How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology

MacLean, Evan L.; Matthews, Luke J.; Hare, Brian; Nunn, Charles L.; Anderson, Rindy C.; Aureli, Filippo; Brannon, Elizabeth M.; Call, Josep; Drea, Christine M.; Emery, Nathan J.; Haun, Daniel B. M.; Herrmann, Eva; Jacobs, Lucia F.; Platt, Michael L.; Rosati, Alexandra G.; Sandel, Aaron A.; Schroepfer, Kara K.; Seed, Amanda M.; Tan, Jingzhi; Schaik, Carel P. van; Wobber, Victoria

doi:10.1007/s10071-011-0448-8

Cited by 236 publications

(227 citation statements)

References 162 publications

(187 reference statements)

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“…For example, in a large-scale test battery, Herrmann et al [17] found that children consistently outperformed chimpanzees on social but not physical tasks, suggesting that humans have specialized socio-cognitive skills in addition to relatively conserved skills for dealing with the physical world. Greater collaboration between researchers, including greater standardization of experimental protocols and the use of online data repositories to facilitate pooled analyses of subjects' performances from different laboratories [18,19] will also improve the scope for robust analyses. In particular, there is ample scope for analyses of the predictors of individual differences, incorporating information on characteristics such as sex, age, body condition, breeding status, and rearing conditions.…”

Section: Limitations Of the 'Cognitive Capacity' Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Individual variation in cognitive performance: developmental and evolutionary perspectives

Thornton

Lukas

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

283

231

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Animal cognition experiments frequently reveal striking individual variation but rarely consider its causes and largely ignore its potential consequences. Studies often focus on a subset of high-performing subjects, sometimes viewing evidence from a single individual as sufficient to demonstrate the cognitive capacity of a species. We argue that the emphasis on demonstrating species-level cognitive capacities detracts from the value of individual variation in understanding cognitive development and evolution. We consider developmental and evolutionary interpretations of individual variation and use metaanalyses of data from published studies to examine predictors of individual performance. We show that reliance on small sample sizes precludes robust conclusions about individual abilities as well as inter-and intraspecific differences. We advocate standardization of experimental protocols and pooling of data between laboratories to improve statistical rigour. Our analyses show that cognitive performance is influenced by age, sex, rearing conditions and previous experience. These effects limit the validity of comparative analyses unless developmental histories are taken into account, and complicate attempts to understand how cognitive traits are expressed and selected under natural conditions. Further understanding of cognitive evolution requires efforts to elucidate the heritability of cognitive traits and establish whether elevated cognitive performance confers fitness advantages in nature.

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Section: Limitations Of the 'Cognitive Capacity' Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Individual variation in cognitive performance: developmental and evolutionary perspectives

Thornton

Lukas

2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

283

231

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“…In recent years, majority influence has become a favourable research topic for behavioural biologists. One line of research has focused on our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates (chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes: Bonnie, Horner, Whiten, & de Waal, 2007;Haun, Rekers, & Tomasello, 2012;Hopper, Schapiro, Lambeth, & Brosnan, 2011;Whiten, Horner, & de Waal, 2005; capuchin monkeys, Cebus apella: Dindo, Thierry, & Whiten, 2008;Dindo, Whiten, & de Waal, 2009;Perry, 2009), which could enable intriguing analysis of the evolutionary roots of this human phenomenon (MacLean et al, 2012). Another line of research has aimed to investigate the possibility of convergent evolution of conformity by focusing on phylogenetically more distant species, such as fish (Day, MacDonald, Brown, Laland, & Reader, 2001;Kendal, Coolen, & Laland, 2004;Pike & Laland, 2010), rats (Galef & Whiskin, 2008;Jolles, de Visser, & van den Bos, 2011;Konopasky & Telegdy, 1977) and fruit flies (Battesti, Moreno, Joly, & Mery, 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

Leeuwen

Haun

2014

Animal Behaviour

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Keywords: conformity decision making frequency-dependent learning majority influence nonhuman animals social learningIn this review, we explore the extent to which the recent evidence for conformity in nonhuman animals may alternatively be explained by the animals' preference for social information regardless of the number of individuals demonstrating the respective behaviour. Conformity as a research topic originated in human psychology and has been described as the phenomenon in which individuals change their behaviour to match the behaviour displayed by the majority of group members. Recent studies have aimed to investigate the same process in nonhuman animals; however, most of the adopted designs have not been able to control for social influences independent of any majority influence and some studies have not even incorporated a majority in their designs. This begs the question to what extent the 'conformity interpretation' is preliminary and should be revisited in light of animals' general susceptibility to social influences. Similarly, demarcating social from majority influences sheds new light on the original findings in human psychology and motivates reinterpretation of the reported behavioural patterns in terms of social instead of majority influences. Conformity can have profound ramifications for individual fitness and group dynamics; identifying the exact source responsible for animals' behavioural adjustments is essential for understanding animals' learning biases and interpreting cross-species data in terms of evolutionary processes.

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“…This is true for accurate perceptual experiences and successful decision making, but also for failures. As a field, we continue to develop methods that can be used with many species and that can highlight aspects of cognitive evolution (see MacLean et al, 2012). From that perspective, we should try to understand how other animals not only apply successful cognitive processes to problems but also unsuccessful cognition to problems that generate errors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

Beran¹

2017

CCBR

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Human cognition affords our species an excellent toolbox for solving problems. Many nonhuman animal species appear to share with humans some of these tools. However, human cognition also is fallible. Susceptibility to perceptual illusions, misrepresentation of probabilities, cognitive biases, faulty memory, and heuristics all present sources of error from which behavior is suboptimal in the pursuit of goals. Some nonhuman species share these perceptual and cognitive biases with humans. Examples of this are described for nonhuman primates, ranging from perceptual illusions to humanlike failures on games of probability such as the Monty Hall Problem. Sometimes the performances of nonhuman primates mirror those of humans, but there are exceptions. Given that other species do experience things erroneously and make errors in judgment, it is an exciting question of whether they also might generate any strategies to offset their fallibility. Two examples to suggest that they do are provided from research with chimpanzees. One is of strategic self-distraction in the face of tempting rewards in a delay of gratification task. The other is of information-seeking behaviors in different contexts where chimpanzees have different types of information. This research, and that of many other groups, shows the value of examining perceptual and cognitive errors across species, and how different individuals and different species may be equipped psychologically to deal with the possibility of these errors occurring. Keywords: primate cognition, perception, illusions, self-control, metacognition IntroductionThe 20th century saw a shift in how humans thought about nonhuman animals (hereafter, animals), their behavior, and the cognitive processes that might underlie their behavior. Comparative cognition emerged as a strong discipline in the second half of the century, largely as a result of the broader cognitive revolution in human psychology, continued developments in ethology, and new opportunities to study a diverse range of species (Shettleworth, 2010). Earlier comparative psychologists certainly took an interest in aspects of cognition (see Dewsbury, 1984Dewsbury, , 2000Dewsbury, , 2013, but researchers in the second half of the century provided new approaches to understanding animal minds. Initially these approaches focused largely on traditional aspects of human cognitive psychology, including memory, perceptual capacities, and learning phenomenon (e.g., Honig & Fetterman, 1992;Hulse, Fowler, & Honig, 1978;Roitblat, Bever, & Terrace, 1984), as they might reflect the use of mental representations and other information-processing approaches for interacting with the world. Later, 58COMPARATIVE COGNITION & BEHAVIOR REVIEWS Beran research increasingly focused on questions that covered nearly every topic found in a human cognitive psychology textbook, and even questions that were not typically discussed in such sources (e.g., theory of mind, deception, mind reading, cooperative decision making, metacognition, mental time travel, and ot...

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How does cognition evolve? Phylogenetic comparative psychology

Cited by 236 publications

References 162 publications

Individual variation in cognitive performance: developmental and evolutionary perspectives

Individual variation in cognitive performance: developmental and evolutionary perspectives

Conformity without majority? The case for demarcating social from majority influences

To Err Is (Not Only) Human: Fallibility as a Window Into Primate Cognition

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