Evolution Learning And Cognition
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Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior
Author: Sara J. Shettleworth
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2010-04-10
How do animals perceive the world, learn, remember, search for food or mates, communicate, and find their way around? Do any nonhuman animals count, imitate one another, use a language, or have a culture? What are the uses of cognition in nature and how might it have evolved? What is the current status of Darwin's claim that other species share the same "mental powers" as humans, but to different degrees? In this completely revised second edition of Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, Sara Shettleworth addresses these questions, among others, by integrating findings from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a unique and wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research on animal cognition, in the broadest sense--from species-specific adaptations of vision in fish and associative learning in rats to discussions of theory of mind in chimpanzees, dogs, and ravens. She reviews the latest research on topics such as episodic memory, metacognition, and cooperation and other-regarding behavior in animals, as well as recent theories about what makes human cognition unique. In every part of this new edition, Shettleworth incorporates findings and theoretical approaches that have emerged since the first edition was published in 1998. The chapters are now organized into three sections: Fundamental Mechanisms (perception, learning, categorization, memory), Physical Cognition (space, time, number, physical causation), and Social Cognition (social knowledge, social learning, communication). Shettleworth has also added new chapters on evolution and the brain and on numerical cognition, and a new chapter on physical causation that integrates theories of instrumental behavior with discussions of foraging, planning, and tool using.
An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology
An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is the first concise introduction that lays out the epistemological foundations of evolutionary cognitive archaeology in a way that is accessible to students. The volume is divided into three sections. The first section situates cognitive archaeology in the pantheon of archaeological approaches and distinguishes between ideational cognitive archaeology and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. This is followed by a close look at the nature of cognitive archaeological inferences and concludes with brief summaries of the major methods of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The second section of the book introduces the reader to a variety of cognitive phenomena that are accessible using the methods of cognitive archaeology: memory, technical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, art and aesthetics, and symbolism and language. The third section presents a brief outline of hominin cognitive evolution from the perspective of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. The authors divide the archaeological record into three major phases: The Bipedal Apes—3.3 million-1.7 million years ago; The Axe Age—1.7 million-300,000 years ago; and The Emergence of Modern Thinking—300,000–12,000 years ago. An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology is an essential text for undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars across the behavioral and social sciences interested in learning about cognitive archaeology, including psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists.
Evolutionary Foundations of Learning and Cognition
Author: Georgian Federation of Psychologists Academic Team
language: en
Publisher: Prof. Dr. Bilal Semih Bozdemir
Release Date:
The field of evolutionary psychology has provided invaluable insights into the origins and mechanisms underlying human learning and cognition. At its core, this paradigm proposes that the architecture of the mind is the product of specific and recurrent selection pressures acting over deep evolutionary time (Shackelford & Liddle, 2014). From this perspective, the human mind is not a blank slate, but rather a set of specialized computational mechanisms designed to solve adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. (Shackelford & Liddle, 2014) Evolutionary psychologists argue that attention to adaptive function is key to understanding the design of the human mind. They posit that the principles underlying biological evolution, such as random mutation and natural selection, can be applied to the development of human knowledge and problem-solving. (Sweller & Sweller, 2006) This view suggests that long-term memory functions akin to a genome, with learning from others analogous to biological reproduction. Similarly, working memory when processing novel information can be viewed as an epigenetic system managing environmental information, while long-term working memory is the epigenetic system's management of genomic information. (Sweller & Sweller, 2006) This integrated perspective on the nature of human learning and thought has important implications for how we approach the presentation and acquisition of information. The suggestion that the development of human knowledge and biological evolution by natural selection share a common underlying base can be traced back to the ideas of Charles Darwin, and has since gained significant traction in the field of evolutionary psychology. (Cosmides & Tooby, 2005) The core theoretical assumptions of evolutionary psychology, as well as the significant empirical findings that have emerged from this approach, offer a powerful framework for unifying the currently disparate subdisciplines of psychological science.