Chapter 5
Cognitive Development and
Innateness
Nature/Nurture Debate
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British Empiricists vs. Nativists
Ethologists and Behaviorists
Developmental progression
Stage theories
– Sudden or gradual transfer?
• Epigenetic landscape
– Extreme environmental disruption needed to
drastically alter general behavioural development
Evolution of the Human Brain
• Domain general
– Pattern recognizer
– Flexible
• Domain specific
– Innate modules
– Task dependent
Pattern Recognizer
• Reverse Speech
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–
–
–
David John Oates
What you really mean is spoken backwards
"More energy and money and effort.”
"You're frightened, lean on me.”
Remez, Rubin, Pisoni & Carrell
(1981)
• Speech perception without traditional
speech cues
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Three tone sinusoid replica
Nothing but sine waves
Priming
Here’s the sine waves again
Pareidolia
• Phenomenon of perceiving familiar patterns in
random or non-relevant structures
• Our neurobiology lets us recognize people,
process language, identify predators, etc.
• Very strong evolutionary selective forces for these
abilities
• Pareidolia is a byproduct, or spandrel, of selection
for our other, useful, neurological pattern
recognizing capacity
Some Other Examples
• The Doors, Break on Through
– "Treasures there”, becomes "I am Satan”
– But, if you don’t cut the backwards tape off at
the right place you really get, "I am
Satanschmegel”
• Electronic voice phenomena
– Alleged ghost voices
O Fortuna
• Misheard lyrics
Fodor (1983)
• “Modularity of mind”
– Different brain systems work only with certain
kinds of data
– Other data available, but not utilized
– Module impenetrability
Fodor’s Modularized Brain
• A collection of independent perceptual
modules
– Each has a specific task
– Work independently
– Process sensory information rapidly
• Central cognitive processes
– Non-modularized
– Slow
Geometric Module
• Ken Cheng
• Ignore salient landmarks
• Use overall spatial geometry of
environment
Transformations
Training
18
0
1
6
Testing
180° Rotation
6
0
90° Rotation
1
18
0
18
6
1
Geometry
long
short
short
Short to left, Long to right
Short to left, Long to right
Short to right, Long to left
Short to right, Long to left
long
180° Rotation
S to l, L to r
S to l, L to r
S to r, L to l
S to r, L to l
90° Rotation
S to r, L to l
S to r, L to l
S to l, L to r
S to l, L to r
Massive Modularity
• Cosmides & Tooby (1992)
– “Swiss army knife” model
– An extreme view
• Heavy-duty Nativist perspective; innate
– Modules for everything, including cognitive
processing
• Not limited to perceptual modules
Criticisms
• No flexibility
– Only capable of dealing with previously
evolved problems
• Recent developments?
• Interaction?
– What regulates the separate modules?
Actual and Proper Domains
• Actual domain of a module
– Anything that satisfies its basic requirements
• Proper domain of a module
– The stimulus/stimuli that, by activating the
module, gives adaptive value
Bug Detector
• Frogs have cells in visual system that fire when
small objects move in particular ways
• Causes frog to fire its tongue out
• Cells also fire when small stones tossed in front of
a frog
• Flies are proper domain, stones are actual domain
• Toss bits of chopped up meat passed pet frog
• Bits of meat are not just actual domain, but also
part of proper domain
Development
• Does modularity preclude developmental
change?
• Karmiloff-Smith
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Predispositions (domain-relevant biases)
Domains: biology, physics, psychology
Focus attention; not modules
With experience, adults develop “modular-like”
structures
– Representational redescription
• Beyond information encapsulation; cross domain
• From implicit to abstract representations
Face Recognition
• A module?
• Infants
– Respond to faces early
– Graded neurological/brain region response
• Categorization
– Gauthier et al. (1999)
– Birds and cars
– Same region as face recognition
Social Cognition
• Language, culture, politics, etc.
• Cognition interacting with decision making
• Humans
– Highest level of functioning
Theory of Mind
• Descarte
– “I think, therefore I am.”
• ToM
– “I think that you think, and that your thoughts
drive your behaviour.”
– The content of another’s mental state may differ
from our own, and/or from the reality of the
situation.
Intentionality
• States of mind about beliefs and desires
• Reflexive hierarchy
• First order: belief-desire
– I believe.
• Second order: ToM
– I believe that you suppose.
• Third order
– I believe that you suppose that I want this.
How Far can this Go?
• Kinderman et al. (1998)
– Higher order intentionality
– Vignettes
– Questions about:
• Mental states of people in vignette
• Facts from vignette
– Fine up to four orders of intentionality
• “I believe that you think that I intend to deceive you.”
• Stressing cognitive abilities
• Neocortex size
• Women perform better than men
ToM Developmental Benchmarks
• <18 months
– Joint attention
• Intentionality and eyedirection detectors
– Self and social
referencing
• 18-24 months
– Pretend play
– Primary
representations
– Desire psychology
• Understanding of internal
drives
• 36 months
– Secondary
representation
• Beliefs about beliefs
– Deceit
• 48-56 months
– False belief task
• Smarties or Sally-Anne
methodology
• Meta-representational
thought
Machiavellian Intelligence
• Social living
• Deception and manipulation
• Understanding of your own and others’
intentions
• Excel and prosper
Comparisons for Understanding
• Normal to abnormal
• Gross morphological brain damage
• “Subtle” neurophysiological deficits
Autism
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0.05% of children
No obvious neurological damage
Language, cognitive, social impairment
ToM
False Belief Test
100
Passing (%)
• 4 year old
• Normal and Down’s
syndrome
• Autistic
• Not intelligence or
cognitive
50
normal
Down’s
Subjects
autistic
• Autistics also fair poorly on true belief task
– High-functioning autistics
• General rules of thumb
• Lack of deep social understanding
• Impairment specific to belief states
– Do well on false photo (memory) tasks
• No joint attention, poor lies, no/limited
pretend play, don’t understand desire
ToM Module Debate
• ToM module deficit
– Primary problems
• Affective disorders
– Secondary problems
• Indifference to people, literalists
• Dual deficit
– ToM
– Weak central coherence
• Problem organize parts into groups
– Illusions, face-recognition, embedded figure
• Advantageous in some situations
Genetic Component
• Fathers of autistics
– Better at piecemeal local processing tasks
• Physics, engineering, and autism
• 4:1 male:female cases of autism
• Extreme form of “male brain”
– Continuum
– Folk physics vs. folk psychology
Williams Syndrome
• Chromosome 7 gene deficits
• Low IQ
• Very good language skills and musical ability
– Williams and language (4:46-6:29)
• Very sociable
– Intense interest in people, excellent face-processing
skills
– Poor social judgment; trouble with friendships
• Same impairment on false belief as autistics
ToM
• Two separate components
– Social-cognitive component
• Represents mental states of others
– Social-perceptual component
• Represents the emotional states of others
• Tager-Flusberg & Sullivan (2000)
– Autistics have impairment in both components
– Williams syndrome have less impairment on
social-perceptual component
Conclusions
• Fodarian perceptual modules generally
accepted
• Most evolutionary psychologists strongly
favour existence of at least some higher
cognitive modules
• Debate as to the impenetrability of
cognitive modules
• Strong evidence for general-domain system,
too