This chapter begins by noting that, while psychologists and neuroscientists have almost always studied learning in a laboratory setting, other scientists - ethologists - have mainly studied learning in more natural environments. One form of early learning, imprinting, was studied by the Austrian ethologist, Konrad Lorenz. The chapter describes his claims about this phenomenon and how researchers that were more experimentally oriented than Lorenz tested these claims and rejected many of them. The interaction between ethologists and learning theorists led to studies of how species differed in regard to constraints on what they can learn, a topic that is covered in the second half of Chapter 6. This describes research on topics such a sign- and goal-tracking, conditioning of fear reactions and the work of Garcias group on taste-aversion learning.

The interdisciplinary field of animal studies owes much to Darwin’s work, particularly in the Descent of Man, where he claims that mental and emotional capacities ranging from an ability to reason to an aesthetic sense exist in other animals besides humans. This chapter examines the significance of Darwin’s work for animal ethics, the science of animal behavior, theories of companion species, and the age of mass extinction. Activists, scientists, humanists, and environmentalists continue to find new uses for Darwin’s work as they pursue greater knowledge about the animal kingdom and more just ecological communities.

How do nonhuman primates process information about their social and physical world, and how do they make decisions? To address this question, research in the tradition of ethology and behavioral ecology aims to uncover how animals behave under ecological and evolutionarily valid conditions. By combining detailed observations of behavior in the wild with field experimentation, such studies have shed light on what primates know about predators, their home ranges and food sources, and their social environment. A second research stream takes non-naturalistic experiments into freely moving groups of wild or captive primates to test social learning, problem-solving skills, and motivation. Finally, captivity-based studies address a wide range of questions, using an array of different methodological approaches, often with the aim to explore the limits of the animals’ abilities. This chapter compares the strengths and the limitations of the different research streams and proposes an integrative approach to developing a profound understanding of primate cognition.

What is the purpose of studies of primate cognition, and how should one best study primate cognition? This book answers those questions, and it highlights some of the most recent and compelling evidence regarding the cognitive abilities of primate species. This book describes the goals of studying primate cognition (historically, and in the present), and how such studies teach us about the minds of our closest living relatives, as well as about our own minds. Primate cognitive studies illustrate important aspects of the origins of human cognition, and they provide a measure of connectedness between humans and other primates. Topics range across nearly all those typically seen in a book of human cognition: perception, representation, categorization, memory, decision-making, communication and language, numerical cognition, metacognition, and theory of mind, among others. This book also describes the varied setting in which primates can be studied, and the range of experimental and observational approaches that are typically used. Some authors address questions about the ethics of working with nonhuman primates, as well as the concerns that have emerged about replication and reproducibility of results that are reported in primate cognitive research.

In this chapter, we provide a review of human attachment and bonding, from the perspective of attachment theory and with an eye towards evolutionary psychology and narrative methodologies. Attachment theory, a dominant paradigm in contemporary psychological science, is used to understand the processes by which people form, and the implications of, adaptive and maladaptive attachments across the lifespan. Distinct from its predecessors, including object relations theory and social learning theories of dependence, attachment theory is a curious combination of psychoanalytical, ethological, and evolutionary principles. Attachment theory was born out of an interest in understanding why infants desire a close physical proximity to their caregivers. This phenomenon is explained by the existence of an innate attachment behavioral system, a system that has evolved to aid the likelihood of survival throughout infancy and childhood and, later, reproduction. At the heart of the attachment behavioral system lies the internal working model of close relationships, believed to be largely formed on the basis of experiences in infancy and, to a lesser degree, beyond. Caregivers who are available and appropriately responsive are thought to contribute to the development of a secure attachment model, one in which the individual is comfortable depending on caregivers, and later being depended upon. When caregivers are less reliable, the attachment behavioral system may become upregulated, leading to an anxious orientation, defined by hypersensitivity to others’ availability and a preoccupation with potential loss and separation, or downregulated, leading to an avoidant orientation, defined by a desire for separation and independence. The attachment construct, which has been assessed using behavioral, projective, interview, and self-report methodologies, carries implications for functioning from the infant to the elderly, as well as the varied relationships that are entertained between these periods. In adulthood, romantic attachment may be plotted along continuous dimensions of anxiety and avoidance. These constructs are most often considered via self-report measures in which participants rate their affect, behaviors, and cognitions within romantic relationships. Incorporating evolutionary principles and life history theory, some have predicted, and some have found, sex differences in levels of insecure romantic attachment, with males demonstrating comparably heightened levels of avoidance and females demonstrating comparably heightened levels of anxiety. Here, we further exemplify this finding via the life stories of a small number of male and female cases with varying levels of avoidance and anxiety. As a species, we have evolved to possess both (i) a complex attachment behavioral system designed to help us thrive in the social world, and (ii) a tendency to perceive the social world, ourselves, and our relationships as a story. We conclude by signaling the need for further work exploring attachment, evolution, and lived experience.

Sexual concerns and dysfunctions are common, complex, and result in significant distress for individuals and couples.In spite of the vital role sex plays in our lives, defining sexual function and dysfunction is complicated by the multitude of variables impacting sexual behavior: biological, instinctual, emotional, interpersonal, social, cultural, as well as personal sexual history.Further, our understanding of human sexuality is currently in flux in response to changing sociocultural interpretations.The inconsistency with which we currently define typical sexual function is complicated by our incomplete understanding and acknowledgement of how evolutionary influences impact sexual function.Human sexuality is influenced not only by our socially constructed ideals, but also by a deeper physiology that transcends cultural ideals and understanding. In this chapter, we argue that some proportion of a person’s sexual experience is generated via unconscious means through evolutionary forces manifesting as innate reactions and desires.These evolutionary influences manifest in human sexual behavior in nuanced yet profound ways.Thus, conscious sociocultural decisions about what constitutes “appropriate” sexual function may be of limited value in the privacy of people’s bedrooms without embracing evolution’s impact. The unfortunate tendency to disregard evolutionary biology by the mental health community leaves patients with an incomplete understanding of their sexual and relationship struggles.Further, this lack of understanding risks our labeling typical female sexual function as dysfunctional, and translates into less effective treatments for those suffering with sexual concerns.Evolutionary theory does not offer insight into all human sexual function and dysfunction.However, it is a relevant aspect of the story for many individuals who struggle sexually.Acknowledging our sexual adaptations and instinctive tendences results in less pathologizing of sexual desires, less shaming of ourselves and others, and less self-blame and personalization of a partner’s sexual inclinations.Sexual satisfaction and self-acceptance have dramatic implications in people’s lives and relationships that extend far outside the bedroom.Sexual satisfaction impacts relationship satisfaction and even life satisfaction.Clinical experience reveals how encouraging the sexual vulnerability inherent in our more primitive sexual tendencies make sex more satisfying, and perhaps more importantly, it deepens lovers’ emotional connection. The most loving, open-minded thing we can do for ourselves is to embrace our humanness, rather than deny it.This chapter explores ways evolutionary forces may impact female sexual function and dysfunction.Greater clarity on evolutionary influences impacting people’s sexual experience can support women and their partners in creating the sex lives they long for, as well as assist medical practioners in developing more targeted and thus more effective treatment plans for their patients.

The main areas of male sexual disorders recognized by sexual medicine are paraphilic disorders and sexual dysfunctions This chapter offers an overview of the contributions of evolutionarily informed approach to the aetiology of male paraphilic disorders, with some space dedicated also to an evolutionary view of male sexual dysfunctions. First, the details of an evolutionary sexology (ES) approach are explained: (1) ES is relatively independent of current sexologic diagnoses. In contrast with the traditional medical and legal view, it is also independent of current sociocultural norms; (2) An advantage of ESis that symptoms themselves might be viewed as separate units of selection or parts of different complex evolutionarily relevant phenomena; (3) recent evolutionarily informed theories explain sexual disorders using a combination of nature and nurture reasoning; (4) ES combines the theoretical approach ofevolutionary psychology and ethology with knowledge of human phylogenetic history and selective pressures in the pleistocene environment of evolutionary adaptedness. An evolutionary framework views some male sexual disorders as adaptive behavioral strategies selected over evolutionary history because they increased the reproductive success of our ancestors, but they might also be viewed as maladaptive margins of the variability within the normophilic spectrum. A major part of the chapter is dedicated to evolutionary perspectives on paraphilic sexual interests (paraphilias) and disorders (according to current diagnostic manual (DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), the latter characterized by either paraphilia-related distress or antisocial behavior). Throughout the chapter, we distinguish between paraphilias and sexual offending. We provide evidence for the biological as well as developmental correlates of paraphilia and explain their possible placement in multidimensional sexual orientation space. We also summarize recent evidence on the prevalence of paraphilias in current populations. Finally, the dominant evolutionarily informed theories of the aetiology of common paraphilic interests and disorders (i.e., chronophilia, fetishism, nonconsent related paraphilias, and sadomasochism) and male sexual dysfunctions are described.

In this chapter, the author, from the double perspective of ethology and neuropsychiatry, gives an interdisciplinary account of language through the lens of the neurosciences, interweaving diverse scientific discourses. Using phylogenetic and ontogenetic accounts, he describes the transition from sensory perception to symbolic representation in animals and humans, and the way neural circuitry of language coalesces through relating. He thus maps the processes and trajectories of the ‘word-making machine’, corroborated by studies of sensory or institutional deprivation or of illness, abuse, or accidents. Studies carried out on plurilingual speakers recovering from aphasia reveal that the Mother tongue, the most deeply imprinted language, is the one that comes back first. Experiments with newborn babies confirm the origin of the Mother tongue in tactile interuterine stimuli, which are later recognised by the newborn in the lower frequencies of the mother’s voice, creating ‘a reassuring bond of familiarity’. This interdisciplinary approach sheds light on the embedding of language in the body and on the enduring imprint of early language formation in the brain.

Chapter 3 addresses the Modern period. As good a way as any of designating the period is via Eric Hobsbawm’s moniker the Short Twentieth Century (1914–91), which he sees as an age of extremes marked, especially in its first half, by a sequence of potentially world-ending catastrophes bookended by the two world wars. Much nature writing of the time evidences this apocalyptic trend, though it also takes heart in the regenerative properties of nature, which is viewed, via the lenses of such fast-developing disciplines as ecology and ethology, with an increasingly scientific eye. The first part of the chapter draws accordingly on writing which, informed by evolving ecological understandings, also debates the protectionist measures needed to combat species extinction in an ecologically threatened world. These ecological threats are then brought to bear on early- to mid-twentieth-century rural writing, which is often all too hastily viewed as reacting against the modern forces of industrialisation and urbanisation, but is better seen as belonging to a complex machinery of rural representation adapted to the cultural needs of post-war England as well as to the new technological demands of a rapidly modernising world.

This chapter summarises the major take-homes and discusses in greater detail how one might empirically test the model developed in the book.

This chapter surveys what the ethological record reveals about the uniqueness of the human computational system, and explores how linguistic theories account for what ethology may determine to be human-specific. The core computational architecture of the language faculty is compared alongside existing accounts of non-human primates, songbirds and a number of other species, helping to delimit what computational processes electrophysiological models of language need to account for.

This chapter refines the oscillatory model of phrase structure building. Considerably, greater empirical coverage will be presented, but the narrow focus on syntactic and semantic comprehension is maintained. In addition, broader implications for neuroethology and theories of language evolution are discussed.