7b. MacLean, E.L., Matthews, L.J., Hare, B.A., Nunn, C.L., Anderson, R.C., Aureli, F., Brannon, E.M., Call, J., Drea, C.M., Emery, N.J. and Haun, D.B. (2012) How does cognition evolve?Phylogenetic comparative psychology. Animal Cognition, 15(2): 223-238.
Now more than ever animal studies have the potential to test hypotheses regarding how cognition evolves. Comparative psychologists have developed new techniques to probe the cognitive mechanisms underlying animal behavior, and they have become increasingly skillful at adapting methodologies to test multiple species. Meanwhile, evolutionary biologists have generated quantitative approaches to investigate the phylogenetic distribution and function of phenotypic traits, including cognition. In particular, phylogenetic methods can quantitatively (1) test whether specific cognitive abilities are correlated with life history (e.g., lifespan), morphology (e.g., brain size), or socio-ecological variables (e.g., social system), (2) measure how strongly phylogenetic relatedness predicts the distribution of cognitive skills across species, and (3) estimate the ancestral state of a given cognitive trait using measures of cognitive performance from extant species. Phylogenetic methods can also be used to guide the selection of species comparisons that offer the strongest tests of a priori predictions of cognitive evolutionary hypotheses (i.e., phylogenetic targeting). Here, we explain how an integration of comparative psychology and evolutionary biology will answer a host of questions regarding the phylogenetic distribution and history of cognitive traits, as well as the evolutionary processes that drove their evolution.
If the evolution of cognition follows and feeds the evolution of social life, if cognitive evolution is just a result of "one animal getting a new ability making them personally better" (for example the peacock's nice tail) followed by "other animals trying to pretend to have that ability to not be left out as the weaker individual (cheaters)" (peacocks with a nice tail but that are not fit) and the rest of the species "evolving cheater detectors" (the non-fit nice tailed peacock that might die from predators it cant escape). Then why is it that not all species have evolved to being extremely cognitively performant? In other words, if cognition is a reproductive advantage for individuals and species, but also create social situations that require more cognitive capacities (feed forward loop), then why have some species not yet evolved to become as cognitively capable as humans? Is it that not enough time has passed? Or maybe it is just that evolutionary advantage is not enough to explain the "why" of cognition.
ReplyDeleteThere are many different successful evolutionary strategies, only one of which is sophisticated human-level cognition. But not every species needs to be highly intelligent to survive and reproduce. One species being successful at one thing creates a niche for another species to be successful at something different.
DeleteTo relate to civilization: We need plumbers, so plumbers get paid well. Therefore, plumbing is an evolutionarily successful strategy. But if everyone was a plumber then there would be no one growing crops. Since we need food, farmers also get paid well. Therefore, farming too is an evolutionarily successful strategy.
Some animals get by by being really smart. Some do so by being big and strong, others by being small and agile. Some have sharp fangs for hunting and others eat leaves. There is such an abundance of resources that it doesn't make sense for every species to compete for the same resource using the same strategy, so they differentiate.
To add to that point, some species have "intellegences" that far surpass our own when it comes to various tasks and measures. For example: ants. We don't think of ants as being very powerful, since they're so small and feeble when compared to our large size. However, the group intelligence of ants can be amazing. For example, some species of ants living in trees have battles between colonies by selectively pruning their trees to reach the neighboring trees and carrying out attacks on the other colonies. They also are amazing efficient and successful with their colony job/role structure. Another example would be the birds and butterflies that can navigate across continents without maps. Sure, humans have developed ways (like GPSs) to be able to make those journeys, but if you dropped a human or a bird in the middle of nowhere with nothing, I'm betting on the bird.
DeleteHumans have succeeded in becoming the animal that has the most direct control over the earth, with our superior cognitive skills, but that is not to say that other animals haven't evolved forms of intelligence that outstrip ours in certain ways.
Julie, evolution is driven by genetic variation and local conditions. There is no "evolution toward" anything. There is variation (random or recombinatory) in genes (DNA) and if the trait that a gene codes for helps the organism survive and reproduce better, then it gets passed on, and there is more of it in the next generation. The outcome is not the same for all species because (1) the starting genome is different, (2) the ecological niche is different and (3) the variation is diferent. (Both homologous and analogous evolution as well as convergent and divergent evolution show how evolution can take different paths.)
Delete@Michael, your interpretation was quite helpful in putting things into context, but wouldn't you agree that since Industrial Revolution, many of the specializations have become obsolete? It's daunting how only 1% of the US population are farmers and they "generate food, fuel, and fiber for Americans and people around the world" (2012 Census, US Department of Agriculture). The death of specialization is not only prevalent in agriculture, but also in numerous aspects of human society (i.e., jack of all trades, master of none doesn't apply well. You need to be a jack of all trades at higher proficiency).
Delete"Some animals get by by being really smart. Some do so by being big and strong, others by being small and agile."
Since the beginning of Information Revolution, the variety of that specialization has shifted drastically. There definitely is a difference between a computer programmer and a plumber, but isn't the whole purpose of offloading knowledge to the Web another form of normalization? You don't need plumbers for minor fixes that used to require plumbers. You can just Google it and watch YouTube tutorials.
If you offload knowledge or specialization, you can save resources, whether it be time, genes, or whatever it may be. In a similar way, I am curious if we continue to off-load all the components of cognition, then will we be able to offload cognition into the Web such that it has cognition. And after "sufficient" evolution, will humans be no different than animals as a consequence of offloading our ability for symbol grounding and other mysteries of what constitutes the being of human?
@Francisco. What you’re saying about offloading knowledge and how that would affect our evolution is fascinating. Our genes only code the ability or potential to learn new things rather than the information itself (eg. language). So, it’s not as if our knowledge of things itself is evolving, but rather the methods we use to learn this knowledge is what is being evolved and passed on. The internet then becomes an extremely effective method with which we can gather more information, learn etc. An external hard-drive of sorts for our memory. Yet, since our genes don’t code more than necessary, and we have a method (i.e. the internet) that allows us to access information without needing to remember it, the internet is perhaps reducing our memories need to encode information. Furthermore, it’s probably reducing the necessity of our brain to figure out ways to retrieve information faster and more efficiently, since we now have external devices to do the job for us.
DeleteHowever, I don’t think we would “be no different from other animals” since we would still have the method of language with which we can access the offloaded information. I feel as if you’re imagining this transition as a step ‘backwards’ because it may mean not advancing our brains ability to encode information, when really it would be adaptation or variation that allows us to access and solve problems more easily.
@Francisco and Nimra - I agree that the idea of offloading necessary capacities onto technology is an interesting concept, especially in terms of memory. I think memory capacity could have the potential to decrease overtime due to this "external hardrive," as it will no longer be evolutionarily adaptable to have a good memory (remembering what things are dangerous to eat, remembering characteristics of potential mating partners), because this information will all be easily stored online. So, either memory capacity will decrease to a more randomly generated level, or that memory capacity could then instead be used for other things, and open up more possibilities for human cognition. Either way, I do not see it as a step backwards (agreeing with Nimra), because if memory capacity is no longer a deciding factor of evolutionary benefit, it allows room for another factor to become important and would give that room to change to be more beneficial to human cognition.
DeleteHow does the problem of other minds come into play when comparing cognition between species?
ReplyDeleteIn the summary it says, “we stand to gain an understanding of how cognition evolves in nonhumans, as well as a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that gave rise to the human mind.”
While between humans we have the problem of other minds (which we dismissed for our purposes in this course), how can we do the same when we are working with different cognitive and anatomical architecture to begin with when comparing between species, unlike when we compare between humans who assumingly have the same cognitive and anatomical architecture?
Is our dismissal of this confound still valid despite these structural and cognitive differences?
Hey Aliza,
DeleteThe problem of other minds is especially prevalent with other animals, because while one can read, study, and learn about another human in order to get a perspective of how they think, no matter how much we learn about another species, one can never know what it is like to be think as that species.
With this in mind, the best way we can answer questions regarding how other species think is via behavioral data (which is all we can ever have in the domain of cognition, regardless of species, ex: Turing Tests). Evolutionary and comparative psychologists are able to make claims about how a dog cognizes because of the behavioral tests that they can perform with dogs. This approach takes behavioral results of animals along the phylogenetic tree and tries to extrapolate their cognitive abilities by tracing when cognitive abilities are developed.
This approach is far from perfect, and any attempt to understand another being’s cognition will never be perfect due to the problem of other minds, but it is the best method these psychologists have currently and it is bound to have some explanatory power that is worth using.
Hey Aliza and Karl.
DeleteI had the same thought about the other minds problem with this thorough reading (Aliza we are on the same page this week!)
I don’t mean to make this discussion about using animals in scientific studies, but I think it is an important point to make. As far as animal studies go in psychological science, I think the value is unjustified because the concepts measured are subjective (e.g. depression in rats; loneliness etc.) We subjectively interpret animal behaviours as proxies that suit research. Drawing parallels in my opinion is unsound. I’m sure Prof Hanard will agree (V moment). Though I think the described phylogenetic methods are brilliant and can in fact substantiate the accomplishments of comparative psychologists, it is a slippery slope to extrapolating too much from these findings. The evolution of cognition should be studied as in depth as possible across species, however I feel there is always a danger when methods that use animals get increasingly complex. I am not necessarily talking about this reading as the paradigms explored are unambiguous (i.e. self-recognition). I worry that supporters of animal testing will argue that the complexity of a methodology make animal research more legitimate (more empirically valid).
I think investigating the phylogeny and the functions of cognitive abilities and skills is valid and important as it provides information on when and how these traits evolved, as the authors mentioned. Knowing this type of information will definitely advance our ability to understand cognition. However, with that being said, while I believe the idea is good, there are definitely changes and improvements to the method that could be made to strengthen the findings. This was already noted in the paper. They identified that a larger sample as well as using many different species would help.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I'm wondering is whether they will only ever be able to attribute evolved adaptive factors to something measurable. By that, I am referring to in the paper how they mentioned that species with larger brains had better inhibitory control on cognitive tests. If it wasn't for this clear difference in brain size, the explanation for the improved inhibitory control may have been unknown. This is where this approach may become a bit problematic in trying to explain the evolution of cognition.
You make an interesting point, but isn’t everything measurable, at least to an extent? Science revolves around the idea of empirical, quantitative, non-subjective data, so to try and separate quantitativeness from investigations like these seems a bit like wanting a PB&J without PB or J. Qualitative entities like categories can, and should, be measured, and even affordances vary to a certain degree. A thing may be red, or it may be blue, but we will always be able to say if something is more red than blue, or more blue than red, because we can innately measure that gradient between the two.
DeleteThis paper discusses the polygeny and function of the brain from the point of view of comparative psychology and evolutionary psychology. However, I’m just wondering if the brain itself (not like body parts, such as hands or feet, which have direct contact with the physical environment) develops its own “affordance” for a specific level of cognition or intelligence through evolution? And is that what explains for why some animals know to use tool to learn while others don’t because their brain could only “afford” them with a limited level of cognition and intelligence?
ReplyDeleteRe: "A second methodological concern in comparative studies is how to adapt each cognitive task for use with diverse species."
ReplyDeleteThis certainly depends on the nature of the cognitive task and more specifically the level of difficulty of the task. It is impossible to standardize most tasks across a wide variety of species. Even small differences in the method would make these results no longer comparable across species. The author states that “the results could still be analyzed comprehensively using phylogenetic techniques,” but this seems to be based on assumptions. The author also suggests replicating these tasks across multiple populations of a single species, however this is incredibly time consuming and requires a lot of resources. The method must first be fine-tuned before it is used extensively. Ultimately, how much can these scientific tests requiring cognitive tasks done with primates and other animals really tell us about the evolution of cognition?
I agree with Annabel. I’m not sure that this method is sufficient in explaining the casual mechanisms of cognition.
DeleteThe reading states, “One rationale for this research is that if we understand how cognition evolves in nonhumans, this knowledge may in turn inform our understanding of how our own species’ cognitive abilities have evolved”
It seems to me like if we found cognitive differences between chimpanzees and humans for example this would serve to simply point out differences. We would still be left with the hard problem in understanding how this evolution happened.
I do think a phylogenetic comparative approach is useful, I am just not convinced it is sufficient.
I agree with you Elise regarding whether or not evolutionary psychology can be used to determine causal mechanisms of cognition. In the previous reading on evolutionary psychology I found some of the conclusions drawn to be a bit questionable. How confident can we be in a certain hypothesis once it has been verified by different methods. I thought this paper presented a good argument in support of phylogenetic approaches however it would have been nice if the authors had given some examples of how it has been used in practice and what we have gained as a result. Like Annabel said, it would be imprudent to invest in a highly resource-intensive methodological approach that has only yielded theoretical benefits.
DeleteI'm having a hard time understanding the "Reconstructing ancestral states" section. The authors point out that they can measure the cognitive traits of extinct species by reconstructing values at ancestral nodes. They then place statistical measures of confidence on such reconstructions.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as the ancestral line grows, won't all of these reconstructions introduce more and more uncertainty? In other words, won't there be a decrease of information with each additional reconstruction? I understand that confidence intervals are supposed to account for the uncertainty, but with such a large amount of guesswork, I find it hard to wrap my head around an estimate of ancestral state which is not mostly fabricated.
Hey Laura, I was similarly confused on the methodology the authors outlined in this section. Most of my confusion comes from being unfamiliar with the techniques they discuss (I had to look up a bunch of things like “endocast features” and “Brownian motion model” to even follow this section), but I still found myself questioning their interpretation of their results based on the seemingly wide confidence intervals used. In the example given, their generated model for inhibitory control yielded a reconstructed score of 57% on the cognitive task for this particular species at a particular point in time (i.e. at the given phylogenetic node). But then the confidence interval stuff seems to undermine that reconstructed score: they are 98% sure that the actual score at that node would have been somewhere between 28% correct to 86% correct, and that seems like a humongous range for such a specific task. I get that this is maybe the best methodology they have right now, but it definitely makes me cautious about interpreting future results using this method (but no more cautious than I would be about interpreting results of other disciplines that have as wide intervals).
DeleteI'm fuzzy on the methodological details as well, but I think the point of this research is to compare how much various species have diverged from their 'ancestral state'. By measuring the divergence of many species, we get a (loose) statistical baseline by which to judge any given species... I think the overall goal of this research to is to see if humans diverge widely compared to other species, that is, if we are very different to the great apes than lemurs are to simpler lemurs. Methodological problems aside, I'm not quite sure what can be gained from this line of questioning. What more pointed research questions would open up if we find that compared to other lineages, we are very different from the next species down the evolutionary line? What questions will open up if we're not that different after all? Not meaning to be cynical, just didn't get a clear idea of where this line of research is headed via the reading!
DeleteHey Lauren, I think the reason why so much time and effort is being put into identifying how humans have diverged from other species is to try and better understand why humans but no other species, has developed such a high cognitive capacity. In previous readings, we talked a lot about evolution of language and how humans have developed an intrinsically built system to access categories (through language) that are not accessible through sensorimotor experience alone. Evolutionary divergence of humans allows us to see how far sensory motor capabilities can take a species in terms of their cognitive abilities. For example, in the mirror recognition task, non-human primates are able to identify dirt on their face and remove such dirt when they look into a mirror. This is evidence for self-awareness. This line of research is trying to identify the key difference between language speaking humans, and self-aware intelligent primates. Studying divergence may eventually lead to answers about what special feature humans evolved that other organisms did not. Perhaps this will be the key to being able to reverse engineer cognition.
DeleteWhile there are methodological uncertainties in terms of the statistical significance, and using appropriate measurement tools for different species in this line of research, I think these are problems that are realized and efforts are being made to try and reduce error margins.
"One major advantage of these collaborative papers is that the raw data for many species can be presented, analyzed, and discussed comparatively and comprehensively in a single article. ...For example, convincing null results... frequently remain unpublished and are often considered uninteresting or difficult to interpret when considered in isolation. However, the same results provide valuable information about inter-specific cognitive variation when considered in parallel with data from other species that performed better on the same task."
ReplyDeleteThis is a very important (and often overlooked) issue that exists within the scientific field. I first learned about this last semester in one of my psychology classes. Known as the "File Drawer Problem," researchers and publishers are more likely to publish findings that contain positive results. However, this leaves holes within scientific literature, as other researchers don't know when null results have already been found. Therefore, I think the authors of the article are correct in pointing out how comparing results will help alleviate this problem. It's important that all the facts are available - not just selective positive results.
Hi Laura,
DeleteThat's an excellent point! Like you mentioned, the holes that are left in scientific literature due to such phenomena as 'p-hacking' definitely doesn't serve the scientific community very well ultimately. Just trying to find some significant results is at the most only going to allow an individual lab to obtain the funds to advance its own research. In the context of this paper, re-analyzing some data repeatedly to obtain a result that makes some finding appear to be more important or significant than it actually is. Animal ethics guidelines do often recommend selecting a smaller sample size initially, and that on its own can lead to p-hacking. Using a larger sample size and phylogenetic targeting seem like solid first steps toward gaining a more comprehensive understanding of cognitive evolution.
Hi Laura and Liza,
DeleteWhile I do understand the importance of the "File Drawer Problem" and p-hacking, I think it is important to underscore some of the problems that can come along when compiling data. I think it would be best to illustrate this with an example. In the paper they discuss inhibitory control.
This is illustrated through the task in which participants reach around a glass first to get food rather than trying to go through the glass. This experiment is then conducted in different labs; however, this will introduce variability because there is no way to control all conditions. I am not sure that pooling these results and analyzing them is the best measure because the results could be affected in numerous ways. Additionally, it is hard to control the experimental task itself with varying species due to affordances. The inhibitory control task set up may be easier for one species than another due to their affordances. While individual species can be selected for affordances like monkeys not being nocturnal, this seems like it could be confounding in and of itself. Allowing researchers to hand pick what is measured can lead to tailoring what is tested to find significance. Additionally, the paper states that the results are better when more species are considered and this should be the goal. However, it is a rule in statistics that the more groups that are tested for significance the more likely significance will be found. I do think that this methodology is making the best of a difficult problem. However, these factors need to be considered when analyzing the significance of the results.
From Cognition as a trait
ReplyDelete“Many phylogenetic comparative methods address patterns of trait evolution, or the relationship between a set of traits. Thus, one major challenge is for comparative psychologists to develop dependent measures that can meaningfully be interpreted as traits. In some rare cases, it is possible that performance on a single task may meet this criterion”
Since traits can either be innate or learnt and since traits are very differently expressed across species, how do phylogenetic methods account for individual species developing traits that are targeted towards a very specific environmental problem? In the case of studying inhibition as a trait across primate species, and given the small sample size of the study, it is unclear how captive species, which perhaps already developed certain traits of food acquisition in their captivity :( , express their original adaptive traits. Perhaps they would have exhibited something completely different if they were in their natural environments. We have enough evidence showing that certain species have rapidly learnt to adapt to human environments, which would require them to express traits that would solve human problems. In this case inhabitation as a trait is problematic because many primate species live in environments where they have access to plenty of food. Inhibition as a trait can be both negative and positive for a species. In the case of humans it has shown to be mechanism for success. I am not sure if pushing this as an example of a successful trait onto animals that are very different is a correct technique to study trait evolution.
I like your point, for example with the mirror recognition task- where animals are presented with a mirror and the experimenters see if the animal can recognise that it is themselves in the reflection- how are they sure that this is a good litmus test of consciousness? It may not even signal self awareness as the animal may be more intelligent than others and recognise that if they move in one direction the 'other' animal in the glass will also move. How do they decide the point at which the animal is displaying self recognition and how can they be sure?
DeleteTo be clear I am playing devil's advocate, I do believe animals are conscious
One example of a mirror recognition tasks consists in putting some dirt/paint on the face of the animal and see if, with the help of the mirror, it can realize that it has dirt and remove it. If the animal is not self conscious it cannot realize that the dirt on its reflection is also on its own face.
DeleteFor the problem of environment and traits, I totally agree with you. The methods do require to have as little training as possible for the tasks in order to minimize these issues but even this way the general captive environment may have a severe impact on the results of complex behavior and cognition tasks. Although for more "general" cognitive tasks such as the mirror recognition task it should not be too significant if the experiment is done following the correct methods.
This discipline in my opinion is fascinating, and the question you are asking Soham has been addressed by some researchers in the field. If you are interested, Firestein in his book "Ignorance: how it drives science" gives a few examples of scientists who decided to study animals' consciousness by letting them as "free" as possible. They were not in their natural environment, but the scientists would simply observe them, and not train them, and they would report seeing "sparks" of consciousness, from time to time (not to say that the animal is sometimes conscious and sometimes not, but rather that one could only glimpse at its consciousness). Those were completely hypothese-free studies, obviously harder to get fund for, but they are one solution to the problem of our "expectations". I do think, however, that considering cognition as a set of traits is also useful, because it can limit our tendency to treat cognition and thus consciousness only as a human behaviour. Indeed, if we consider consciousness only qualitatively, most people are very unlikely to ever admit its existence in other creatures (i dont have a set opinion on the matter personally). The two approaches are complementary to each other.
DeleteIn terms of phylogenetic targeting, the arguments seem to all suggest that we should put more emphasis on research of related species because they tend to provide more statistically powerful comparisons. However, would it not be beneficial to look at “opposites” as well. It seems reasonable to me that knowing how something functions in the opposite direction could help explain how that thing functions in our direction of interest. For example, if we knew that hot temperature will cause water to expand, evaporate and rise, wouldn’t that help us explain that cold temperature will cause water to condense and fall? I do see a problem with potentially having too many confounding variables but with genetic modifications now possible, would we not be able to create “opposite” traits while minimizing the number of confounding variables? My suggestion stems from the fact that we constantly look to explain things by trying to find other similar examples. It does work but surely not 100%. Therefore, maybe it’s beneficial to look at things from a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you are saying, and I think the authors may have been hinting at that as well when they talk about choosing data points that "maximize variation in the independent variable." In this manner, you attempt to keep the species as close as possible except for in the trait you are examining. This increases both the power of your results in two ways. First, it will make it more likely that a strong correlation can be found (if one exists), and second, it will ensure as many confounding factors are held in check as possible, which allows for greater interpretability.
DeleteRE: “In doing so, we stand to gain an understanding of how cognition evolves in nonhumans, as well as a better understanding of the evolutionary processes that gave rise to the human mind.”
ReplyDeleteAlthough recent advancements in the fields of comparative psychology and evolutionary biology have allowed us to quantitatively measure the evolution of cognition in non-humans, there are two issues that fundamentally limit our ability to generalize the findings from nonhumans to humans.
1. An understanding of how cognition works (causal mechanism) for non-humans is not the same as (and is an approximation at best) an understanding of how cognition works for humans.
Although comparisons between species may help to clarify “when” a certain cognitive trait evolved, it does not tell us whether or not the mechanism that gave rise to the cognitive trait is the same across all species being compared.
This leads us to the second limitation of phylogenetic comparative psychology:
2. In order to confirm a shared causal mechanism for cognition between non-humans and humans, one must have complete knowledge of all the stresses (environmental & internal input) that shaped and gave rise to the organism’s cognitive mechanism.
Since this is not yet possible, a causal explanation for the evolution of cognition in non-humans remains an approximation at best for explaining cognitive mechanism in humans.
Perhaps, then, the “best model for a [human mind] is another or the same [human mind]”.
This article made me think of homologous versus analogous traits in the context of cognition.
ReplyDeleteBriefly, two or more traits are homologous if they are functionally and structurally similar and are derived from a common ancestor. For example, the common ancestor of birds must have had wings, so the wings of all birds are homologous. Presumably, the genes coding for wings in all birds would reveal some high level of similarity.
On the other hand, traits are analogous if they are functionally and structurally similar but did not come from a common ancestor. That is, they evolved independently on separate evolutionary timelines. For example, bats and birds both have wings, but these are not derived from the same common ancestor. They evolved in a different way in each species to serve the same function: flight. The differences would probably be reflected in their respective genomes.
I wonder if homology and analogy apply to cognitive and behavioural traits as well as morphological ones, and how they might be discerned with the methods of phylogenetic comparative psychology. Presumably we could trace the trait back to a common ancestor (or fail to do so) and this would be a revealing test. But, in the same way that bird and bat wings have a different structure to perform the same function (i.e., degrees of freedom in wing design), if we found two cognitive/behavioural traits, would this suggest they have different causal mechanisms?
two analogous cognitive/behavioural traits *
DeleteHey Michael!
DeleteI never realized that the physical traits could perhaps be transferred/translated to the cognitive, and its a super interesting point to bring up. However the only thing I have to add is - how would we ever know? In order to know if a (cognitive) trait is homologous or analogous, we have to be able to compare ourselves to another creature that can do what we do (and thereby decide whether their capabilities are homologues or analogues). Unless I'm missing something, we can't really make any such comparison. Maybe not until ET...
I found the use of phylogeny to track cognitive abilities to be both very interesting and creative. One thing I am curious about though, is if the experimenters in the inhibitory control study controlled for ages of the animals they were testing. If the animals were younger, certain cognitive functions may not have been fully developed by the time the study was run (for example, a human cannot perform object permanence until they are 18-24 months). Could some of the animals brains not have been fully developed when the study was run? I also wonder if any of these skills are things that can be taught over time. I think this would be very interesting to look at in the long run - can we teach an animal a skill, and as a result can they teach it to other animals in their species?
ReplyDeleteHi Eugenia,
DeleteI think it is safe to assume that all subjects are mature adults in these studies (especially with so much focus on ensuring that comparison between studies be kept as similar as possible).
I think as for your second point, that it's important to keep in mind the difference between socially passed-down behaviors compared to evolutionarily caused traits (which I believe was discussed in lecture). It's also much easier to look at socially passed on skills. For example, looking at creole languages, children are able to take partially combined languages and form it into a completely new one, which shows great cognitive learning abilities (that even surpass the generation previous). Other social concepts such as gender roles and other social norms are very obviously (non-consciously for the most part) taught to younger generations. If we are assuming cognitive capacities of some sort in animals, I think we can assume the same is true in them - that some things are innate and other things are learned through behavior from generation to generation. It would be interesting, though, to see if the proportion of innate vs learned behaviors differ greatly between species; this could give us a clue as to if for more complex cognitive abilities, it is necessary to offload more onto learning (like language), as many people theorize. (Of course, this is all keeping in mind the idea that innate vs. learned is not a clear dichotomy and there is mostly an interaction effect between the two in terms of development).
I'm a bit skeptical that evolutionary psychology will provide the breakthrough answer to our question in class. I don’t see how the 'easy' and 'hard' problem will be solved by rigorous examination of phylogeny. That being said, I think it is still an interesting avenue to pursue when searching for insights into human psychology.
ReplyDeleteFor example, evolutionary psychology provides an explanation for a phenomena which seem deleterious to modern human living: altruistic punishment.
Altruistic punishment is what happens in a social situation when an ‘enforcer’ goes out of their way to punish a cheater, someone who breaks social norms. For example, suppose that a child cheats on a math test. The teacher catches them, and asks them to come in after class to write lines. The teacher goes out of their way to punish the student at no benefit to their personal life. Most surprisingly, they experience a sense of reward from this punishment.
In experiments which replicate this setting (or any setting in which someone can go out of their way to punish someone who has deviated from social expectation) humans often go out of their way to punish others. They even do this at a cost to themselves, if participants can take 5 dollars from a thief or have 10 dollars from a researcher they will take the 5 dollars and experience a larger sense of reward. Humans broadly speaking enjoy punishing people who deviate from social norms, regardless of the norms which have been broken. Needless to say, this leads to some socially unpleasant and destructive behaviors.
This is explained (hypothetically) by evolutionary psychology. Mutual reciprocation and group living is of an overall benefit to survival of the species, but it does not increase individual chances of reproduction. Cheaters are strongly rewarded (evolutionarily speaking) for cheating, yet we are strongly inclined to cooperate, even with strangers. This cooperation is defined by social rules. Thus, when we developed the ability to punish each other we provided a disincentive to cheat. But the enforcer is often harmed by the punishment as well, in the form of revenge, hurt feelings, injury, or time investment. We needed to develop a sense of reward in association to punishment in order to socially evolve.
This is of course a theoretical explanation, but it is the best one for bullying, schadenfreude, pettiness and homophobia that I have come across.
Compare to the 7a reading, the phylogenetic comparative method seems relatively convincing as it aims to find out how human cognition was arisen by considering the evolution of cognition from genetically-related species of humans. However, addressing cognition by looking at how humans and close-related species may not be sufficient to give the answer of how HUMAN cognition works. Humans and our related species might vary a lot through the decades due to adaptations (and other factors). Leaving variations between species alone, the field seems still having way too many challenges in achieving a broader comparison of species, due to limitations of resources, for example the cost of running these studies and maintaining a population for research. But I guess phylogenetic comparative psychology could be one of the possible ways that can bring us to know more about cognition.
ReplyDeleteI agree, surely there’s a variation among species and even if they are highly similar they are not the same. It just like analyzing a specific behavior of cat, probably we should use another cat and the best option is the same cat due to both within and between species variations.
DeleteI agree with you that the phylogenetic comparative method is convincing. Would you say that it is comparative to the domain specific ideology talked about in 7A?
DeleteI also was curious as to if these close-related species could explain human cognition as the article talked about the idea of social complexity and how it increased with primates and I believe has increased with humans.
Though I wasn’t able to understand the details, using the phylogenetic framework to study cognitive capacities seems quite interesting. However attempting to pinpoint the divergence of certain cognitive capacities in a way that really helps us understand them seems to come with some inherent limitations.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how far beyond painting a general picture of significant cognitive adaptions (e.g language) we can really go. It seems commonly accepted that there are no new brain parts in humans, but rather that certain areas of our brains have grown larger in comparison to others and that there are novel synergies between previously disconnected (or only weakly connected) brain areas. These novel synergies presumably produced many cognitive adaptions which can be seen as individual traits, but thinking of them this way might be missing the bigger picture. (Is that what the authors mean by “contextual variables” within and between species?)
I suppose this comes back to the question of parts and wholes, which seems especially complex in the case of brains and their evolution because it makes causality is so hard to disentangle. How did novel traits make the appearance others more or less likely? Did a trait evolve within the context of a pre-existing synergy, or did it allow for such novel synergies? At what point is a cognitive capacity distinctly new as opposed to being merely a more developed version of what came before it? How do all of these questions factor into building an explanation that tells us how and why a trait evolved, or how a trait works?
I think this lends itself well to readings #6 - and allows me to further consider a previous thought. When examining categorization, I understood a certain organization/hierarchy in categories of human consciousness and wondered whether there was a line that could be drawn between what we consider as consciousness for us and what separates us in terms of working our way up a categorical hierarchy. If here we achieve an explanation of the phylogenetic point of divergence of cognition between us and our closest ancestors it may illuminate the base functions required to prop up what we qualify as consciousness in all its complicated aspects. Evidently there is a contribution evolution has made in terms of propping up our ultimate distinct self-awareness but it begs the question of where did this emerge from, can consciousness be graded as all or none or is it on a gradient that can be elaborated over evolutionary/phylogenetic time?
ReplyDeleteI like the point you mention about there being a possible gradient of consciousness and I think it brings up what I see as a downfall of focusing on phylogenetic adaptations alone. I think the evolutionary theory we take into account as the “true” one, such as what was the path of migration out of Asia/Africa, also has a an effect on our assumptions on what is the psyche. Referring to the evolutionary hierarchy of consciousness you mention, I feel like it is easier to draw distinct categories between hominids/neanderthals than it is to compare today’s human brain than it is to that of today and 1,000 years back.
DeleteThis is where ontogeny comes in, and where I think the article falls short for assuming the existence of discrete categories. The brain develops over it’s life time, ontogenetics shows us this, and how we can pass down certain traits acquired throughout our time on earth. But each’s experience varies, and as do cultures if we’re to draw those as existing boundaries…those bring us to the shaky grounds eugenics was founded on. At that, I wonder what the end goal of evolutionary psychology is. If the goal is to reverse engineer the brain, what would knowledge about our ancestral brain serve for human need if at all? This might be a relatively stigmatized position in the realm of academia…but a part of me is o.k with having experimental projects without an agenda of intent. I appreciate how scientists can approximate answers to their questions by giving it life to some degree in the lab, and not have the pressure to justify one’s curiosities per say. I think there is a way of going about practicing proper ethics at the same time so as not to have ill intention or application behind research.
I’d be curious to know what you mean by “propping up our ultimate distinct self-awareness”. Do you think the neocortex might have played a role in serving that function?
Re: "If the goal is to reverse engineer the brain, what would knowledge about our ancestral brain serve for human need if at all?"
DeleteI think that perhaps seeing how our ancestral brains evolved into what they are now would help us understand the changes in capability of our brains as we evolved through time. However, I do concede that while in an ideal world we can reverse-engineer the brain by looking at the gradual changes in physiology and ability in parallel, I don't entirely see how we could apply the appropriately precise methodology that we usually take for granted when studying the link between brain and behaviour.
RE: Evolution and Consciousness
ReplyDeleteThe hard problem of consciousness is two-part: it’s the how, but it’s also the why. What adaptive problem does consciousness address? We feel the burn of a hot stove after we pull away our hand. If we are perfectly capable of solving the “adaptive problem” of not burning ourselves by pulling away our hand without feeling the burn of stove, what’s the purpose of feeling the burn? Presumably, the burn is a reinforcement mechanism that aids in preventing us from touching the hot stove again. But why wouldn’t our bodies just assign a numerical points system, akin to the ones we use to get computers to learn things, instead of providing us with the seemingly less economical feeling? Is it possible that consciousness is a non-functional by-product of evolution rather than a “purposeful” adaptation?
Moreover, why did consciousness evolve to be exactly the way it is now? Why is consciousness exactly this level of fun? Why aren’t we just high all the time? It’s possible that addressing questions about the phenomenal character of consciousness could provide us with a deeper understanding of its evolutionary function.
I completely agree with you. To further support your claim, I raise another issue with studying the relation between evolution and cognition. When describing cognition as an adaptation there is no way to avoid circular reasoning. In other words, was it the social system that produced cognition, or was it cognition that produced the social system? To claim cognition as an evolutionary advantage, it seems like there would need to be a way to determine which came first.
DeleteI like that point Auguste, does consciousness have an evolutionary function? I think that you're probably right, that it is a byproduct of other cognitive and social adaptations with actual functional purposes. Thus cognitive processes, like cheater detecting and facial recognition confer evolutionary advantage, but perhaps the ability to detect faces cheaters give rise to consciousness, thus it doesn't have it's own specific function.
DeleteBut if one hominoid had all the "right" mutations, mirror neurons and all, would that result in complete consciousness? If it's not an adaptation, it seems strange that it would develop in a gradient. Ie. if being a bit conscious (whatever that may be) was not evolutionary helpful, then why would the next subsequent generations of organisms be more and more conscious? If it's not evolutionary then it sort of seems like a certain cocktail of genes and environment could led to consciousness, but I think that this is too materialist. It seems like this argument tries to bridge the easy and hard problems of cognition, ie. easy cognition somehow gives rise to hard?
Is it possible to compare consciousness at all? Maybe your consciousness is why more fun then mine aha. We could never answer this question without some way of measuring others "level of consciousness", which seems pretty unlikely.
@Madison, you make a good point, how can we really tell which came first. But I think it's possible both needed to work at the same time. Certain social systems favoured certain levels of cognition, and certain cognitive states gave rise to certain social systems. I think it's possible they would need to be produced together.
RE: Phylogenetic Targeting
ReplyDelete"We can obtain greater value for our time and effort by collecting data on fewer species that provide stronger tests of a particular hypothesis and better control of confounding variables and alternative hypotheses."
Thorough and efficient research requires strong hypotheses and concise framing of experimental questioning. The greatest advantage of phylogenetic comparison it seems is the measured ability to control for confounds and the specificity of the process.
As a tool, phylogenetic comparative methods set a precedent for collaboration, as the authors note, because it allows for a cooperative sharing of ever-expanding datasets that can be more easily standardized. The tunnel-vision of individual studies tends to obscure larger significance, but phylogeny encourages and incentivizes collaboration by nature of its methodology. This allows for a resource to be considered when making top-down hypotheses, with statistical confidence.
While I see the limitations/pitfalls of a reliance on phylogenetics, it remains a strong and necessary tool to be expanded and elaborated on.
Reconstructing ancestral states is an interesting approach in discovering how cognition differentially evolved among various phylogenetic lineages, however I am doubtful of the accuracy with which extrapolating a species or individual-specific characteristic from genetic information can actually provide. Surely, the further back in time we attempt to extrapolate, the less accurate the ancestral reconstruction will be, as more confounding variables accumulate. The article didn’t go into detail of how these ancestral states are actually reconstructed, but I’m curious to know how statisticians and comparative psychologists account for the environmental or historical changes that would inevitably affect a species’ cognitive abilities.
ReplyDeleteOf course, many of the most interesting species to study may fall outside the conventional taxonomic focus of comparative psychology. Developing creative ways to study these species will be one of the exciting challenges, and facilitating collaboration between researchers, zoos, and animal sanctuaries will be a fruitful way to access species normally unavailable to study
ReplyDeleteIndeed, by doing so we might avoid the trap of naming “cognition” and “intelligence” anything that resembles what a human being is able to do. Indeed, an octopus watching a human could very well find us to be unintelligent and unable to communicate since we cannot change our body colour or body shape as they do. Like the author mentioned at the beginning of the article, it might be more useful to link the measure of evolved cognitive flexibility with the complexity of the environment. The cognitive abilities of the octopus would then be seen relative to the complexity of living in the tropical coral reef environment (which can be quite complex). It avoids placing the human being as the ultimate intelligent organism at the center of the equation.
I think the effect of contextual variables is undervalued in this article. The mention of variations between-species, among lab sites and/or lab technicians are but superficial causes of what may alter a reflection the specie’s “natural” behavioural patterns. The primary measure for cognition here is inhibition control, a variable that has been associated with behavioural characteristics in the human. There is no evidence provided to suggest that such inhibitory tasks are best reflective of the evolutionary pattern of the species in question. Despite the corollaries with success on the inhibition task and brain size, other tasks such as response to mating calls or pheromones may better account for within species evolution. Secondly, the conditions in which species are being tested for inhibitory capacity are not necessarily reflective of their natural environments or relevant tasks to their survival.
ReplyDeleteLastly, a large setback seems to be where ontogenetics are set on the backburner for discussion. It seems counterintuitive to rationalize phylogenetic explanations of survival without discussing the survival function those gene expressions serve in the animal’s life time.
ReplyDeleteRe: “Thus, one major challenge is for comparative psychologists to develop dependent measures that can meaningfully be interpreted as traits”.
In my view, this is not only one major challenge – it is the core challenge. Even for human beings, the development of tests for cognitive ability is incredibly difficult, having to attain validity and reliability. I see this as the core challenge because if the measures cannot be confidently said to be valid and reliable – i.e. the measures actually measure cognition and they do so consistently – then everything falls apart since nothing is measured except for an ability to take invalid and unreliable tests. The danger here is that researchers then interpret test-taking ability as actual cognitive ability. The authors do recognize that a “methodological concern … is how to adapt each cognitive task for use with diverse species” and that “this problem can be overcome by using a double-tiered approach”. The solution offered here, however, is problematic because any adaptations to the cognitive task then need to be reassessed for validity and reliability. Any adjustment can mean that the results are just reflecting test-taking ability as opposed to cognition. While the rationale behind phylogenetic comparative psychology is clear, I think that it easily falls into a trap of poorly assessed instruments, resulting in deceptive conclusions about cognition when it’s really about test-taking.
I'm still working through my thoughts regarding Prof. Harnad's theories on T2/T3/T4 robots. This article - and the larger field of evolutionary psychology - seems fit well with Prof.Harnad's theory that T3 robots could cognize, while T2 robots could not.
ReplyDeleteEvolutionary psychology posits that cognitive capacities were pushed to develop from environmental factors such as social group size or ecological context. According to this theory, cognition is a response to some kind of environmental pressure. If this were the case, it makes sense that cognition requires input from the external world to develop (ie - the robot has to be T3) because that would mirror the context of cognition emerging through evolutionary pressures.
Evolutionary psychology provides further support for the importance of T3 for cognition.
I appreciate that the paper by MacLean et al notes that evolutionary psychology might be well poised to answer questions of function in cognition - that is, how cognition might affect survival and reproduction. With much evolutionary psychology, I find the answers to be incredibly neat and tidy, a trait I find a little unsettling in the field of sciences. MacLean et al dedicate a significant amount of the paper discussing all the ways phylogenetic comparison work might be compromised and the steps (both in experimental and statistical methods) that should be taken to negate those differences. The combination of clearly visible results and pre-requisite of data modification lessen the power of evolutionary psychology in my mind.
I'm finding myself somewhat at odds - I feel as if there is value to be found in evolutionary psychology and its connection to T3 processing but I am leery of trusting too wholeheartedly in its research methods. I'm interested to see the directions it takes and how other disciplines such as computer science might interact with results found through phylogenetic comparison.
“To do so, comparative psychologists will need to expand beyond the “model” species approach (Rosati and Hare 2009) to gain access to nonconventional test species that are of the greatest theoretical interest.”
ReplyDeleteFrom what I’ve understood from the writers, it is essential to study other species through phylogenetic methods. Regardless of the structural and cognitive differences, the origin of species come from the same beginning, therefore, it is logical to study the spectrum of cognition that we witness in nature. I agree with the writers on the impracticality of model species approach. Not only does it restrict the potential for discoveries by placing a set boundary on the investigation, but it also blocks the possibilities and serendipitous nature of research. I do not see Turing Test as a suitable measure for assessing the ability to cognize other than our own kind.
An interesting “model” that we should inquire upon is the Dictyostelium discoideum. This particular class of Dictyostelids are commonly attributed as the bridge between unicellular and multicellular organisms. They are used extensively as a model organism in molecular biology and genetics; however, not so common in evolutionary psychology or cognitive science.
Although they are many evolutionary steps behind from the complex organisms we study in order to gain a better understanding of cognition, they possess a fundamental behaviour which may be linked to the development of cognition. When exposed to starving conditions, the unicellular amoebas join to form a fruiting body (i.e., the individual amoebas sacrifice themselves to save the species). This act of recognition for the greater good of the species reminds us of, not a mere act, but a collective mind (i.e., inexplicable intentionality in which the species are saved) similar to that of “United we stand, divided we fall.” Perhaps, this was the inception of what we now call cognition.
I like the ‘united we stand, divided we fall’ analogy as I very much agree that cognition has evolved as it has because of human interaction, to ensure the survival and development of the species. Language, for example, is there as a result of the need for humans to interact and work together, which is very similar to the idea of neural networks: they are created, then they communicate, then together they can produce actions, memories, and many other things when they function with other neurons.
DeleteIn terms of understanding ourselves through the study of other species, I don’t believe that this will get us to where we want in terms of understanding cognate functions. We do have similar base origins, but humans rose to the top of the food chain for a specific reason, that’s what we’re trying to understand: why did this occur? For that, comparing ourselves to other species seems futile. You can compare two animals, say an octopus and a rhino, and there will be similarities and differences, but would you use a rhino to study an octopus, or vice versa? So why would you use a rat to study humans? Or humans to study machines? This is very a simplistic analogy, there’s obviously more to it, but the point is there. There are many things all life forms on Earth are predisposed with, such as the search for energy (food, sun) and water, reproduction, all things to ensure the survival of a species. The problem with phylogeny is that we quickly look to other species when we should be looking at each other to uncover how and why humans ended up as they did.
RE: “A majority of cognitive traits likely evolve along more subtle dimensions and will not clearly map onto the main lineages of a phylogeny”
ReplyDeleteFrom what I understand, the purpose of this article is to outline a path to how we can create an evolutionary tree for cognition. I believe this is highly pertinent to the hard problem - the fundamental driving mechanism of cognition where we want to know HOW and WHY we feel. However, mapping alone seems challenging, but mapping the evolution of cognitive capacities seems even more challenging. If we are studying the evolution of cognitive skills but observing apes and chimps (those who are our close relatives), aren't we just really studying the evolution of behaviour? Doesn't the cognitive skill just refer to a trait that produces a certain output? The article focuses on many problem solving tasks that have tangible outputs which in my mind doesn't quite seem to help trace cognitive phenomenas. It seems as though the authors have not really addressed the causal-mechanisms of problem solving skills to cognition. After reading this article, tt seems like a poor attempt in solving the hard problem. Even if we did find similar traits, we are often taught in psychology classes over and over again that the animals used in psychology studies are not 100% comparable to humans because there is no way to know if the actual mechanisms are ever the same.
So we mentioned in class that we don’t have the genetic predispositions to know our species or our family members, how does it explain for the fact that when a baby is nervous, only sugar (selected by evolution), breast feeding and mom’s hug can calm him/her down? Does it mean that we learn to recognize our moms at a very early age or does it mean that we are actually born with the genetic predisposition to tell who’s our mom?
ReplyDeleteJessalyn:
Delete(1) If the mother's breast milk or hug is calming, that doesn't mean we are born recognizing our mothers. It just means we imprint on them from early exposure (and they are predictably our mothers).
(2) I don't know whether father-hugs are less reassuring, but if so, it's probably because there is more mother contact, and mothers can nurse with their own milk and father's can't (or not as easily).
(3) I bet a baby raised by a single father and bottle-fed would find its father's hug just as reassuring (if the father was a good one)...
I found it interesting that this article focused more on the “how” rather than the “why” of evolution. I think this method can avoid the issue of “just-so” reasoning to an extent. For instance, using what we know about phylogeny along with statistical methods, it is possible to estimate whether a certain trait or ability was present in a certain evolutionary lineage and at what point in time. I think that only when we have a lot of information about the “how” of cognitive development can we ask questions about why certain traits might have been selected for at a specific period of time. For instance, it is not enough to say that humans lived in hunter-gatherer societies for a long period throughout evolution and use that to explain current patterns of behaviour— it is important to examine the evolutionary timeline as best we can to determine how quickly an environmental or lifestyle change produces a wide-spread behavioural (or genetic) change. This will allow us to make much better inferences about what aspects of our ancestors’ environments are likely having the greatest effects nowadays. Finally, it might allow us to make predictions about future changes based on environmental changes that occurred in the past but whose effects have not yet been seen— for instance, perhaps we could have predicted an increase in depressive symptoms based on the fact that we are exposed to less sunlight due to societal changes. However, these hypotheses would definitely be difficult to make based on the number of possible confounds, and may take an incredibly long time to confirm or refute depending on how big the change was and how long ago it took place.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like the most difficult task in comparative phylogenetic studies is determining what elements of each selected task are "essential" and which components can be allowed to fluctuate based on the specifics of each species. This already handicaps comparative phylogenetic in that the experimental design cannot be as clean and interpretable as other types of studies (ex. randomized controlled trials). One would have to argue for the permittance of every variation between the setup for different species. These confounding factors, even if they are well explained, essentially prevent any causal interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne part of the article that particularly stood out to me was the discussion of the “social intelligence hypothesis” which, if I understood correctly, states that intelligence in a species is determined by whether or not the species experiences social pressures stemming from more complex social structures. So, species who have more complex social structures and more socially intelligent.
ReplyDeleteI find this theory interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, it seems to suggest that intelligence is formed through societal pressures. I’ve heard a primatologist say this as well. He pointed out that some people believe that intelligence evolved when something in the environment forced the species to become intelligent to survive. So, for example, monkeys who eat seeds that require breaking a tough shell experience environmental pressure to use tools, and therefore are deemed to be more cognitively advanced. The professor admitted that this view was contentious, but it seems relevant to the discussion of this article.
Clearly, this is not what happened with humans, as it does not seem like the food that we eat is the most complicated to consume out of all the animal kingdom. But I would argue that it is definitely true that our social structures are the most complicated.
However, is this the only way that intelligence can evolve? If that is true it is interesting what we might do about artificial intelligence; is there some way to create a selective pressure on an artificially intelligent being that might accelerate its cognitive capacities?
Can we really take information from these animal studies and attribute them to how humans work? There are many cases that show how similar humans and animals are but in other ways we are so different, especially in terms of cognition. Not to say that animals do not have a high cognitive ability however, the paper even says that the evolution of cognitive flexibility in primates was due to an increase in social complexity. It seems as though the level of social complexity has continued to increase and I’m wondering how it is possible to keep up with the mechanisms of human cognition?
ReplyDeleteBuilding on Jenna's statement, there are a lot of social settings available to humans that do not exist in animals. For instance, the ability to utilize language shapes a large portion of how we interact with one another and with the world around us. Cognitive flexibility is affected by social complexity, and one may even argue that humans have the most complex social systems out of all species. Without even tackling the idea of intelligence, survival has been dependent on affordances and being able to interact with the world correctly. Most humans do not grow up in isolation and social interactions even affect survival. Social interactions help build context, and these have shaped evolutionary traits such as facial recognition. So we must ask ourselves, why do we study animals to learn how humans work? What is it that we are looking for from outer sources that we cannot find within ourselves? Similarities may arise between us and other animals, but from a social point of view, there is not much overlap.
DeletePhylogeny appears to be an important method in discovering how cognition works. Everything we do, all the innate abilities we are predisposed with and have come to develop are here for a reason. They have come about because our ancestors acquired traits that gave them affordances, which enabled them to survive in the world we live in today.
ReplyDeleteThere are a couple of problems I have with the way phylogeny is studied, and most of it has to do with animal testing. I alluded to this in a previous post, but how can we invent a machine that does more that mimic a human being if we ourselves do not understand how human being functions? With animal testing, not only do they not have the same functions as humans, but they are simply not human. We can understand basic things from them, and they are intelligent forms of life hence there will be similarities, but what are we looking to understand in animals if we believe them to be far inferior beings? There is a cut-off, meaning that, even if we uncovered all there is to uncover in animals, there will be a point at which we will be stuck in practically the same place we’re stuck now because our brains are different. You can compare an octopus and a rhino, and there will be similarities and differences, but would you use a rhino to study an octopus, or vice versa? I’m not condoning human testing, but I believe that only so much can be done without actually looking at ourselves.
Phylogeny can explain why we have evolved the way we have, and why we are predisposed with certain mechanisms, but the article does two things: explicitly tells us how similar we are to animals, but also implicitly tells us how completely different we are to them. I’m a firm believer that phylogeny is one of the ways to go, but it’s not the key to the answer. It can only be one of many keys.
“Without recourse to questions of phylogenetic history and function, we cannot understand how or when species evolved to differ cognitively. Moreover, we cannot test why certain lineages—including humans—have evolved the cognitive abilities they possess.”
ReplyDeleteIn one of the earlier readings, I believe professor Harnad has stated that the goal of Cognitive Science is reverse engineering (with the example of the duck.) The language of this paper on comparative psychology reminds me of this in the sense that it seeks to use evolutionary history and phylogenetic (dis)similarity to explain the diversity of cognitive functioning that we see among different species today.
“Comparisons on actual cognitive tests of species that live in social systems of differing social complexity offer the strongest test of the social intelligence hypothesis because they provide a direct comparison of species’ cognition in a specific domain”
The authors go on to decry the use of only closely related species and the subsequent inability to generalize, but I wonder how useful it would be to compare very different species according to this theory. That is to say, can we really equate the social complexity of two very different species on some uniform scale, as if they increase on some regular and comparable increments?
“ a variety of species have been tested on their understanding of object permanence (Piaget 1954), with considerable diversity in performance across taxa that does not map cleanly onto any major phylogenetic grouping.” One danger is that in eagerness to match cognitive thresholds according to phylogenetic criteria, we may overlook other causes or explanations for similarity among different species.
RE: " According to this hypothesis, increases in social complexity drove the evolution of cognitive flexibility in primates."
ReplyDeleteI don't think this hypothesis makes sense. The specification that it only works for primates seems like it's trying to make a pattern out of one that isn't there. For example, bees and other insects are highly socially complex but did not benefit from the same evolution of cognitive flexibility. Would they be more flexible than other similar insects that are less social? I feel like this hypothesis becomes too narrow because of that claim.
Plus, in using phylogeny to understand evolutionary psychology, it would rely on understanding the primitive brain which is less complex, therefore brains of less complex creatures would be valuable to evaluate in order to better understand cognition.
I think the authors were referring to the fact that as primate society grew more and more complex, the need for cognitive flexibility became more and more paramount. If we just take cognitive flexibility as the speed and ability to switch from one task to another (switching from discriminating objects based on color rather than shape/ vice versa), it seems vital that an individual exhibits this in modern human society. For example, one must be very cognitively flexible in order to effectively use technology or even navigate through this website. I would guess that a rise in this need also arose from the use of early primitive technology.
DeleteObviously to a lesser extent but does this kind of play into the idea that students learn more complex information in shorter periods of time than a great- great grandparent just because this information is readily available and taught?
DeleteRE: According to this hypothesis, increases in social complexity drove the evolution of cognitive flexibility in primates. This hypothesis leads to the prediction that changes in social complexity on different evolutionary lineages should be coupled with changes in the cognitive abilities required to live in increasingly complex social groups.
ReplyDeleteCould these newfound pressures due to a rise in the complexity of society be driving certain disparities between populations of humans? Obviously, natural selection in the sense of maladaptive traits being less fit for the environment and therefore these traits recurring less frequently in future generations has slowed since the dawn of our species (thanks to modern medicine among other factors). However, certain individuals have traits that allow them to “succeed” better than others in modern society (I am referring to success purely in a career oriented fashion)? Social intelligence seems to be a major predictor in how an individual “succeeds” in society, so wouldn’t it follow logically that two partners mate because of similar perceived social intelligence? Subsequently, couldn’t this be a factor in creating disparities between populations in humans?
I think one of the most compelling contributions that comparative phylogenetic studies gives us is the ability to create a timeline and discriminate when and where in phylogeny cognitive changes have occurred. This allows us to look at evolutionary transitions between species and distinguish cognitive traits unique to humans or how certain cognitive traits have been elaborated in humans, perhaps allowing us to become closer to pinpointing explanations and selection pressures that might have increased specific cognitive complexity such as social complexity in humans. It certainly bolsters the evolutionary explanation in making adaptive hypotheses if there is support from phylogenetic methods and serves to decrease post hoc explanations.
ReplyDeleteIt is an interesting approach to use phylogenetic framework to study cognitive capacities. Despite reading the many quantitative methods and substantial examples provided in the paper, I feel that this approach may be a useful tool, but it perhaps wouldn’t be a significant improvement to our study in understanding the cognition. First of all, it seems to me that when we study the evolution of cognitive skills by observing our close relatives or ancestry, it seems that we are merely studying the evolutionary of behaviour. The term “cognitive skills” mentioned in the paper seems to be a trait that produces a specific behavioural output within a particular set of conditions and settings. And from their sections on inhibitory control, it seems that we are only able to extrapolate to study the evolution of cognitive skills by studying the evolution of behaviour.
ReplyDeleteAnother point that I took some more thinking on is the phylogenetic comparative methods. It seems impossible to see the way of how similar the patterns of cognitions are across species: such that if I can perform this task and my closest phylogenetic relative can too, there would still be no way to demonstrate how our cognition pattern of similar. Seemingly, we just fall back into the other minds problem and we know that similarities in behavioural output does not guarantee similar in cognitive patterns - which is shown by the example discussed in class on how both ape and baby can express what they desire by gesturing (similar behavioural output), but in that ape’s sign language is forced association whilst baby’s gesturing is propositional and is capable of evolving into language. So back to problem in that we can never know if the primates is thinking and feeling, so we could only infer it does based on it behaviour. Such that if it responds to certain condition the same I do, it seems that it would logical to conclude that it think and feel just like us and believe some form of similarities exist in the cognitive activity pattern.
Overall, phylogeny is definitely not the only approach to answering the filed of cognition and its evolution. But in this paper, its attempt with methodological approach in both quantifying and statistically analyzing components of cognitive evolution proves it to be a seemingly powerful technique that would perhaps eventually become a key component of empirical testing hypothesis on cognition development.
I found that this article did not explain the influence of culture/society on cognition well enough. Most animals do not develop in isolation, they're frequently influenced by other animals of the same species, and often animals of other species as well. I think that it would be an important approach to try to integrate culture into the study of evolution. Just as much as our biology can affect our behaviour, our environment can also influence our biology. Therefore, the ability to interact with other members in your environment can definitely play a role in shaping the development of your cognitive abilities. I would be interested in learning what kind of research has been done to investigate the effects of culture on the evolution of cognition.
ReplyDeleteThis article got me thinking about how we define cognition or draw the line for what “counts” as cognition. Specifically, if we consider an animal who has N number of cognitive traits, abilities, etc. and they are X closely related to a known cognizing being (like humans), at what point do we decide they are also a cognizer? Do they need to possess all of the same cognitive traits as certifiable cognizing beings? Or do they need to meet a certain threshold of cognition? I don’t even know how you would begin to rationalize either one of these approaches, but I think it will become crucial as more accurate models of cognitive processes (domain-specific as well as general or distributed) are supported. As other students mentioned, understanding this may also help with reverse engineering – instead of trying to create a perfect T3 in a full sweep, could we build bottom-up until we reach a particular threshold for cognition? Or, is it not important to talk about certifiable cognizers but instead about cognitive traits, and the number and/or degree of cognitive traits?
ReplyDeleteThis article did a better job of trying to tackle the how of evolutionary psychology using phylogenics than the Confer article. Studying the history of an event is always a useful pursuit even if to to complete a encompassing understanding of it. If Trump was learned on individual stories involving WW2 would he be slightly less inflammatory in order to do everything in his power to stop history repeating itself? That being said when cognitive traits appeared and in which organisms most likely is not going to answer the easy problem. Perhaps studying these can however put a focus on the most salient or common features of cognition in order to focus the creation of a crude T3 more managable?
ReplyDeleteI never thought that people would study the evolution of cognition and look at the lineage of even primate ancestry to try to see at what point there was a difference between self-recognition, but I found it so interesting. What would cause this creation of self-recognition in one group, but not the other? What sort of factors affected this change? Are a certain family of animals more likely to have this self-recognition, and if so, what about their biological make up does so? Does this imply that we could potentially see apes in the future understanding more of what we are saying and eventually perhaps being able to communicate with them in some way?
ReplyDelete“Because Cognitive performance does not fossilize, one cannot directly measure the cognitive traits of extinct species..” This is precisely the problem I have found with evolutionary psychology in the past, and the critique that I found of the last reading on evolutionary psychology. From what I can tell from this article, phylogenies seem to be a more empirically sound measurement of the evolution of cognition than any of the methodologies sited in the previous reading. “New phylogenic methods allow researchers to reconstruct values at the ancestral nodes in a phylogeny and to place statistical measures of confidence on these reconstructions.” I am curious to know more about phylogeny and how it can be used in evolutionary psychology and the study of cognition.
ReplyDeleteI found the article’s argument quite convincing that by using phylogenetic techniques in comparative psychology we might access some valuable information about how evolution and its genetic traces have contributed to development of brain in its vegetative state and the capacity for certain behaviors that we assume to involve cognition across different species. However, I think understanding the evolution of cognition in nonhuman species and its bridge to development of cognition in human species might not be feasible by assessing either of the two sets of traits that we can compare across species, namely the anatomy of the brain and the behavioral tasks that involve cognition.
ReplyDeleteI agree that “we will also need to consider how to assess cognition as a trait” but I am not entirely sure that this trait is necessarily “representative of a species ability to solve a particular problem”. I think the view that cognition is necessarily present to solve a problem might be influenced by the overall framework of evolutional psychology that assumes a problem solving and survival importance for every developed “information processing circuit” and mechanism. After all, we cannot certainly say that development of cognition in human brain was just a problem-solving strategy as there still remains many aspects of cognitive capacity for which we have not found a clear survival importance yet.
This article makes the case for phylogenetic approaches to understand the evolution of cognition in humans and non-human animals. I felt that the paper makes some compelling arguments in favour of this approach. In particular, I think that comparisons across multiple species can give a better understanding of the variation in cognitive capacities across species and thus also at what point in evolutionary history of the species these traits may have emerged. However, one challenge (mentioned by the authors) is the difficulty in determining accurate dependent measures for the trait under investigation especially if that trait is a cognitive one. Many ways in which we test cognition in humans (ie requiring a verbal response and providing specific verbal instructions) would not be possible in most animals. Even making gestures such as pointing would be possible for primates, but most animals would be unable to produce such a response. Thus ensuring the trait you are looking at is being measured consistently across species poses a challenge.
ReplyDelete“ Cognition as a trait
ReplyDeleteMany phylogenetic comparative methods address patterns of trait evolution, or the relationship between a set of traits. Thus, one major challenge is for comparative psychologists to develop dependent measures that can meaningfully be interpreted as traits. In some rare cases, it is possible that performance on a single task may meet this criterion. However, in many cases, it is domains of cognition rather than performance on single tasks that is most interesting for comparative analysis (e.g., Herrmann et al. 2007).”
I felt like this article did not make it very clear how it's defining cognition and cognitive abilities. When it speaks about “evolution of cognition,” it seems like it’s implying an evolution of A - > B, where B is “[the most highly developed] cognition” and A is “no cognition.” What is our reference point for B? From what the article said, I would guess that it’s humans, but I don’t think this was ever explicitly. I don’t much about this topic, but I would guess there are certain mental activities that certain other animals can do “better” than humans (Or, if not “better,” at least differently.) I’m not sure why we’d say humans are “cognizing more.” That being said, I can understand the rationale for using human cognition as the frame of reference. But I think we should be clear that we’re using human cognition as a frame of reference, as our “point B,” here, rather than saying one form of mental activity constitutes “less cognition” while another form (ours) constitutes “more cognition.”