By David Bjorklund, Evolutionary Psychology, 14:4, October 17, 2016. The abstract:
“Developmental thinking is gradually becoming integrated within
mainstream evolutionary psychology. This is most apparent with respect
to the role of parenting, with proponents of life history theory arguing that cognitive and behavioral plasticity
early in life permits children to select different life history
strategies, with such strategies being adaptive solutions to different
fitness trade-offs. I argue that adaptations develop and are based on
the highly plastic nature of infants’ and children’s
behavior/cognition/brains. The concept of evolved probabilistic cognitive mechanisms
is introduced, defined as information processing mechanisms evolved to
solve recurrent problems faced by ancestral populations that are
expressed in a probabilistic fashion in each individual in a generation
and are based on the continuous and bidirectional interaction over time
at all levels of organization, from the genetic through the cultural.
Early perceptual/cognitive biases result in behavior that, when
occurring in a species-typical environment, produce continuous adaptive
changes in behavior (and cognition), yielding adaptive outcomes.
Examples from social learning and tool use are provided, illustrating
the development of adaptations via evolved probabilistic cognitive
mechanisms. The integration of developmental concepts into mainstream
evolutionary psychology (and evolutionary concepts into mainstream
developmental psychology) will provide a clearer picture of what it
means to be human.”
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