R E V I E W A N D C R I T I Q U E O F “ T H E O R I G I N S O F D O M A I N - S P E C I F I C I T Y : T H E E V O L U T I O N O F

F U N C T I O N A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N ” B Y C O S M I D E S . L E D A , A N D J O H N T O O B Y ( 1 9 9 4 )

P R E S E N T A T I O N B Y C H R I S T I N E R O S A K R A N S EF O R H U M A N - M E D I A I N T E R A C T I O N ,

P R O F E S S O R C A R L O S G O D O Y , R P I

The Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of

Functional Organization

A Short Critique and Caveat

While the work of Cosmides, Leda & John Tooby represents an excellent resource for journeying into cognitive science, the organization of the paper itself is not as straightforward as would be optimal. Therefore, for this presentation, certain points have been reordered to fit a more logical progression. Also, being such a rich topic for discussion, I would have found a glossary of terms to be most helpful, but previous experience in this realm was probably assumed by the authors.Questions for discussion will be permitted at the end of the presentation.

“ D o m a i n - s p e c i f i c i t y i s a t h e o r e t i c a l p o s i t i o n i n c o g n i t i v e s c i e n c e t h a t a r g u e s t h a t m a n y a s p e c t s o f c o g n i t i o n a r e s u p p o r t e d b y s p e c i a l i z e d , p r e s u m a b l y e v o l u t i o n a r i l y s p e c i f i e d , l e a r n i n g d e v i c e s . ”

- - W i k i p e d i a

What is Domain Specificity?

“The work on domain specificity in cognitive development has not been, for the most part, motivated by evolutionary considerations or, indeed, by any larger program intended to discover how the human mind regulates behavior. Instead, it was spurred by philosophical arguments that combinatorial explosion will prevent a blank slate -or its technologically modern equivalent, the general-purpose computer - from learning anything in real time (e.g., Carey, 1985; Keil, 1989; Markman, 1989).”

--The Origins of Domain Specificity

And how did that happen?

The Evolution of Mind

Function of a design ->

ex. sexual jealousy ->

The evolutionary process acting on our hunter-gatherer ancestors led to certain evolved adaptations.

Hence, this is an adaptationistapproach to cognitive evolution.

Key – design changes that enhanced their own propagation were those that were then selected for.

An Adaptive Problem

Beyond the basics, including: information gathering, inference & decision making

Defined as an evolutionary recurrent problem whose solution promoted reproduction.

Our diverse range of adaptations include a myriad of necessary tasks, from “solicitation of assistance from one's parents, to language acquisition, to modeling the spatial distribution of local objects, to coalition formation and cooperation, to the deduction of intentions on the basis of facial expressions, to avoiding incest, to allocating effort between activities, to the interpretation of threats, to mate selection, to object recognition.”

Time for a little contrast

A domain-general psychological architecture cannot guide behavior in ways that promote fitness for these reasons:

1. “Fit” behavior differs from domain to domain, so there is no domain-general criterion of success or failure.

ex. Vervet Monkeys

Reason 1:

The definition of error is domain-dependent.

(ex. sex w/ kin)

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity

2. Adaptive courses of action can be neither deduced nor learned by general criteria, because they depend on statistical relationships between features of the environment, behavior, and fitness that emerge over many generations and are, therefore, not observable in a single lifetime.

Reason 2: Many relationships necessary to the successful regulation of action cannot beobserved by any individual during their lifetime.

Now for the Really Interesting One

3. “Combinatorial explosion” paralyzes any truly domain-general system when encountering real-world complexity.

Reason 3: Due to the permutations of possible outcomes, alternatives increase exponentially as the problem complexity increases.

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity

Domain-Specific Reasoning in Children

Certain constraints on the system decide what adaptations can be selected for (evolvabilityconstraints from recurring conditions).

Because the world has certain “enduring properties” we can go beyond what is perceptible to develop an accurate model of reality.

(ex. Chomskyan psycholinguistics)

Evolution, domain specificity, and culture

Go Team Human!

Not everything is taught. Some comes about from natural selection.We develop these mechanisms according to the “local situations”.Also, the existence of domain-specific mechanisms signifies that there is a level of universal human mental content – a universal human "culture" (e.g., Universal Grammar, social exchange logic, object permanence, theory of mind) !!!!!!

Example –Food Sharing

Optimal foraging theory suggests (1) that we should have domain-specific information-processing mechanisms governing foraging and sharing (2) these mechanisms should be sensitive to information regarding variance in foraging success, causing us to prefer one set of sharing rules for high variance items and another set for low variance items.Ex. The !Kung San

The Future of Domain-Specific Research

Anthropology and psychology have the same basis in theory: a description of the reliably developing architecture of the human mind, a collection of cognitive adaptations. This approach represents a link between mind, culture, and the world. Domain-specific performance is the signature of these evolved mechanisms, a signature that can lead us to a comprehensive mapping of the human mind.

Questions? Thoughts? Ideas?