The
Evolution and Development of Social Cognition
Denise
Cummins
University
of California-Davis
dcummins@ucdavis.edu
Cognition is a biological function, not a cultural
invention. Our nervous systems detect, encode, and process information not
because someone invented these capacities in antiquity, but because evolutionary
forces shaped the organs that instantiate these biological functions.
Cognition is the function that ensures a non-arbitrary relation between
perception and action. Historically,
psychologists have tended to overlook or downplay the role of biology and
evolution when developing theories of cognitive functions, with the inevitable
result that our theories have often provided inadequate predictions and
explanations of cognitive phenomena. This talk will focus on cognition that is
highly canalized as a result of learning biases that evolved to cope with the
exigencies of the social environment. These highly
specialized functions need not be present at birth. Instead, the balance of
comparative, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence weighs in on the side
of fast-track learning through early emerging biases that entrain the focus of
our attention on the environmental stimuli and contingencies that are most vital
for survival in a complex social environment, while neurological plasticity
allows our actual environmental experiences the final say in whether and how
those predispositions are expressed.