Cognitive “barriers,” synchronic development, and autism: A proposal for the integration of intelligence modules in the hominid cognitive architecture (original) (raw)

2012, Proceedings of the 2nd European Society for the Study of Human Evolution, Bordeaux, France

The present paper proposes that developmental reorganization enabled the synergistic integration of key cognitive processes to help transformed the nonintegrated hominid cognitive architecture proposed by Mithen (1996) into an integrated one and reexamines his analysis of behavioral signatures of cognitive integration in the archaeological record. Mithen’s cognitive architecture consisted of discrete intelligence modules with either “barriers” between them prohibiting their interaction or “lowered” barriers enabling synergistic interaction; however, he did not propose a mechanism for the integration of general, social, natural history, and technical intelligences and language that yielded the modern human mind.

1 The Origins of Modern Cognition

2014

This paper argues that ritual behavior was a critical selective force in the emergence of modern cognition. The argument is based on the following observations: (1) About 70,000 years before present (ybp) hominins faced an ecological crisis resulting from the massive Toba eruption. (2) Genetic and archeological evidence indicate that some anatomically modern humans (AMH), but no archaic species, arrived at a social solution to this crisis in the form of expanded reciprocal inter-group trade alliances. (3) Increased inter-group interactions put pressure on many hominin social/cognitive abilities, but most critically on ritual behavior. (4) Increasingly sophisticated social rituals arose in order to establish inter-group trust and to ensure intra-group solidarity. (5) Ritual behavior placed demands on attention and working memory, creating a Baldwinian pathway for the emergence of modern cognition by virtue of a modest enhancement of working memory capacity. Evidence for each of these...

A developmental model for the evolution of language and intelligence in early hominids

Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1979

This paper presents a model for the nature and adaptive significance of intelligence and language in early hominids based on comparative developmental, ecological, and neurological data. We propose that the common ancestor of the great apes and man displayed rudimentary forms of late sensorimotor and early preoperational intelligence similar to that of one- to four-year-old children. These abilities arose as adaptations for extractive foraging with tools, which requires a long postweaning apprenticeship. They were elaborated in the first hominids with the shift to primary dependence on this feeding strategy. These first hominids evolved a protolanguage, similar to that of two-year-old human children, with which they could describe the nature and location of food and request help in obtaining it. The descendents of the first hominids displayed intuitive intelligence, similar to that of four- to seven-year-old children, which arose as an adaptation for complex hunting involving aimed-...

Cave Art, Autism, and the Evolution of the Human Mind

The emergence of cave art in Europe about 30,000 years ago is widely believed to be evidence that by this time human beings had developed sophisticated capacities for sym-bolization and communication. However, comparison of the cave art with the drawings made by a young autistic girl, Nadia, reveals surprising similarities in content and style. Nadia, despite her graphic skills, was mentally defective and had virtually no language. I argue in the light of this comparison that the existence of the cave art cannot be the proof which it is usually assumed to be that the humans of the Upper Palaeolithic had essentially 'modern' minds.

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