HCE Exam 2

falsified.

Because humans are apes, if chimps or bonobos show theory of mind, then the proposal that human TOM is either unique/derived in humans would be…

yes, apes, but not non-apes (no monkeys) have self-recognition. Using the Rouge Test, apes touch the spot on themselves where the rouge was applied rather than the mirror itself. Other self-exploratory behaviors in a mirror promote ideas of self-recognition in apes (and most do this). The leaner interpretation is that they just use the mirror as a tool and have bodily recognition. Like young children, young chimpanzees interact with their reflection like it’s another ape

Do apes have self recognition?

That it’s just an association, not really acknowledgment of self or consciousness

What does Povinelli argue about mirror recognition?

• Main importance of the experiment was the question: Do chimpanzees understand the intentions of others? 

• Finding was that, overall, the chimpanzee consistently chose the picture that had to do with solving the problem that the human was looking to accomplish

• However, this chimpanzee was raised by humans and had a unique rearing history relative to wild chimpanzees; this prompted people to claim that she was just making simple associations, because she had seen these problems solved over and over again

• She wasn’t thinking about mental states in others, just had an associative way of solving the problem

• The experiment could not rule out the more parsimonious explanation. Nobody was convinced by the experiment, but the question was really good 

When a chimpanzee was shown a video of a human struggling to accomplish a goal and was asked to choose between two pictures where one depicted the human solving the problem, did she understand the human’s goal? (Premack & Woodruff, 1978)

• Chimpanzees watch others watch food hidden 

• One experimenter has the bucket on his head, the other doesn’t

• Then the chimp has to choose which experimenter to trust to lead him to where the food is hidden

• If apes have theory of mind, they would understand that something has to be seen in order to act adaptively, and that if someone can’t see something, then they’re not going to be able to act adaptively and communicate correctly

• They should choose the person who saw the baiting 

• If this is an associative task, then it would take many trials for the chimps to recognize that the solution is to avoid the guy with the bucket on his head

• If it is a theory of mind task, then it will only take a couple of trials for them to get it right (since TOM allows you to spontaneously solve this type of problem) 

• In the first 5 trials, the chimps were guessing, and after that, they started performing at above chance

• Povinelli argued that this meant that chimps had perspective-taking/ability for mental state attribution, but associationists/behaviorists challenged this because the amount of trials that it took them to perform above chance was sufficient to form an association

What was the result of Povinelli’s first experiments on the cooperative-communicative paradigm? (Povinelli, et al 1990, 1994)

little evidence for gaze following in 16 different species of primates, but some evidence that chimpanzees follow the gaze of a human experimenter

Do apes gaze follow?

No; they really struggle to understand that the experimenter is trying to tell them where the grape is. You get the same results if you point at the cup, look at it, etc.

If an experimenter hides a grape, and puts a block on it to communicate to an ape where the grade is hidden, do they find it? (Tomasello et al, 1997)

• There is food in front of one of two experimenters (one who could see the food in front of them and one who could not), and the chimpanzees had to make a physical cue to ask for the food from one of the experimenters

• In most of the cases (¾ of them), chimpanzees guessed at random which experimenter to ask for the food they want. They only chose the correct experimenter above chance when the choices were between an experimenter that had their back turned to them or an experimenter who was facing them.

If there is food in front of one of two experimenters (one who could see the food and one who could not) do chimps correctly discern who to ask? (Povinelli & Eddy, 1996)

• In all studies, few individuals tested

• Subjects given dozens if not hundreds of test trails (therefore more association than sophistication; easy to learn after that many studies)

• Subjects could have easily used egocentric trial and error rule learning to solve the problems 

• Future studies must rule out simple learning explanations by testing groups of individuals with few trials each, in novel situations and no evidence for learning

What are the behaviorist critiques of cooperative-communicative studies?

the ability to think about the thoughts of others is derived in humans

Before considering competition with conspecifics, the cooperative-communicative paradigm would have predicted that…

• social cognition evolves to out-compete conspecifics

• function predicts mechanism: primates will show the most flexible social problem-solving skills when competing against conspecifics

• there was a mismatch between cooperative-communicative tasks and real-world, evolutionary situations in which apes would have to exercise their capacities for theory of mind

• the previous approach had only tested humans, cooperative-communicative, and depended on trained responses.

• Needed to test spontaneous behaviors in a competitive setting with conspecifics

What is the adaptive perspective of social cognition?

• Five species of primates do

• In most cases, if a monkey looks up at an orange, then the other monkeys will also look up to see what they’re looking at

• Chimpanzees move around visual barriers blocking their view of another individual’s gaze

• Chimps habituate to the fact that someone is looking at nothing, and quickly ignore them when there’s nothing to look at. It takes longer for monkeys to dishabituate, and they look up for longer

Do primates follow the gaze of conspecifics? Humans?

When competing over food, subordinates should prefer to approach/retrieve food that dominants cannot see

• If you understand what dominants can and cannot see, you should go for the piece of food that the dominant cannot see 

• That is exactly what is found: subordinates target hidden piece of food. There was no training

• There was also more food collected by subordinates when there were more occluders present

• Alternative: subjects reading behavior to avoid approaching dominant 

• To combat this: subordinate was let out first, and they were forced to commit to a decision before the dominant was let out. They knew the dominant was going to be let out, but couldn’t read their behavior 

• Capuchin monkeys were always responding to the dominant monkey’s behavior (control had no effect), but chimpanzees still preferred the one behind the barrier

• When the barrier is transparent, they actually go for the one out in the open (showing that it’s not just the presence of a barrier that they respond to, but instead that they know what the dominant can and cannot see)

What were the results of the occluder tests of what fruit subordinate apes will retrieve?

• Professor Hare designed game where chimps could approach a piece of banana behind a barrier from either side of him, but it was a game that he would always win because he could pull the piece of banana away from them before they could grab it.

• Then, chimps were given the chance to either try to grab this piece of banana from the side where the barrier was opaque (they can’t be seen) or transparent, or where there was a complete occluder (they can’t be seen) or a split barrier (can be seen).

• In both cases, chimpanzees were most likely to go for the approach that made them less likely to be seen by the experimenter and use an indirect approach.

Do chimpanzees know when others can or cannot see them?

Adaptive paradigm points to yes:

• Chimps prefer to retrieve:

  • 1) Hidden food first when competing against dominant

  • 2) when individual had been subordinate, they swapped to a trial with a chimp subordinate to them so that they were now dominant, and they went for the visible food

• Chimps prefer to hide their approach:

  • 1) behind a visual occluder instead of a non-occluding barrier

  • 2) using indirect approaches if they aid in confusing competitor (spontaneous result)

Do chimpanzees know what others can see?

• Reacting to competitors’ behavior?

  • the dominant’s door is kept down and the dominant’s release is delayed

  • subordinate only knows dominant will be released before choosing

  • Human competitor’s behavior controlled

  • must react to static cues relevant to visual access

• Learn strategies during test?

  • non-differential rewarding used (they weren’t rewarded for the right choice; just either successful or not, and when they don’t get the food, they still use the same strategy, showing that they didn’t learn this in trials- they brought it with them)

  • preferences must represent pre-existing biases

• Using inflexible strategies?

  • Subjects presented with novel social problems

  • must ignore novel non-occluding barriers

How did they control for parsimonious explanations when trying to study if chimps knew what others saw?

• Professor Hare sat behind a barrier and put grapes through a window, then either couldn’t or refused to give the chimp a grape

• occasional delays occur while human hands chimp food

• Unable (accident): the sharer is prohibited from sharing by the physical world

• Unwilling (intentional): nothing prohibits sharing, yet there is still a delay

• Dependent measure is differences in the subject’s spontaneous behavior

How did they measure whether or not chimps could read intentions?

When an experimenter was unable to share food, the chimps were patient and tried to help. When an experimenter was unwilling to share food, the chimps left the testing area and displayed obviously frustrated behavior. Subjects left sooner and showed more frustration behaviors when a human was unwilling to share.

What was the evidence that apes could read others’ intentions?

Inherited

Is intention reading inherited or derived in humans?

Inherited

Is perspective taking inherited or derived in humans?

• Hare et al (2001)

• Experiment: both dominant and subordinate saw the food hidden, then the dominant was swapped out for another dominant when the divider comes up.

• In experimental condition, subordinates go for the food behind the barrier more than when the dominant is not swapped out because they know that the new dominant doesn’t know the food is there

• In cases when a dominant is uninformed or misinformed about the location of food, the subordinate retrieves more food vs. when the dominant is informed about the original location/ a change in location of food, they refuse to approach more

• suggest that chimpanzees show some evidence of false belief understanding, but reanalysis was not significant, so result is still up in the air (understand that seeing leads to knowing, but evidence not convincing enough for false belief understanding)

Do apes know what others know?

An eye-tracking study showed that chimps and bonobos show looking time consistent with false belief understanding, but truly adaptive responses depend on explicit actions on false beliefs

How have false beliefs been measured implicitly in apes?

Potentially dervied

Is false belief understanding inherited or derived in humans?

Inherited

Is understanding of ignorance inherited or derived in humans?

• Chimpanzees watch monitor of either an unknown chimpanzees yawning, or an unknown chimpanzee making an open mouth facial expression

• Chimpanzees demonstrate contagious yawning in response to seeing others yawn

• Show emotional contagion, but perspective-taking, targeted helping, sympathetic concern, and consolation only maybes

Do chimps and bonobos show empathy?

Parts are inherited (understanding ignorance, intentions in actions, perceptions), but others are likely derived (false beliefs, empathy, shared intentions)

Is human theory of mind inherited or derived?

derived:

Only humans recognize shared goals between themselves and others, enabling cooperation

Is shared intentionality inherited or derived in humans?

• shared intentionality is a big deal for solving problems together (cooperation)

• Argument for why human cooperation is unique is shared intentionality

Why is shared intentionality important?

• Young children help others spontaneously and at a cost

• Experimenter behind table drops pen and reaches for it, does toddler walk through obstacle course and ignore fun toy to help the experimenter?

• Yes, 14-18 month olds already have a desire to help and can recognize when someone is in need of help (kid would be put in situation 10 times in a row, and they just kept helping regardless of there being a reward or not)

• Because it’s such a struggle, we presume we’re really motivated to help

Do young children help at a cost?

• Apes show lots of cooperation in the wild, but not in experiments. Observations in the wild make it seem that chimpanzees are excellent at cooperation. For example, on new logging road (and not other roads), alpha chimpanzee leads the way and sticks behind while the rest of the pack crosses the street. Suggests rich cognition, but doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what’s going on.

• However, in experimental demonstrations (like putting something out of reach, making it really heavy, and seeing if the apes work together to pull it closer), they typically fail unless trained to do it. Success requires hundreds of training trials, learned skills do not generalize to new problems. If you genuinely shared intentionality, you would be able to do so in novel situations

What is the panin paradox? Why can’t we conclude that non-human apes have shared intentionality?

they won’t cooperate

If apes don’t tolerate each other, …

North of the Congo River

Where do chimpanzees live?

South of the Congo river?

Where do Bonobos live?

False. Behaviors in bonobos and chimpanzees are more similar to humans than each other. If our common ancestor is truly more like a chimpanzee, we have to understand how the different traits evolved in Bonobos, which can give us insight into how those that are shared with humans evolved as well.

True or false? Behaviors in bonobos and chimpanzees are more similar to each other than humans.

Mutualistic cooperation: cooperatively defend groupmates (protect family member/alliance partner), cooperatively hunt (rare for Bonobos), and cooperatively defend territory

Potential Altruistic (costly to reproductive success) cooperation: reciprocal alliances (protect stranger/new group member), reciprocal grooming, reciprocal food sharing

Examples of chimpanzee and Bonobo cooperation

• If you can’t tolerate your partner, you can’t work together. If you allow chimpanzees the opportunity to cooperate with those they normally share food with, they tolerate sharing and cooperatively pull rope to get food on the first trial.

• Chimps who don’t regularly food share don’t allow sharing and don’t solve the rope pulling task, but pairs who did share food (tolerated each other) were also those that were the best at solving the cooperative task spontaneously.

Why had the panin paradox been observed?

• Bonobos are super tolerant, unlike chimpanzees, Bonobos don’t have preferred partners. They share with everyone and share even small amounts.

• They even put their hands in the same bucket as each other, which even the most tolerant chimps never do

How do bonobos perform on the joint rope pulling task?

• Subject is always tested with a tolerant partner

• Partner is locked in an adjacent room

• Experimental condition: Subject is released into the test room, and needs their partner to get food from the apparatus. If ape knows that they need someone to help them, they’d unlock door to let in their tolerant partner

• Control condition: Subject is released into the test room, and does not need their partner to get the food from the apparatus.

• Chimpanzees recruited help much more often when they couldn’t get the food on their own, so yes. Therefore, it’s more likely that chimpanzees understand the role of their partner in their success than it is that they are unaware of joint effort.

Do chimpanzees know when they need to recruit help?

• Subject is tested with 2 new partners that they can tolerate

• One of the partners is more effective than the other (and they learn this through introductory non-test trials)

• Both partners are locked in adjacent rooms to the test room

• The subject is then released into the test room.

• On the first of the test trials, the more effective partner was chosen consistently, so yes.

• Chimpanzees know that there are skillful and unskilled partners and choose between them. Therefore, they don’t cooperate indiscriminately.

Do chimpanzees learn and remember who is the best helper?

Why we share part of an endowment we’re given without having to, or why we reject small donations when we feel they’re insufficient (even if the alternative is receiving nothing).

Possibly because of:

• norms of fairness/equity

• reciprocity and reputation effects

• sophisticated social cognition and communication skills

What can’t classical economics explain about human negotiations?

• In room 1, there’s a big amount of food and a small amount of food on the tray.

• In room 2, there are two even amounts of food on the tray.

• Question is if the subordinate getting the small amount of food will negotiate by going to room 2 before committing to pull, or otherwise wait/attempt to communicate to sway the dominant

• still rope pulling task

• Yes: the subordinates often refuse a selfish offer, but cooperation results in up to 95% of trials in experimental condition. On the initial offer, subordinates only accepted selfish offer 40% of the time (and refused 60% of the time)

• If the dominant offered mutual payment from the start, subordinates normally accepted.

• However, if mutual offer is unavailable (no ropes), subordinates accept selfish offer ~90% of the time. 95% of the time, chimps were able to reach conclusion

  • However, if there is a more unequal payoff, subordinate chimpanzees have less success negotiating for equal payoff, and they don’t split up greater amount or take turns (no evidence of calculated reciprocity)

• So, yes chimpanzees can negotiate when they have conflicting interests, and it is not impossible without norms and language

Do chimpanzees negotiate?

Yes, at the same frequency and in the same pattern as human children

Will chimpanzees retrieve a tool to an experimenter who had it “stolen” from them?

• When there’s a small cost to assisting another chimpanzee to access a slice of banana that they can’t get themselves, chimpanzees will do it in most cases (open a chain)

• However, chimpanzees are hostile to strangers in general and won’t act prosocially toward one

• Therefore, yes, chimpanzees help each other (non-kin included) even at a cost to themselves (sharing food or defending against predation) and they don’t only share to avoid conflict or gain a reward

Will chimpanzees help one another?

inherited!

Our skills for collaboration, shunning, negotiation, and costly sharing/helping are…

False. Bonobos are relatively more tolerant with others. They have affiliative interactions with strangers in the wild:

• intergroup encounters: socio-sexual behaviors, grooming, co-feeding in the same tree

• immigration: case reports of male immigration

• Groups of stranger bonobos will meet up peacefully. This is impossible in chimpanzees.

True or false? Bonobos are hostile toward strangers.

Yes! Bonobos are attracted to strangers.

• Chimpanzees will not help when a problem is about food.

• Chimpanzees will also steal and trade for things, but Bonobos just keep things for themselves

• If bonobos are given the choice to invite a non-groupmate or a group-mate into a room with them to share food, they share with the stranger. And they always share instead of monopolizing the food for themselves.

• Because there’s no cost in creating a new social bond, the opportunity for expanding social networks, especially in females, is worthwhile so that their sons have more potential mates. Most successful Bonobo males are more successful than the most successful chimpanzee male (friendliness more successful)

• Bonobos will also help a stranger get food at a slight cost to themselves

Are bonobos xenophilic?

• No.

  • If one bonobo in a room has uncracked nuts and the other has a tool, they won’t transfer tools over, but about 20% of the time, they will pass food to the bonobo with the tool (groupmate) for them to crack and eat them, which is about the same proportion seen in children

Do Bonobos share tools?

• Chimpanzees will help and share objects they can’t access with groupmates

• Bonobos won’t share at most extreme cost (delicious food that is easy to process when they’re hungry), but otherwise, they share food at smaller costs with both strangers and groupmates, but not objects

Differences in bonobo and chimp sharing habits

Contagion

• form of behavioral mimicry to form rapport

• a precursor of empathy that shares psychological states

Bonobos yawn in response to watching a stranger yawn more than they do in response to watching a groupmate yawn: they share mroe with strangers because they have a higher emotional response to strangers than groupmates (higher automatic empathetic response to strangers)

Do bonobos yawn at strangers?

Shared intentionality

“we psychology”: humans do a thing together

• proposed to be unique to humans, we know we’re working toward the same goals, so we communicate and take on roles to fulfill them

• If an experimenter and a child are playing a fun trampoline game, and the experimenter puts down the trampoline and turns his back, infants respond by trying to reengage the experimenter to restart the play

• Neither bonobos nor chimps will try to reengage an experimenter in play when “playing catch” is interrupted by the experimenter. They look mostly at the ball.

Why we assume that shared intentionality is uniquely human

No, bonobos actually show a preference for “hinderers,” or dominant individuals over subordinate ones

Do bonobos prefer helpers like children do?

Socioecology

The effect of a species ecology on its social behavior

• sexual selection

• kinship theory

We need genetic diversity because we don’t know what’s coming next or what traits we’ll need to be prepared for it

Different constraints on male and female reproductive success in species with females providing highest parental investment (most mammals and all primates)

• Sexual selection makes it so that males only exist to create genetic diversity, so the investing sex is picky and typically males have to work hard to advertise the value of their genetic payout

Why does sexual reproduction exist? What consequence does it have for behavior?

for females- access to resources (females map onto food)

for males- access to females to donate their genetic diversity and pass on their genes (males map onto females)

males and females are constrained for reproductive success in different ways, so they behave differently

What are the limiting factors for reproductive success?

Not because they improved flight, but because women loved them. There was higher fitness with longer tails because the longest feathered bird had the most reproductive success, as it was some sort of signal of quality of genetic diversity

Why is it hypothesized that pheasants have long tail feathers?

Kinship theory

altruistic behaviors will be favored by selection if the costs of performing the behavior are less than the benefits discounted by the coefficient of relatedness between actor and recipient

selection could favor altruistic alleles if animals interact selectively with their genetic relatives. If the coefficient of relatedness times the sum of fitness benefits surpasses the cost of helping, then altruism is favored

coefficient of relatedness

the genetic relationship between interacting individuals

the average probability that two individuals acquire the same allele through descent from a common ancestor. Parents and siblings share 50% of genes, half-siblings share 0.25, so do grandparents and grandchildren, in addition to aunts/uncles and nieces/nephews. First cousins share 0.125, and strangers share 0.

much greater benefit needed to offset cost of helping a distantly related relative

As relatedness decreases,

Slightly polygynous (1-20% of partnerships are polygynous, multiple wives), with general polygyny being the next most frequent. With the advent of agriculture, the general pattern remains similar.

Describe the hunter-gatherer mating system

Polyandry: having multiple husbands (popular in Nyimba and Nepal- women normally take brothers as husbands)

What is the only mating system not seen in hunter-gatherers that is seen in agricultural societies?

We evolved under slight polygamy, not strict monogamy. Relative to chimps, human balls/penis are smaller. The more competition for females as number of potential mates within a population increases, organisms have bigger balls, differently shaped/sized penis, and faster sperm

What does human testes size suggest about our mating systems?

• Both men and women report some level of infidelity (between 5-30%), mirroring rates of slight polygyny

• In UK over 25-30% of fathers who were tested for matches to children needing donation were found not to be the father of the child

How does infidelity support that we evolved under slight polygyny?

Kin selection

• a powerful motivation for cooperation in social interactions

• important principle for the organization of social structures

• primary principle around which groups form

• primary in defining the relationships between groups

Coefficient of relatedness:

• people favor close kin in their wills, people favor kin with reproductive potential or children

• almost no child abuse when both parents related to offspring, more when only one is

What predicts amount of money people will be endowed with after someone dies and rates of child abuse?

• males must have high variance in reproductive success bc they must compete for access to females

• females can be choosy in selecting mates

• Prediction: men will be less choosy than females and men will be more motivated than females for short-term mating opportunities (but not in long-term, bc men will have relatively high investment as well)

• Prediction seen: men would rather have much more sex partners over a lifetime than women, men need to know their potential mate for less time before agreeing to have sex with them

Evidence for slight polygyny in short term mating behavior

• Macaque monkeys on island began to habitually wash their sweet potatoes. Young monkeys watched and copied

• Did the same with rice mixed w/ sand. Shows evidence for shared culture

• however, only 15 monkeys learned to wash in 5 years, what they were learning from each other had low fidelity, and only young monkeys picked it up

Macaque monkey evidence for primate culture

culture according to Kummer & Goodall

• transmission of innovation within and between generations

• no need for symbolic meaning of artifacts or innovation passed on

• based on observations of chimpanzees using and making tools

• definition opens opportunity for culture to be applicable in non-human populations (no need for application of meaning for something to be culture)

social learning

• copying (imitation, emulation)

• affordance learning

• observational conditioning

• enhancement

• direct teaching

Social facilitation

observing a behavior pattern in another individual leads an individual to express more of the same behavior (a behavior you already know how to do)

• ex: chicks already know how to peck, but watching another chick peck will make you start pecking

Local and stimulus enhancement

becoming attracted to a location or object upon observing another individual interacting with that location or object

• ex: pigeons gathering in the same place, people getting in a line just bc others are in a line, but they don’t know why they’re doing it

• local: attraction to a place, stimulus: attraction to object

Imitation

• very high fidelity

• reproducing the same actions of another to reproduce the same result and accomplish the same goal

• you understand intentions (have theory of mind)

cultures have different levels of fidelity due to mechanism of social learning

• emulation, imitation, and teaching require greater capacity for TOM to practice actions with higher fidelity

Why do cultures differ across species?

• Hand clasp grooming

  • evidence that type of behavior was learned from each other

  • if you hand clasp groom, you may do it differently depending on where you’re from, or you may not do it all

  • the variation is arbitrary, but it doesn’t facilitate action

• termite fishing

  • chimp uses “tools” to hunt termites: one stick for poking holes in the ground, then other for “fishing” and eating termites from hold

  • hard to do on large scale by individual learning

• medicinal plant use in chimpanzees

  • if chimps had a tapeworm, they’d swallow super fibrous leaves that they wouldn’t normally eat to remove parasites from digestive system and this behavior was learned from their mothers

Examples of chimpanzee culture

• 39 behavioral patterns across Africa that cannot be explained by ecological validity

• Behavioral patterns that vary between groups more than they do within groups

• Arbitrary behaviors such as hand-clasp grooming seem most difficult to explain through individual learning

Why is there an argument that chimpanzees have culture?

Individual learning

• trial and error learning is a powerful method of learning that does not involve observing others

• in many cases, actually leads to more flexible problem solving because an individual adjusts to situation and does not simply copy others who might use incorrect solution

• No, when gorillas that did not ever eat many nettles (because they grew up in captivity) were given nettles to eat, they ate them in the same way as the gorillas presumed to have learned them via culture

• Can’t be an example of culture/social learning bc it occurred via individual trial/error processes and observation of properties of nettles in general

Is gorilla nettle eating strategy learned via culture?

high fidelity because we need culture for our survival

What is likely to be the unique mechanism of human social learning/culture?

The Ratchet Effect

• Imitation and teaching allows humans to build new innovations on previous innovations

• This high fidelity form of social learning ratchets up cultural evolution as technology is refined and grows in complexity across generations

• imitation requires understanding mental states of others: only by understanding someone’s intentions can you copy them

• hypothesis: only humans imitate bc we read others’ intentions

• children imitate to a fault: they copy an adult demonstrator’s method even when the method cannot solve the problem (ex. rake was in ineffectual position, but kids would still copy the adult)

• apes emulate: they learn the tool is important from the demonstration but eventually find a technique that works

  • chimpanzee would learn that a tool was important for solving a problem, but would not copy the experimenter when unsuccessful, may use toy in a different way, learn result and try to recreate it by using a tool, but not precise steps

Do humans imitate differently?

Emulation learning

• chimpanzees learn the result that a tool can produce in the environment toward their goal

  • they do not learn to reproduce the actions from a demonstrator

• after watching an adult demonstrate how to use a string to retrieve a block, a child will learn how to do it and is successful, chimpanzees won’t

• emulation and simple imitation likely not enough for learning complex techniques

Example of how emulation learning can be ineffectual

True

True or False? Bonobos raised like children imitate like children while bonobos raised by their mothers do not.

• apes performed more actions when experimenter was directly copying them than when experimenters responded to an ape’s action with a different action, delayed the copied action, or delayed a different action

Do apes have awareness of others’ actions as well as their results?

chimpanzees emulate by default but can imitate when necessary, while human children imitate by default (if they can see an action is unnecessary, they don’t do it)

• Apes don’t mimic pointless tapping on box, but kids do

What is the difference between children and chimpanzee imitation and emulation?

If they do, it’s very little compared to constant intentional teaching in humans

Do chimpanzees intentionally teach?

social, theory of mind, physical.

• tested understanding of space, quantities, causality (physical), and social learning, communication, and theory of mind, therefore, we have the unique ability to learn from others at a very young age because we’re prepared for culture.

• Remember, children’s brains are underdeveloped

At 2.5 years of age children outperform juvenile and adult chimpanzees and orangutans on ______ problems related to _________________ but NOT ____________ tasks.

• women prioritize resources a lot more than men

• men always value physical attractiveness more than women

• men more likely to divorce wife over adultery bc it threatens paternity certainty, women more likely to divorce over cruelty/bad behavior bc it threatens resources

• men more willing to hook up with less intelligent women than women and less intelligent men (men less picky in short-term interactions)

Cross cultural long term partner preferences

• we have evolved psychology to find these fruits unattractive because we are attracted to symmetry (since we’re also bilateral)

Why are we less likely to buy ugly fruits?

• Neural circuits were designed by natural selection to solve problems. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving different adaptive problems- they are domain specific

• consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg; most of what goes on in your mind is hidden

• our modern skulls house a stone age mind, adapted to the environment of evolutionary ancestry

Basic Tenets of Evolutionary Psychology

• bilateral symmetry

• large eyes

• waist to hip ratio

What are evolutionarily shaped indicators of beauty?

Waist to hip ratio

• cross culturally and cross generations, men prefer women with waist that has 70% radius of hip radius

• they have higher fitness across cultures

• even as weight preferences fluctuated over time, ratio preference is maintained (preference lower for ratios both smaller and larger than 0.7)

• men wore t-shirts 48 hours without bathing

• women rated their photos for attractiveness

• women rated t-shirts of men with more symmetrical faces as smelling better

• Men with more symmetrical faces also had more olfactory cues for genetic variability

• (Source of unique individual odors is related to immune function)

Are women attracted to certain MHC combiantions?

• the operation of modules is mandatory and fast

• modules have dedicated neural architecture (bc there is some sort of problem threatening our survival that needs to be solved via automaticity. ex. neurons that fire when you detect eyes)

• modular systems are informationally encapsulated (different parts of the brain can’t change info that they manage)

• modules are domain specific

Tenets of the modularity of the mind

we can’t help but attribute intentionality/agency to the shapes moving in the video clip

Example of the mandatory/fast nature of input systems

Phineas Gage: before his accident, he was nice and normal, but afterwards, he became irritable and impulsive, couldn’t hold a job.

• Damage to regions in his brain impaired his executive function, implying that there’s dedicated architecture to different things

Bilateral amygdala damage leads to faulty assessment of trustworthiness

Examples of dedicated architecture in the brain

• systems are effective because they do their job no matter what (highly canalized)

• ex: phantom limb from networks in brain dedicated to sensation in missing limb

Examples of how modular systems are informationally encapsulated

• Wason selection task: turn over fewest cards to find any violations of rule

• social rule version of the task is easy, but the non social version of the task is harder because we have domain specificity for detecting cheaters/violators of social constructs

• humans prefer animals with white sclera

• when participants saw that they were being watched by kismet (massive white sclera) while the instructions of the game were given, they donated more to the public goods fund

• when humans saw a picture of eyes over a creamer fund instead of a picture of flowers, they paid more per liter of milk they consumed

we have fast, automatic neural networks that help us recognize when we might be caught cheating and we feel uneasy

Example of domain specific problem solving of the modular mind

Africa, likely before ancestors left Africa to live in different continents

Where did culture emerge?