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Participants were interviewed about the biological and psychological functioning of a dead agent. In Experiment 1, even 4- to 6-year-olds stated that biological processes ceased at death, although this trend was more apparent among 6- to 8-year-olds. In Experiment 2, 4- to 12-year-olds were asked about psychological functioning. The youngest children were equally likely to state that both cognitive and psychobiological states continued at death, whereas the oldest children were more likely to state that cognitive states continued. In Experiment 3, children and adults were asked about an array of psychological states. With the exception of preschoolers, who did not differentiate most of the psychological states, older children and adults were likely to attribute epistemic, emotional, and desire states to dead agents. These findings suggest that developmental mechanisms underlie intuitive accounts of dead agents' minds.

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The possibility that infants' and young children's immature behaviors and cognitions are sometimes adaptive is explored and interpreted in terms of evolutionary theory. It is argued that developmental immaturity had an adaptive role in evolution and continues to have an adaptive role in human development. The role of developmental retardation in human evolution is discussed, followed by an examination of the relation between humans' extended childhood and brain plasticity. Behavioral neoteny, as exemplified by play, is examined, as are some potentially adaptive aspects of infants' perception and cognition that limit the amount of information they can process. Aspects of immature cognition during early childhood that may have some contemporaneous adaptive value are also discussed. It is proposed that viewing immaturity as sometimes adaptive to the developing child alters how children and their development are viewed.Nature wants children to be children before they are men. If we deliberately depart from this order, we shall get premature fruits which are neither ripe nor well flavored and which soon decay. We shall have youthful sages and grown up children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling, peculiar to itself; nothing can be more foolish than to substitute our ways for them.-Jean Jacques RousseauPeople understandably tend to see development as being progressive: from immature and inefficient structures and functions to mature and efficient ones. Early, immature forms are seen as "unfinished" and incomplete versions of the adult; the child is a "work in progress." From this viewpoint, immaturity is a necessary evil, something that people must get through on their way to adulthood, where the "real show of humanity emerges on stage" (L. Thomas, 1993, p. 175). This is not an unreasonable view. A prolonged period of youth is necessary for humans. Humans, more than any other species, must survive by their wits; human communities are more complex and diverse than those of any other species, and this requires that they have not only a flexible intelligence to learn the conventions of their societies but also a long time to learn them. But the species's physical and cognitive development need not progress synchronously. Their prolonged bodily development could in theory be accompanied by rapid cognitive and social development. This would result in a physically dependent child who has the intellectual and social wherewithal to master the ways of the world.Portions of this article were presented at

The prolonged cognitive immaturity characteristic of human youth is described as adaptive in and of itself. The adaptive nature of cognitive immaturity is examined in developmental research in the areas of metacognition, egocentricity, plasticity and the speed of information processing, and language acquisition. Some of the consequences of viewing children's immature cognition as adaptive for cognitive development and education are discussed.Bernadette Gray-Little served as action editor for this article.Portions of the article were written while David F. Bjorklund was supported by a grant from The Spencer Foundation. We would like to thank the following people for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article:

Based on the tenets of parental investment theory, the authors postulate that there was greater pressure to inhibit potentially maladaptive emotional, social, and sexual responses on prehistoric women than men in some contexts, resulting in enhanced inhibitory abilities in women in some domains. They reviewed studies whose researchers examined gender differences on social, behavioral, and cognitive tasks involving inhibition and found gender differences favoring female humans most consistent for social tasks (e.g., control of emotions), somewhat less pronounced for behavioral tasks (e.g., delay of gratification), and weak and inconsistent for cognitive tasks (e.g., conceptual tempo). This pattern was interrupted as being consistent with the position that gender differences in inhibition are relatively domain specific in nature, with women demonstrating greater abilities on tasks related to reproduction and childrearing, which is consistent with parental investment theory.

Evolutionary developmental psychology involves the expression of evolved, epigenetic programs, as described by the developmental systems approach, over the course of ontogeny. There have been different selection pressures on organisms at different times in ontogeny, and some characteristics of infants and children were selected in evolution to serve an adaptive function at that time in their life history rather than to prepare individuals for later adulthood. Examples of such adaptive functions of immaturity are provided from infancy, play, and cognitive development. Most evolved psychological mechanisms are proposed to be domain specific in nature and have been identified for various aspects of children's cognitive and social development, most notably for the acquisition of language and for theory of mind. Differences in the quality and quantity of parental investment affect children's development and influence their subsequent reproductive and childcare strategies. Some sex differences observed in childhood, particularly as expressed during play, are seen as antecedents and preparations for adult sex differences. Because evolved mechanisms were adaptive to ancestral environments, they are not always adaptive for contemporary people, and this mismatch of evolved mechanisms with modern environments is seen in children's maladjustment to some aspects of formal schooling. We argue that an evolutionary perspective can be valuable for developing a better understanding of human ontogeny in contemporary society and that a developmental perspective is important for a better understanding of evolutionary psychology.

The Origins of Human Nature offers readers the first booklength attempt to define the field of evolutionary developmental psychology-the application of the principle of natural selection to explain contemporary human development. The authors point out that an evolutionary-developmental perspective allows one to view gene-environment interactions, the significance of individual differences, and the role of behavior and development in evolution in much greater depth. The authors also focus on how an evolutionary perspective can foster a better understanding of human development and how developmental processes may have influenced the course of human evolution.Of particular interest are chapters that explore factors influencing parenting and other aspects of family life; the role of play; and the interacting roles of an extended juvenile period, a big brain, and a complex social structure in human cognitive evolution. The authors present a hybrid approach to evolution and development, pointing out that though underlying assumptions held by evolutionary and developmental psychologists have been at odds, each field has much to offer the other. This volume will be an important and useful resource for scholars and others interested in the relationship between evolution and psychological development.