Four routes of cognitive evolution

The Evolution of Symbolic Thought: At the Intersection of Schizophrenia Psychopathology, Ethnoarchaeology, and Neuroscience

The human capacity for symbolic representation arises, evolutionarily and developmentally, from the exploitation of a widespread sensorimotor network, along a fundamental continuity between embodied and symbolic modes of experience. In this regard, the fine balancing between constrained sensorimotor connections (responsible for self-embodiment processing) and more untethered neural associations (responsible for abstract and symbolic processing) is context dependent and plastically neuromodulated, thus intersubjectively constructed within a specific socio-cultural milieu. Instead, in the schizophrenia spectrum this system falls off catastrophically, due to an unbalance toward too unconstrained sensorimotor connectivity, leading to a profound distortion of self/world relation with a symbolic activity detached from its embodied ground. For this very reason, however, schizophrenia psychopathology may contribute to unveil, in a distorted or magnified way, ubiquitous structural features of human symbolic activity, beneath the various, historically determined cultural systems. In this respect, a comparative approach, linking psychopathology and ethnoarchaeology, allows highlight the following invariant formal characteristics of symbolic processing: (1) Emergence of salient perceptive fragments, which stand out from the perceptual field. (2) Spreading of a multiplicity of new significances with suspension of common-sense meaning. (3) Dynamic and passive character through which meaning proliferation is experienced. This study emphasizes the importance of fine-grained psychopathology to elucidate, within a cross-disciplinary framework, the evolutionarily and developmental pathways that shape the basic structures of human symbolization.

Can human nature be saved?

This paper argues that the best interpretation of the human nature concept used in evolutionary social science (ESS) is as the human adaptive complex. This understanding of the concept enables us to make sense of the features of human nature that are described in that literature as symptomatic of traits which are part of human nature, rather than being constitutive of human nature itself. This enables this proposal to make better sense of how the human nature concept is used than other current proposals for how to understand that concept.

Disembodiment and Language in Schizophrenia: An Integrated Psychopathological and Evolutionary Perspective

Different hypotheses have flourished to explain the evolutionary paradox of schizophrenia. In this contribution, we sought to illustrate how, in the schizophrenia spectrum, the concept of embodiment may underpin the phylogenetic and developmental pathways linking sensorimotor processes, the origin of human language, and the construction of a basic sense of the self. In particular, according to an embodied model of language, we suggest that the reuse of basic sensorimotor loops for language, while enabling the development of fully symbolic thought, has pushed the human brain close to the threshold of a severe disruption of self-embodiment processes, which are at the core of schizophrenia psychopathology. We adopted an inter-disciplinary approach (psychopathology, neuroscience, developmental biology) within an evolutionary framework, to gain an integrated, multi-perspectival model on the origin of schizophrenia vulnerability. A maladaptive over-expression of evolutionary-developmental trajectories toward language at the expense of embodiment processes would have led to the evolutionary "trade-off" of a hyper-symbolic activity to the detriment of a disembodied self. Therefore, schizophrenia psychopathology might be the cost of long-term co-evolutive interactions between brain and language.

Canine perspective-taking

An important question in the study of canine cognition is how dogs understand humans, given that they show impressive abilities for interacting and communicating with us. In this review, we describe and discuss studies that have investigated dogs' perspective-taking abilities. There is solid evidence that dogs are not only sensitive to the gaze of others, but also their attention. We specifically address the question whether dogs have the ability to take the perspective of others and thus come to understand what others can or cannot perceive. From the latter, they may then infer what others know and use this representation to anticipate what others do next. Still, dogs might simply rely on directly observable cues and on what they themselves can perceive when they assess what others can perceive. And instead of making inferences from representations of others' mental states, they may have just learned that certain behaviours of ours lead to certain outcomes. However, recent research seems to challenge this low-level explanation. Dogs have solved several perspective-taking tasks instantly and reliably across a large number of variations, including geometrical gaze-following, stealing in the dark, concealing information from others, and Guesser/Knower differentiation. In the latter studies, dogs' choices between two human informants were strongly influenced by cues related to the humans' visual access to the food, even when the two informants behaved identically. And finally, we review a recent study that found dogs reacting differently to misleading suggestions of human informants that have either a true or false belief about the location of food. We discuss this surprising result in terms of the comprehension of reality-incongruent mental states, which is considered as a hallmark of Theory of Mind acquisition in human development. Especially on the basis of the latter findings, we conclude that pet dogs might be sensitive to what others see, know, intend, and believe. Therefore, this ability seems to have evolved not just in the corvid and primate lineages, but also in dogs.

The Creative Neurons

Creativity generates novel solutions to tasks by processing information. Imagination and mental representations are part of the creative process; we can mull over ideas of our own making, and construct algorithms or scenarios from them. Social scenario-building can be viewed as a human cognitive "super-power" that involves abstraction, meta-representation, time-travel, and directed imaginative thought. We humans have a "theater in our minds" to play out a near-infinite array of social strategies and contingencies. Here we propose an integrative model for why and how humans evolved extraordinary creative abilities. We posit that a key aspect of hominin evolution involved relatively open and fluid social relationships among communities, enabled by a unique extended family structure similar to that of contemporary hunter-gatherer band societies. Intercommunity relationships facilitated the rapid flow of information-"Culture"-that underpinned arms-races in information processing, language, imagination, and creativity that distinguishes humans from other species.

The effects of spatial stability and cue type on spatial learning: Implications for theories of parallel memory systems

Some theories of spatial learning predict that associative rules apply under only limited circumstances. For example, learning based on a boundary has been claimed to be immune to cue competition effects because boundary information is the basis for the formation of a cognitive map, whilst landmark learning does not involve cognitive mapping. This is referred to as the cue type hypothesis. However, it has also been claimed that cue stability is a prerequisite for the formation of a cognitive map, meaning that whichever cue type was perceived as stable would enter a cognitive map and thus be immune to cue competition, while unstable cues will be subject to cue competition, regardless of cue type. In experiments 1 and 2 we manipulated the stability of boundary and landmark cues when learning the location of two hidden goals. One goal location was constant with respect to the boundary, and the other constant with respect to the landmark cues. For both cue types, the presence of distal orientation cues provided directional information. For half the participants the landmark cues were unstable relative to the boundary and orientation cues, whereas for the remainder of the participants the boundary was unstable relative to landmarks and orientation cues. In a second stage of training, all cues remained stable so that both goal locations could be learned with respect to both landmark and boundary information. According to the cue type hypothesis, boundary information should block learning about landmarks regardless of cue stability. According to the cue stability hypothesis, however, landmarks should block learning about the boundary when the landmarks appear stable relative to the boundary. Regardless of cue type or stability the results showed reciprocal blocking, contrary to both formulations of incidental cognitive mapping. Experiment 3 established that the results of Experiments 1 and 2 could not be explained in terms of difficulty in learning certain locations with respect to different cue types. In a final experiment, following training in which both landmarks and boundary cues signalled two goal locations, a new goal location was established with respect to the landmark cues, before testing with the boundary, which had never been used to define the new goal location. The results of this novel test of the interaction between boundary and landmark cues indicated that new learning with respect to the landmark had a profound effect on navigation with respect to the boundary, counter to the predictions of incidental cognitive mapping of boundaries.

How Dogs Perceive Humans and How Humans Should Treat Their Pet Dogs: Linking Cognition With Ethics

Humans interact with animals in numerous ways and on numerous levels. We are indeed living in an “animal”s world,’ in the sense that our lives are very much intertwined with the lives of animals. This also means that animals, like those dogs we commonly refer to as our pets, are living in a “human’s world” in the sense that it is us, not them, who, to a large degree, define and manage the interactions we have with them. In this sense, the human-animal relationship is nothing we should romanticize: it comes with clear power relations and thus with a set of responsibilities on the side of those who exercise this power. This holds, despite the fact that we like to think about our dogs as human’s best friend. Dogs have been part of human societies for longer than any other domestic species. Like no other species they exemplify the role of companion animals. Relationships with pet dogs are both very widespread and very intense, often leading to strong attachments between owners or caregivers and animals and to a treatment of these dogs as family members or even children. But how does this relationship look from the dogs’ perspective? How do they perceive the humans they engage with? What responsibilities and duties arise from the kind of mutual understanding, attachment, and the supposedly “special” bonds we form with them? Are there ethical implications, maybe even ethical implications beyond animal welfare? The past decades have seen an upsurge of research from comparative cognition on pet dogs’ cognitive and social skills, especially in comparison with and reference to humans. We will therefore set our discussion about the nature and ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship against the background of the current empirical knowledge on dog (social) cognition. This allows us to analyze the human–dog relationship by applying an interdisciplinary approach that starts from the perspective of the dog to ultimately inform the perspective of humans. It is our aim to thereby identify ethical dimensions of the human–dog relationship that have been overlooked so far.

Sinking In: The Peripheral Baldwinisation of Human Cognition

The Baldwin effect is a hypothetical process in which a learned response to environmental change evolves a genetic basis. Modelling has shown that the Baldwin effect offers a plausible and elegant explanation for the emergence of complex behavioural traits, but there is little direct empirical evidence for its occurrence. We highlight experimental evidence of the Baldwin effect and argue that it acts preferentially on peripheral rather than on central cognitive processes. Careful scrutiny of research on taste-aversion and fear learning, language, and imitation indicates that their efficiency depends on adaptively specialised input and output processes: analogues of scanner and printer interfaces that feed information to core inference processes and structure their behavioural expression.

Proximate and ultimate causes of ritual behavior

Ritual behaviour, intended as a specific, repetitive and rigid form of action flow, appears both in social and non-social environmental contexts, representing an ubiquitous phenomenon in animal life including human individuals and cultures. The purpose of this contribution is to investigate an evolutionary continuum in proximate and ultimate causes of ritual behavior. A phylogenetic homology in proximal mechanisms can be found, based on the repetition of genetically programmed and/or epigenetically acquired action patterns of behavior. As far as its adaptive significance, ethological comparative studies show that the tendency to ritualization is driven by the unpredictability of social or ecological environmental stimuli. In this perspective, rituals may have a "homeostatic" function over unpredictable environments, as further highlighted by psychopathological compulsions. In humans, a circular loop may have occurred among ritual practices and symbolic activity to deal with a novel culturally-mediated world. However, we suggest that the compulsion to action patterns repetition, typical of all rituals, has a genetically inborn motor foundation, thus precognitive and pre-symbolic. Rooted in such phylogenetically conserved motor structure (proximate causes), the evolution of cognitive and symbolic capacities have generated the complexity of human rituals, though maintaining the original adaptive function (ultimate causes) to cope with unpredictable environments.

The Lens Shapes the View: on Task Dependency in ToM Research

Purpose of Review

This article provides an overview of current findings on Theory of Mind (ToM) in human children and adults and highlights the relationship between task specifications and their outcome in socio-cognitive research.

Recent Findings

ToM, the capacity to reason about and infer others’ mental states, develops progressively throughout childhood—the exact time course is still a matter of debate. Neuroimaging studies indicate the involvement of a widespread neuronal network during mentalizing, suggesting that ToM is a multifaceted process. Accordingly, the tasks and trainings that currently exist to investigate and enhance ToM are heterogeneous, and the outcomes largely depend on the paradigm that was used.

Summary

We argue for the implementation of multiple-task batteries in the assessment of socio-cognitive abilities. Decisions for a particular paradigm need to be carefully considered and justified. We want to emphasize the importance of targeted research on the relationship between task specifications and outcomes.

Evolutionary neuroscience of cumulative culture

Culture suffuses all aspects of human life. It shapes our minds and bodies and has provided a cumulative inheritance of knowledge, skills, institutions, and artifacts that allows us to truly stand on the shoulders of giants. No other species approaches the extent, diversity, and complexity of human culture, but we remain unsure how this came to be. The very uniqueness of human culture is both a puzzle and a problem. It is puzzling as to why more species have not adopted this manifestly beneficial strategy and problematic because the comparative methods of evolutionary biology are ill suited to explain unique events. Here, we develop a more particularistic and mechanistic evolutionary neuroscience approach to cumulative culture, taking into account experimental, developmental, comparative, and archaeological evidence. This approach reconciles currently competing accounts of the origins of human culture and develops the concept of a uniquely human technological niche rooted in a shared primate heritage of visuomotor coordination and dexterous manipulation.

Born Pupils? Natural Pedagogy and Cultural Pedagogy

The theory of natural pedagogy is an important focus of research on the evolution and development of cultural learning. It proposes that we are born pupils; that human children genetically inherit a package of psychological adaptations that make them receptive to teaching. In this article, I first examine the components of the package-eye contact, contingencies, infant-directed speech, gaze cuing, and rational imitation-asking in each case whether current evidence indicates that the component is a reliable feature of infant behavior and a genetic adaptation for teaching. I then discuss three fundamental insights embodied in the theory: Imitation is not enough for cumulative cultural inheritance, the extra comes from blind trust, and tweaking is a powerful source of cognitive change. Combining the results of the empirical review with these insights, I argue that human receptivity to teaching is founded on nonspecific genetic adaptations for social bonding and social learning and acquires its species- and functionally specific features through the operation of domain-general processes of learning in sociocultural contexts. We engage, not in natural pedagogy, but in cultural pedagogy.

Animal social learning: associations and adaptations

Social learning, learning from others, is a powerful process known to impact the success and survival of humans and non-human animals alike. Yet we understand little about the neurocognitive and other processes that underpin social learning. Social learning has often been assumed to involve specialized, derived cognitive processes that evolve and develop independently from other processes. However, this assumption is increasingly questioned, and evidence from a variety of organisms demonstrates that current, recent, and early life experience all predict the reliance on social information and thus can potentially explain variation in social learning as a result of experiential effects rather than evolved differences. General associative learning processes, rather than adaptive specializations, may underpin much social learning, as well as social learning strategies. Uncovering these distinctions is important to a variety of fields, for example by widening current views of the possible breadth and adaptive flexibility of social learning. Nonetheless, just like adaptationist evolutionary explanations, associationist explanations for social learning cannot be assumed, and empirical work is required to uncover the mechanisms involved and their impact on the efficacy of social learning. This work is being done, but more is needed. Current evidence suggests that much social learning may be based on ‘ordinary’ processes but with extraordinary consequences.

The evolution of general intelligence

The presence of general intelligence poses a major evolutionary puzzle, which has led to increased interest in its presence in nonhuman animals. The aim of this review is to critically evaluate this question and to explore the implications for current theories about the evolution of cognition. We first review domain-general and domain-specific accounts of human cognition in order to situate attempts to identify general intelligence in nonhuman animals. Recent studies are consistent with the presence of general intelligence in mammals (rodents and primates). However, the interpretation of a psychometric g factor as general intelligence needs to be validated, in particular in primates, and we propose a range of such tests. We then evaluate the implications of general intelligence in nonhuman animals for current theories about its evolution and find support for the cultural intelligence approach, which stresses the critical importance of social inputs during the ontogenetic construction of survival-relevant skills. The presence of general intelligence in nonhumans implies that modular abilities can arise in two ways, primarily through automatic development with fixed content and secondarily through learning and automatization with more variable content. The currently best-supported model, for humans and nonhuman vertebrates alike, thus construes the mind as a mix of skills based on primary and secondary modules. The relative importance of these two components is expected to vary widely among species, and we formulate tests to quantify their strength.

Moving time: the influence of action on duration perception

Perceiving the sensory consequences of action accurately is essential for appropriate interaction with our physical and social environments. Prediction mechanisms are considered necessary for fine-tuned sensory control of action, yet paradoxically may distort perception. Here, we examine this paradox by addressing how movement influences the perceived duration of sensory outcomes congruent with action. Experiment 1 required participants to make judgments about the duration of vibrations applied to a moving or stationary finger. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants judged observed finger movements that were congruent or incongruent with their own actions. In all experiments, target events were perceived to be longer when congruent with movement. Interestingly, this temporal dilation did not differ as a function of stimulus perspective (1st or 3rd person) or spatial location. We propose that this bias may reflect the operation of an adaptive mechanism for sensorimotor selection and control that preactivates anticipated outcomes of action. The bias itself may have surprising implications for both action control and perception of others: we may be in contact with grasped objects for less time than we realize, and others' reactions to us may be briefer than we believe.

Mirror neurons: Tests and testability

Commentators have tended to focus on the conceptual framework of our article, the contrast between genetic and associative accounts of mirror neurons, and to challenge it with additional possibilities rather than empirical data. This makes the empirically focused comments especially valuable. The mirror neuron debate is replete with ideas; what it needs now are system-level theories and careful experiments – tests and testability.

Modeling the minimal newborn's intersubjective mind: the visuotopic-somatotopic alignment hypothesis in the superior colliculus

The question whether newborns possess inborn social skills is a long debate in developmental psychology. Fetal behavioral and anatomical observations show evidences for the control of eye movements and facial behaviors during the third trimester of pregnancy whereas specific sub-cortical areas, like the superior colliculus (SC) and the striatum appear to be functionally mature to support these behaviors. These observations suggest that the newborn is potentially mature for developing minimal social skills. In this manuscript, we propose that the mechanism of sensory alignment observed in SC is particularly important for enabling the social skills observed at birth such as facial preference and facial mimicry. In a computational simulation of the maturing superior colliculus connected to a simulated facial tissue of a fetus, we model how the incoming tactile information is used to direct visual attention toward faces. We suggest that the unisensory superficial visual layer (eye-centered) and the deep somatopic layer (face-centered) in SC are combined into an intermediate layer for visuo-tactile integration and that multimodal alignment in this third layer allows newborns to have a sensitivity to configuration of eyes and mouth. We show that the visual and tactile maps align through a Hebbian learning stage and and strengthen their synaptic links from each other into the intermediate layer. It results that the global network produces some emergent properties such as sensitivity toward the spatial configuration of face-like patterns and the detection of eyes and mouth movement.

How to solve a mechanical problem: the relevance of visible and unobservable functionality for kea

Animals sometimes succeed quickly in solving a mechanical problem that is a modification of one they have previously learnt to solve. However, they may do so by attending to the visible features of the relevant physical dimension without knowing its causal functionality, if that is not directly perceivable. This kind of problem solving can be tested by simultaneously offering two mechanical devices with the same visual features but different inherent appropriateness for problem solving. Here, we provide data collected by following this procedure for the first time in a bird species. Captive kea, Nestor notabilis, a parrot species highly interested in the affordances of objects, were offered a mechanical problem in which they had to remove a baited tube from one of two upright poles where removal was blocked at the end of one pole but not the other. With extended but not with restricted exploration of a baseline apparatus, the kea immediately succeeded in removing the tube from an apparatus that had modified pole ends when they were able to visually observe (without touching) that one of these ends would block tube removal but the other would not. However, when the kea were allowed to explore two poles that had a removable and a fixed obstruction where the difference in function was not visible, they preferred the removable one during unbaited exploration but failed afterwards to push a tube to the end of the pole with the loose structure during subsequent baited test trials. Thus, in spite of the speed with which the kea learnt the tasks, there was no indication that they understood the underlying unobservable causal structure of the problem.

Investigating ideomotor cognition with motorvisual priming paradigms: key findings, methodological challenges, and future directions

Ideomotor theory claims that perceptual representations of action-effects are functionally involved in the planning of actions. Strong evidence for this claim comes from a phenomenon called motorvisual priming. Motorvisual priming refers to the finding that action planning directly affects perception, and that the effects are selective for stimuli that share features with the planned action. Motorvisual priming studies have provided detailed insights into the processing of perceptual representations in action planning. One important finding is that such representations in action planning have a categorical format, whereas metric representations are not anticipated in planning. Further essential findings regard the processing mechanisms and the time course of ideomotor cognition. Perceptual representations of action-effects are first activated by action planning and then bound into a compound representation of the action plan. This compound representation is stabilized throughout the course of the action by the shielding of all involved representations from other cognitive processes. Despite a rapid growth in the number of motorvisual priming studies in the current literature, there are still many aspects of ideomotor cognition which have not yet been investigated. These aspects include the scope of ideomotor processing with regard to action types and stimulus types, as well as the exact nature of the binding and shielding mechanisms involved.

New thinking: the evolution of human cognition

Humans are animals that specialize in thinking and knowing, and our extraordinary cognitive abilities have transformed every aspect of our lives. In contrast to our chimpanzee cousins and Stone Age ancestors, we are complex political, economic, scientific and artistic creatures, living in a vast range of habitats, many of which are our own creation. Research on the evolution of human cognition asks what types of thinking make us such peculiar animals, and how they have been generated by evolutionary processes. New research in this field looks deeper into the evolutionary history of human cognition, and adopts a more multi-disciplinary approach than earlier 'Evolutionary Psychology'. It is informed by comparisons between humans and a range of primate and non-primate species, and integrates findings from anthropology, archaeology, economics, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology. Using these methods, recent research reveals profound commonalities, as well striking differences, between human and non-human minds, and suggests that the evolution of human cognition has been much more gradual and incremental than previously assumed. It accords crucial roles to cultural evolution, techno-social co-evolution and gene-culture co-evolution. These have produced domain-general developmental processes with extraordinary power-power that makes human cognition, and human lives, unique.

Grist and mills: on the cultural origins of cultural learning

Cumulative cultural evolution is what 'makes us odd'; our capacity to learn facts and techniques from others, and to refine them over generations, plays a major role in making human minds and lives radically different from those of other animals. In this article, I discuss cognitive processes that are known collectively as 'cultural learning' because they enable cumulative cultural evolution. These cognitive processes include reading, social learning, imitation, teaching, social motivation and theory of mind. Taking the first of these three types of cultural learning as examples, I ask whether and to what extent these cognitive processes have been adapted genetically or culturally to enable cumulative cultural evolution. I find that recent empirical work in comparative psychology, developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience provides surprisingly little evidence of genetic adaptation, and ample evidence of cultural adaptation. This raises the possibility that it is not only 'grist' but also 'mills' that are culturally inherited; through social interaction in the course of development, we not only acquire facts about the world and how to deal with it (grist), we also build the cognitive processes that make 'fact inheritance' possible (mills).

Producing and understanding prosocial actions in early childhood

Early prosocial development has become a topic of great interest in recent years as experimental studies have provided evidence that instances of prosocial action can already be found in the second year of life. In this contribution, we review the recent literature on young children's production of prosocial actions, in particular helping, sharing, and comforting, and their understanding of others' prosocial behavior. We summarize the novel insights gained by recent studies and point to directions for future studies. Overall, we suggest that while the field consists of considerable knowledge about the developmental timeline of prosocial behavior, more research is needed to examine and better understand underlying social-cognitive mechanisms.

The ghosts in the computer: the role of agency and animacy attributions in "ghost controls"

Three studies evaluated the role of 4-year-old children's agency- and animacy-attributions when learning from a computerized ghost control (GC). In GCs, participants observe events occurring without an apparent agent, as if executed by a "ghost" or unobserved causal forces. Using a touch-screen, children in Experiment 1 responded to three pictures in a specific order under three learning conditions: (i) trial-and-error (Baseline), (ii) imitation and (iii) Ghost Control. Before testing in the GC, children were read one of three scripts that determined agency attributions. Post-test assessments confirmed that all children attributed agency to the computer and learned in all GCs. In Experiment 2, children were not trained on the computer prior to testing, and no scripts were used. Three different GCs, varying in number of agency cues, were used. Children failed to learn in these GCs, yet attributed agency and animacy to the computer. Experiment 3 evaluated whether children could learn from a human model in the absence of training under conditions where the information presented by the model and the computer was either consistent or inconsistent. Children evidenced learning in both of these conditions. Overall, learning in social conditions (Exp. 3) was significantly better than learning in GCs (Exp. 2). These results, together with other published research, suggest that children privilege social over non-social sources of information and are generally more adept at learning novel tasks from a human than from a computer or GC.

Evolution of cognition

Renewed interest in the field of comparative cognition over the past 30 years has led to a renaissance in our thinking of how cognition evolved. Here, we review historical and comparative approaches to the study of psychological evolution, focusing on cognitive differences based on evolutionary divergence, but also cognitive similarities based on evolutionary convergence. Both approaches have contributed to major theories of cognitive evolution in humans and non-human animals. As a result, not only have we furthered our understanding of the evolution of the human mind and its unique attributes, but we have also identified complex cognitive capacities in a few large-brained species, evolved from solving social and ecological challenges requiring a flexible mind. WIREs Cogni Sci 2011 2 621-633 DOI: 10.1002/wcs.144 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Social attitudes differentially modulate imitation in adolescents and adults

Previous studies have demonstrated a bidirectional relationship between social attitudes and imitation in adults: pro-social attitudes promote imitation, and imitation further increases positive social attitudes. Social attitudes and the social brain are developing throughout the adolescent years. Thus, the aim of this study was to test whether pro-social attitudes promote imitation in an Adolescent Group to the same extent as in an Adult Group. Participants were primed with pro-social or non-social words in a Scrambled Sentence Priming task. They then completed an Imitation task wherein participants were required to perform a lift action with either the index or middle finger, whilst observing either a compatible action (e.g. index finger response and observed index finger lift) or an incompatible action (e.g. index finger response and observed middle finger lift). In an Effector Priming control condition, observed fingers remained stationary but a semi-transparent green mask was added to either the compatible or incompatible finger. The magnitude of the Imitation Effect and Effector Priming Effect was calculated by subtracting reaction times on compatible trials from those on incompatible trials. In the Adult Group, social priming specifically modulated the Imitation Effect: pro-social priming produced a larger Imitation Effect but did not modulate the Effector Priming Effect. In adolescents, however, no effect of social priming was seen on either the Imitation or Effector Priming measures. We consider possible explanations for these results including the immature development of social brain regions and reduced experience of the relationship between social attitudes and imitation in adolescence.

Action perception in individuals with congenital blindness or deafness: how does the loss of a sensory modality from birth affect perception-induced motor facilitation?

Seeing or hearing manual actions activates the mirror neuron system, that is, specialized neurons within motor areas which fire when an action is performed but also when it is passively perceived. Using TMS, it was shown that motor cortex of typically developed subjects becomes facilitated not only from seeing others' actions, but also from merely hearing action-related sounds. In the present study, TMS was used for the first time to explore the "auditory" and "visual" responsiveness of motor cortex in individuals with congenital blindness or deafness. TMS was applied over left primary motor cortex (M1) to measure cortico-motor facilitation while subjects passively perceived manual actions (either visually or aurally). Although largely unexpected, congenitally blind or deaf subjects displayed substantially lower resonant motor facilitation upon action perception compared to seeing/hearing control subjects. Moreover, muscle-specific changes in cortico-motor excitability within M1 appeared to be absent in individuals with profound blindness or deafness. Overall, these findings strongly argue against the hypothesis that an increased reliance on the remaining sensory modality in blind or deaf subjects is accompanied by an increased responsiveness of the "auditory" or "visual" perceptual-motor "mirror" system, respectively. Moreover, the apparent lack of resonant motor facilitation for the blind and deaf subjects may challenge the hypothesis of a unitary mirror system underlying human action recognition and may suggest that action perception in blind and deaf subjects engages a mode of action processing that is different from the human action recognition system recruited in typically developed subjects.

Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria)

The ability to learn from the actions of another is adaptive, as it is a shortcut for acquiring new information. However, the evolutionary origins of this trait are still unclear. There is evidence that group-living mammals, birds, fishes and insects can learn through observation, but this has never been investigated in reptiles. Here, we show that the non-social red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria) can learn from the actions of a conspecific in a detour task; non-observer animals (without a conspecific demonstrator) failed. This result provides the first evidence that a non-social species can use social cues to solve a task that it cannot solve through individual learning, challenging the idea that social learning is an adaptation for social living.

Experts see it all: configural effects in action observation

Biological motion perception is influenced by observers' familiarity with the observed action. Here, we used classical dance as a means to investigate how visual and motor experience modulates perceptual mechanism for configural processing of actions. Although some ballet moves are performed by only one gender, male and female dancers train together and acquire visual knowledge of all ballet moves. Twenty-four expert ballet dancers (12 female) and matched non-expert participants viewed pairs of upright and inverted point light female and common dance movements. Visual discrimination between different exemplars of the same movement presented upright was significantly better in experts than controls, whilst no differences were found when the same stimuli were presented upside down. These results suggest expertise influences configural action processing. Within the expert group, effects were stronger for female participants than for males, whilst no differences were found between movement types. This observer gender effect could suggest an additional role for motor familiarity in action perception, over and above the visual experience. Our results are consistent with a specific motor contribution to configural processing of action.

Associative sequence learning: the role of experience in the development of imitation and the mirror system

A core requirement for imitation is a capacity to solve the correspondence problem; to map observed onto executed actions, even when observation and execution yield sensory inputs in different modalities and coordinate frames. Until recently, it was assumed that the human capacity to solve the correspondence problem is innate. However, it is now becoming apparent that, as predicted by the associative sequence learning model, experience, and especially sensorimotor experience, plays a critical role in the development of imitation. We review evidence from studies of non-human animals, children and adults, focusing on research in cognitive neuroscience that uses training and naturally occurring variations in expertise to examine the role of experience in the formation of the mirror system. The relevance of this research depends on the widely held assumption that the mirror system plays a causal role in generating imitative behaviour. We also report original data supporting this assumption. These data show that theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation of the inferior frontal gyrus, a classical mirror system area, disrupts automatic imitation of finger movements. We discuss the implications of the evidence reviewed for the evolution, development and intentional control of imitation.

Evolutionary radiation and the spectrum of consciousness

Evolution is littered with polyphyletic parallelism: many roads lead to functional Romes. We propose consciousness embodies one such example, and represent it here with an equivalence class structure that factors the broad realm of necessary conditions information theoretic realizations of Baars' global workspace model. The construction suggests many different physiological systems can support rapidly shifting, highly tunable, and even simultaneous temporary assemblages of interacting unconscious cognitive modules. The discovery implies various animal taxa exhibiting behaviors we broadly recognize as conscious are, in fact, expressing different forms of the same underlying phenomenon. The variety of possibilities suggests minds today may be only a small surviving fraction of ancient evolutionary radiations--bush phylogenies of consciousness pruned by selection and chance extinction. Although few traces of the radiations may be found in the fossil record, exaptations and vestiges are scattered across the living mind.

The choices, choosing model of quality of life: description and rationale

AIM

This introductory paper offers a critical review of current models and measures of quality of life, and describes a choices and choosing (c-c) process as a new model of quality of life.

METHOD

Criteria are proposed for judging the relative merits of models of quality of life with preference being given to explicit mechanisms, linkages to a science base, a means of identifying deficits amenable to rational restorative interventions, and with embedded values of the whole person.

RESULT

A conjectured model, based on the processes of gaining access to choices and choosing among them, matches the proposed criteria. The c-c process is an evolved adaptive mechanism dedicated to the pursuit of quality of life, driven by specific biological and psychological systems, and influenced by social and environmental forces.

CONCLUSIONS

This model strengthens the science base for the field of quality of life, unifies approaches to concept and measurement, and guides the evaluation of impairments of quality of life. Corresponding interventions can be aimed at relieving restrictions or distortions of the c-c process; thus helping people to preserve and improve their quality of life. RELATED WORK: Companion papers detail relevant aspects of the science base, present methods of identifying deficits and distortions of the c-c model so as to open opportunities for rational restorative interventions, and explore empirical analyses of the relationship between health imposed restrictions of c-c and conventional indicators of diminished quality of life. [corrected]

Sensorimotor experience enhances automatic imitation of robotic action

Recent research in cognitive neuroscience has found that observation of human actions activates the 'mirror system' and provokes automatic imitation to a greater extent than observation of non-biological movements. The present study investigated whether this human bias depends primarily on phylogenetic or ontogenetic factors by examining the effects of sensorimotor experience on automatic imitation of non-biological robotic, stimuli. Automatic imitation of human and robotic action stimuli was assessed before and after training. During these test sessions, participants were required to execute a pre-specified response (e.g. to open their hand) while observing a human or robotic hand making a compatible (opening) or incompatible (closing) movement. During training, participants executed opening and closing hand actions while observing compatible (group CT) or incompatible movements (group IT) of a robotic hand. Compatible, but not incompatible, training increased automatic imitation of robotic stimuli (speed of responding on compatible trials, compared with incompatible trials) and abolished the human bias observed at pre-test. These findings suggest that the development of the mirror system depends on sensorimotor experience, and that, in our species, it is biased in favour of human action stimuli because these are more abundant than non-biological action stimuli in typical developmental environments.

An evolutionary perspective on learning disability in mathematics

A distinction between potentially evolved, or biologically-primary forms of cognition, and the culturally-specific, or biologically-secondary forms of cognition that are built from primary systems is used to explore mathematical learning disability (MLD). Using this model, MLD could result from deficits in the brain and cognitive systems that support biologically-primary mathematical competencies, or from the brain and cognitive systems that support the modification of primary systems for the creation of secondary knowledge and secondary cognitive competencies. The former include visuospatial long-term and working memory and the intraparietal sulcus, whereas the latter include the central executive component of working memory and the anterior cingulate cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex. Different forms of MLD are discussed as related to each of the cognitive and brain systems.

Robotic movement elicits automatic imitation

Recent behavioural and neuroimaging studies have found that observation of human movement, but not of robotic movement, gives rise to visuomotor priming. This implies that the 'mirror neuron' or 'action observation-execution matching' system in the premotor and parietal cortices is entirely unresponsive to robotic movement. The present study investigated this hypothesis using an 'automatic imitation' stimulus-response compatibility procedure. Participants were required to perform a prespecified movement (e.g. opening their hand) on presentation of a human or robotic hand in the terminal posture of a compatible movement (opened) or an incompatible movement (closed). Both the human and the robotic stimuli elicited automatic imitation; the prespecified action was initiated faster when it was cued by the compatible movement stimulus than when it was cued by the incompatible movement stimulus. However, even when the human and robotic stimuli were of comparable size, colour and brightness, the human hand had a stronger effect on performance. These results suggest that effector shape is sufficient to allow the action observation-matching system to distinguish human from robotic movement. They also indicate, as one would expect if this system develops through learning, that to varying degrees both human and robotic action can be 'simulated' by the premotor and parietal cortices.

Imitation: is cognitive neuroscience solving the correspondence problem?

Imitation poses a unique problem: how does the imitator know what pattern of motor activation will make their action look like that of the model? Specialist theories suggest that this correspondence problem has a unique solution; there are functional and neurological mechanisms dedicated to controlling imitation. Generalist theories propose that the problem is solved by general mechanisms of associative learning and action control. Recent research in cognitive neuroscience, stimulated by the discovery of mirror neurons, supports generalist solutions. Imitation is based on the automatic activation of motor representations by movement observation. These externally triggered motor representations are then used to reproduce the observed behaviour. This imitative capacity depends on learned perceptual-motor links. Finally, mechanisms distinguishing self from other are implicated in the inhibition of imitative behaviour.

Personality architecture: within-person structures and processes

This chapter reviews theory and research on intraindividual personality structures and processes. Principles for modeling the architecture of personality, that is, the overall design and operating characteristics of intraindividual personality systems, are addressed. Research demonstrates that a focus on within-person structures and processes advances the understanding of two aspects of personality coherence: the functional relations among distinct elements of personality, and cross-situational coherence in personality functioning that results from interactions among enduring knowledge structures and dynamic appraisal processes. Also reviewed are recent conceptual and empirical advances, which demonstrate that the interindividual personality variables that summarize variability in the population are wholly insufficient for modeling intraindividual personality architecture.

Experience modulates automatic imitation

Action observation gives rise to activation in corresponding areas of the premotor and primary motor cortices. We tested the hypothesis that this activation depends on visual-motor connections established through correlated experience of observing and executing the same action. Previous work has shown that hand opening and hand closing gestures are facilitated when subjects observe the movement they are performing, relative to a condition in which they observe a different movement from the one they are performing. Experiment 1 replicated this finding in a simple reaction time (RT) procedure using stimulus-response (SR) movements in orthogonal planes. This implies that the effect is an example of automatic imitation, an instruction-independent tendency to execute movements that are topologically similar to those observed, and not merely an example of spatially compatible responding. In Experiment 2, the automatic imitation effect found in Experiment 1 was abolished by a brief period of training in which subjects responded to hand opening by closing their hands, and to hand closing by opening their hands. This outcome is consistent with the hypothesis that, rather than being innate, the cortical connections mediating motor activation by action observation are formed through experience.