Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:10:56.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cognitive gadgets: A provocative but flawed manifesto

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Marco Del Giudice Open the ORCID record for Marco Del Giudice [Opens in a new window]
Marco Del Giudice*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131. [email protected]://marcodg.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The argument against innatism at the heart of Cognitive Gadgets is provocative but premature, and is vitiated by dichotomous thinking, interpretive double standards, and evidence cherry-picking. I illustrate my criticism by addressing the heritability of imitation and mindreading, the relevance of twin studies, and the meaning of cross-cultural differences in theory of mind development. Reaching an integrative understanding of genetic inheritance, plasticity, and learning is a formidable task that demands a more nuanced evolutionary approach.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 42 , 2019 , e174
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, C. A., Peterson, E., Pulos, S. & Kirkland, R. A. (2014) Eyes and IQ: A meta-analysis of the relationship between intelligence and “Reading the Mind in the Eyes”. Intelligence 44:78–92.Google Scholar
Barrett, H. C. (2012) A hierarchical model of the evolution of human brain specializations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109(Suppl 1):10733–40.Google Scholar
Barrett, H. C. (2015) The shape of thought: How mental adaptations evolve. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barrett, H. C. (2017) Diversity and hierarchy in the evolution of mental mechanisms. In: On human nature: Biology, psychology, ethics, politics, and religion, ed. Tibayrenc, M. & Ayala, F. J., pp. 467–474. Elsevier.Google Scholar
Barrett, H. C., Peterson, C. D. & Frankenhuis, W. E. (2016) Mapping the cultural learnability landscape of danger. Child Development 87:770–81.Google Scholar
Berthoud, H. R. (2011) Metabolic and hedonic drives in the neural control of appetite: Who is the boss? Current Opinion in Neurobiology 21(6):888–96.Google Scholar
Briley, D. A. & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2017) Comparing the developmental genetics of cognition and personality over the life span. Journal of Personality 85(1):51–64.Google Scholar
Buss, D. M. (2015) The handbook of evolutionary psychology. Wiley.Google Scholar
Del Giudice, M., Manera, V. & Keysers, C. (2009) Programmed to learn? The ontogeny of mirror neurons. Developmental Science 12(2):350–63.Google Scholar
de Moor, M. H., Roeling, M. P. & Boomsma, D. I. (2013) Creativity and talent: Etiology of familial clustering. In: Neuroscience of creativity, ed. Vartanian, O., Bristol, A. S., & Kaufman, J. C., pp. 95–112. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dickinson, A. (2012) Associative learning and animal cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367(1603):2733–42.Google Scholar
Dixson, H. G., Komugabe-Dixson, A. F., Dixson, B. J. & Low, J. (2018) Scaling theory of mind in a small-scale society: A case study from Vanuatu. Child Development 89(6):2157–75.Google Scholar
Duh, S., Paik, J. H., Miller, P. H., Gluck, S. C., Li, H. & Himelfarb, I. (2016) Theory of mind and executive function in Chinese preschool children. Developmental Psychology 52(4):582–91.Google Scholar
Fenstermacher, S. K. & Saudino, K. J. (2007) Toddler see, toddler do? Genetic and environmental influences on laboratory-assessed elicited imitation. Behavior Genetics 37(5):639–47.Google Scholar
Flaxman, S. M. & Sherman, P. W. (2000) Morning sickness: A mechanism for protecting mother and embryo. Quarterly Review of Biology 75(2):113–148.Google Scholar
Frankenhuis, W. E., Panchanathan, K. & Barto, A. G. (2018) Enriching behavioral ecology with reinforcement learning methods. Behavioural Processes 161:94–100.Google Scholar
Frankenhuis, W. E. & Tiokhin, L. (2018) Bridging evolutionary biology and developmental psychology: Toward an enduring theoretical infrastructure. Child Development 89(6):2303–06.Google Scholar
Hanus, D. (2016) Causal reasoning versus associative learning: A useful dichotomy or a strawman battle in comparative psychology? Journal of Comparative Psychology 130(3):241–48.Google Scholar
Heyes, C. (2018) Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, C., Jaffee, S. R., Happé, F., Taylor, A., Caspi, A. & Moffitt, T. E. (2005) Origins of individual differences in theory of mind: From nature to nurture? Child Development 76(2):356–70.Google Scholar
Kuntoro, I. A., Peterson, C. C. & Slaughter, V. (2017) Culture, parenting, and children's theory of mind development in Indonesia. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 48(9):1389–1409.Google Scholar
Lake, B. M., Ullman, T. D., Tenenbaum, J. B. & Gershman, S. J. (2017) Building machines that learn and think like people. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 40:e253.Google Scholar
Liu, D., Wellman, H. M., Tardif, T. & Sabbagh, M. A. (2008) Theory of mind development in Chinese children: A meta-analysis of false-belief understanding across cultures and languages. Developmental Psychology 44(2):523–31.Google Scholar
Marcus, G. (2018) Innateness, AlphaZero, and artificial intelligence. arXiv 1801.05667.Google Scholar
Mayer, A. & Träuble, B. (2015) The weird world of cross-cultural false-belief research: A true- and false-belief study among Samoan children based on commands. Journal of Cognition and Development 16(4):650-65.Google Scholar
Mayer, A. & Träuble, B. E. (2013) Synchrony in the onset of mental state understanding across cultures? A study among children in Samoa. International Journal of Behavioral Development 37(1):21–28. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1177/0165025412454030.Google Scholar
McEwen, F., Happé, F., Bolton, P., Rijsdijk, F., Ronald, A., Dworzynski, K. & Plomin, R. (2007) Origins of individual differences in imitation: Links with language, pretend play, and socially insightful behavior in two-year-old twins. Child Development 78(2):474–92.Google Scholar
Olson, J. M., Vernon, P. A., Harris, J. A. & Jang, K. L. (2001) The heritability of attitudes: a study of twins. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80(6):845–60.Google Scholar
Rajkumar, A. P., Yovan, S., Raveendran, A. L. & Russell, P. S. S. (2008) Can only intelligent children do mind reading: The relationship between intelligence and theory of mind in 8 to 11 years old. Behavioral and Brain Functions 4:51. doi: 10.1186/1744-9081-4-51.Google Scholar
Rindermann, H. (2018) Cognitive capitalism: Human capital and the wellbeing of nations. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ronald, A., Viding, E., Happé, F. & Plomin, R. (2006) Individual differences in theory of mind ability in middle childhood and links with verbal ability and autistic traits: A twin study. Social Neuroscience 1:412–25.Google Scholar
Rozin, P. (1990a) Acquisition of stable food preferences. Nutrition Reviews 48:106–13.Google Scholar
Rozin, P. (1990b) Development in the food domain. Developmental Psychology 26:555–62. [MDG]Google Scholar
Schaafsma, S. M., Pfaff, D. W., Spunt, R. P. & Adolphs, R. (2015) Deconstructing and reconstructing theory of mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19:65–72.Google Scholar
Shahaeian, A., Nielsen, M., Peterson, C. C. & Slaughter, V. (2014) Cultural and family influences on children's theory of mind development: A comparison of Australian and Iranian school-age children. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 45:555–68.Google Scholar
Shahaeian, A., Peterson, C. C., Slaughter, V. & Wellman, H. M. (2011) Culture and the sequence of steps in theory of mind development. Developmental Psychology 47(5):1239–47.Google Scholar
Versace, E., Martinho-Truswell, A., Kacelnik, A. & Vallortigara, G. (2018) Priors in animal and artificial intelligence: Where does learning begin? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22(11):963–65. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2018.07.005.Google Scholar
Vinkhuyzen, A. A., Van der Sluis, S., Posthuma, D. & Boomsma, D. I. (2009) The heritability of aptitude and exceptional talent across different domains in adolescents and young adults. Behavior Genetics 39:380–92.Google Scholar
Warrier, V., Grasby, K. L., Uzefovsky, F., Toro, R., Smith, P., Chakrabarti, B., Khadake, J., Mawbey-Adamson, E., Litterman, N., Hottenga, J.-J., Lubke, G., Boomsma, D. I., Martin, N. G., Hatemi, P. K., Medland, S. E., Hinds, D. A., Bourgeron, T. & Baron-Cohen, S. (2018) Genome-wide meta-analysis of cognitive empathy: Heritability, and correlates with sex, neuropsychiatric conditions and cognition. Molecular Psychiatry 23:1402–09.Google Scholar