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Evolution, Development, and Human Social Cognition

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Abstract

Explaining the causal origins of what are taken to be uniquely human capacities for understanding the mind in the first years of life is a primary goal of social cognitive development research, which concerns so called “theory of mind” or “mindreading” skills. We review and discuss particular examples of this research in the context of its underlying evolutionary conceptual framework known as the neo-Darwinian modern synthesis. It is increasingly recognized that the modern synthesis is limited in its neglect of developmental issues. A recent convergence of work from diverse sources, including but not limited to evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) and developmental systems approaches, demonstrate the need for a developmental expansion of modern evolutionary theory. We attempt to show that not only are nativist explanations of early human social cognition vulnerable to the criticisms of this developmental shift in thinking, but that these criticisms also problematize the dominant and more mainstream theories in early social cognitive development research. We conclude by discussing the importance of developmental analysis in understanding the ontogeny of cognitive capacities in individuals as well as species.

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Notes

  1. And in psychology more generally under the banner of Evolutionary Psychology.

  2. By genocentric we mean an approach that assumes genes contain developmental information and therefore which ignores or minimizes developmental processes. In our view, genocentrism is a holdover from the population genetic model.

  3. Although we use the term “evo-devo”, it should not be taken to indicate that biology’s attempt to integrate the issues of evolution and development has led to the emergence of a homogeneous discipline. How population-genetics and developmental models will be integrated, and what form this discipline will take (i.e. evo-devo, devo-evo, devgen-popgen, and eco-evo-devo) is still debated (Gilbert 2003; Müller 2007). Evo-devo is the dominant form of this merger. Though many evo-devo researchers still take the gene to be sole unit of heritance, it is believed that the merger of evolutionary biology and developmental biology will lead to emergent properties not present in either discipline currently (Hall 2000), and will likely have important implications for psychology as well.

  4. Although there are appropriate uses for isolation procedures (e.g. Gottlieb 1976; West and King 1977; Zulley 2000), they do not lead to the obvious separation between the intrinsic and extrinsic factors involved in development in the way described below.

  5. Developmental analysis involves the careful study of a multitude of factors over time. Cross-sectional studies provide a “snap-shot” of development and cannot provide the same information about stability and change over time that data longitudinal methods offer. The most notable problem is the assumption that one can “reverse-engineer” developmental processes from cross-sectional studies when these data can only be appropriately acquired through longitudinal methods.

  6. Tinbergen (1963) proposed that biological study of behaviour could be best approached through focusing on four main questions concerning the proximate cause, adaptive function, development (ontogeny) and evolutionary history (phylogeny) of the behaviour under study.

  7. However, given the approach we have taken in this article, we clearly do not endorse the innatist presuppositions present in classical ethology (see Lehrman 1953).

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Acknowledgements

Preparation of this article was supported by a Doctoral Scholarship and a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) awarded to the authors, respectively. We thank the four anonymous reviewers who provided generous feedback on a previous version of this article. We would also like to thank Paul Egré for his comments on our manuscript and his assistance throughout the review process.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

    Tyler J. Wereha & Timothy P. Racine

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  1. Tyler J. Wereha
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  2. Timothy P. Racine
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Correspondence to Tyler J. Wereha.

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Wereha, T.J., Racine, T.P. Evolution, Development, and Human Social Cognition. Rev.Phil.Psych. 3, 559–579 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-012-0115-2

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