most experimental captive studies that one can generalize from such atypical conditions to the whole of the species. Furthermore, observations on wild chimpanzees stress the importance of population differences, thereby illustrating how cognition develops over the lifespan as individuals solve the daily challenges faced in their social and physical environment. Combining the information about brain plasticity, environmental validity, and population differences will permit cognitive studies to progress and finally contribute to our understanding of the evolution of human and human-like cognitive abilities.
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TL;DR: A recent systematic review as discussed by the authors describes the current landscape of data available from studies of gestural communication in human and nonhuman primates that make an explicit connection to language evolution, and identifies areas of focus, bias, and apparent gaps within the field.
Abstract: Comparative psychology provides important contributions to our understanding of the origins of human language. The presence of common features in human and nonhuman primate communication can be used to suggest the evolutionary trajectories of potential precursors to language. However, to do so effectively, our findings must be comparable across diverse species. This systematic review describes the current landscape of data available from studies of gestural communication in human and nonhuman primates that make an explicit connection to language evolution. We found a similar number of studies on human and nonhuman primates, but that very few studies included data from more than one species. As a result, evolutionary inferences remain restricted to comparison across studies. We identify areas of focus, bias, and apparent gaps within the field. Different domains have been studied in human and nonhuman primates, with relatively few nonhuman primate studies of ontogeny and relatively few human studies of gesture form. Diversity in focus, methods, and socio-ecological context fill important gaps and provide nuanced understanding, but only where the source of any difference between studies is transparent. Many studies provide some definition for their use of gesture; but definitions of gesture, and in particular, criteria for intentional use, are absent in the majority of human studies. We find systematic differences between human and nonhuman primate studies in the research scope, incorporation of other modalities, research setting, and study design. We highlight eight particular areas in a call to action through which we can strengthen our ability to investigate gestural communication's contribution within the evolutionary roots of human language.
7 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that male jackdaws (Corvus monedula) respond to their mate's stress-state, but not with consolation, and tended to decrease affiliation and partner visit rate in both experimental and natural contexts.
Abstract: Individuals are expected to manage their social relationships to maximize fitness returns. For example, reports of some mammals and birds offering unsolicited affiliation to distressed social partners (commonly termed 'consolation') are argued to illustrate convergent evolution of prosocial traits across divergent taxa. However, most studies cannot discriminate between consolation and alternative explanations such as self-soothing. Crucially, no study that controls for key confounds has examined consolation in the wild, where individuals face more complex and dangerous environments than in captivity. Controlling for common confounds, we find that male jackdaws (Corvus monedula) respond to their mate's stress-states, but not with consolation. Instead, they tended to decrease affiliation and partner visit rate in both experimental and natural contexts. This is striking because jackdaws have long-term monogamous relationships with highly interdependent fitness outcomes, which is precisely where theory predicts consolation should occur. Our findings challenge common conceptions about where consolation should evolve, and chime with concerns that current theory may be influenced by anthropomorphic expectations of how social relationships should be managed. To further our understanding of the evolution of such traits, we highlight the need for our current predictive frameworks to incorporate the behavioural trade-offs inherent to life in the wild.
3 citations
01 Jan 2020
TL;DR: This work challenges neuroethics to adopt a less anthropocentric focus and explore how growing knowledge of nonhuman minds challenges human supremacy.
Abstract: The emergence and development of neuroethics over the last two decades has occurred in parallel with progress and advancement in several separate sciences, including various neurosciences, comparative psychology, comparative cognition, and ethology. The rapid growth of knowledge about animal brains, minds, intelligence, culture, behaviors, and capacities made by these sciences continues to be integrated into the philosophical discourse on animal ethics, but has thus far had little impact on animal research regulations. Our aim is to bend what have heretofore been more or less parallel tracks into convergence and intersection, and examine the implications of neuroscientific research for our understanding of the minds of other animals, the moral status of these animals, and our moral obligations to them. We challenge neuroethics to adopt a less anthropocentric focus and explore how growing knowledge of nonhuman minds challenges human supremacy.
1 citations
References
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TL;DR: It is argued and present evidence that great apes understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality), and children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life.
Abstract: We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with oth- ers and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The develop- mental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.
3,660 citations
TL;DR: The conclusion for the moment is that chimpanzees understand others in terms of a perception-goal psychology, as opposed to a full-fledged, human-like belief-desire psychology.
2,718 citations
TL;DR: A theory is proposed that unites and organizes observations and generates many theoretical and empirical predictions that can be tested in future research by comparative biologists, archeologists, paleontologists, biological anthropologists, demographers, geneticists, and cultural anthropologists.
Abstract: Human life histories as compared to those of other primates and mammals have at least four distinctive characteristics: an exceptionally long life span an extended period of juvenile dependence support of reproduction by older post-reproductive individuals and male support of reproduction through the provisioning of females and their offspring. Another distinctive feature of our species is a large brain with its associated psychological attributes: increased capacities for learning cognition and insight. In this paper the authors propose a theory that unites and organizes these observations and generates many theoretical and empirical predictions. The authors present some tests of those predictions and outline new predictions that can be tested in future research by comparative biologists archaeologists paleontologists biological anthropologists demographers geneticists and cultural anthropologists. (authors)
1,702 citations
Emory University1, University of California, Los Angeles2, University of Siena3, California Institute of Technology4, University of Zurich5, Central European University6, University of California, Davis7, Texas A&M University8, University of Oxford9, University of New Mexico10, University of Pennsylvania11, University of California, Santa Barbara12, Harvard University13, California State University, Fullerton14, University of Colorado Denver15
TL;DR: A cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions found the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied.
Abstract: Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity re- sults from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model - based on self-interest - fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral vari- ability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life.
1,589 citations
Emory University1, University of California, Davis2, University of Oxford3, California Institute of Technology4, University of California, Los Angeles5, College of DuPage6, University of Los Andes7, University of California, Santa Barbara8, Guilford College9, Washington University in St. Louis10, Harvard University11, University of Colorado Denver12, Boise State University13
TL;DR: Experimental results from 15 diverse populations show that all populations demonstrate some willingness to administer costly punishment as unequal behavior increases, and the magnitude of this punishment varies substantially across populations, and costly punishment positively covaries with altruistic behavior across populations.
Abstract: Recent behavioral experiments aimed at understanding the evolutionary foundations of human cooperation have suggested that a willingness to engage in costly punishment, even in one-shot situations, may be part of human psychology and a key element in understanding our sociality. However, because most experiments have been confined to students in industrialized societies, generalizations of these insights to the species have necessarily been tentative. Here, experimental results from 15 diverse populations show that (i) all populations demonstrate some willingness to administer costly punishment as unequal behavior increases, (ii) the magnitude of this punishment varies substantially across populations, and (iii) costly punishment positively covaries with altruistic behavior across populations. These findings are consistent with models of the gene-culture coevolution of human altruism and further sharpen what any theory of human cooperation needs to explain.
1,334 citations