25th Annual Symposium

The Evolution and Development of Self Knowledge

Developmental studies of cognition in human infants and children offer a rich array of models for studying other primate species. Such comparative studies are beginning to yield a picture of the taxonomic distribution of various kinds and levels of knowledge. With the aid of cladistic methodology these comparative data can be used to reconstruct the ancestry of knowledge. Likewise, comparative developmental data can be used to reconstruct the evolution of the ontogeny of knowledge. In this talk I focus on comparative studies of self-knowledge in primates with the aim of reconstructing the evolution, development, and adaptive significance of this kind of knowledge.

Field primatologists have discovered that different groups of wild chimpanzees create and maintain different behavioral traditions, for example, in their tool use practices. These behavioral traditions are similar to, but different in important ways from, human cultural traditions. Experimental comparisons of chimpanzees and human children in tasks of social learning and communication suggest that these differences may be attributed to different processes of socialcognitive development in apes and humans. The evolution of human culture derived from an adaptation allowing human children to understand from an early age that the intentional states of others may be followed into, manipulated, and shared.

The evolution of life is well documented to show a clear, if irregular, tendency to increase in complexity. The fossil record, for example, shows that body size, number of cells, and many other traits have increased in the biosphere. Behavioral complexity has increased along with morphological features. While the fossil record is silent with respect to many behavioral traits, it does reveal an increase in brain size. Furthermore, many aspects of behavioral (and morphological) evolution are preserved in the developmental process of living organisms. Increasing behavioral complexity in human development today is similar, in many ways, to the evolution of human behavioral complexity seen in the fossil and archaeological record. This pattern does not mean that development recapitulates evolution in every detail. The evolution of ontogeny does not always involve simple terminal additions. Because, however, terminal changes in development tend to be the most common mode of developmental evolution, many of the fundamental patterns of the evolution of behavior and thought may be relatively well recorded in the development of infants and children.

Diverging patterns mark the cognitive development of closely related primate species. They offer powerful tests of the underlying mechanisms hypothesized to generate cognitive development, for example, whether language is necessary for thought. Thus, they evidence natural structural grouping by species that provide nonarbitrary bases for delimiting domain boundaries and organization. findings of diverging structural organizations responsible for species' cognitive uniqueness calls for modeling that allows then to be related by plausible evolutionary transformations given, for example, the evolutionary and genetic distances between primate and species.

To study cognitive achievements in prehistoric times meets considerable methodological difficulties. In contrast to historical sources the material remains of prehistory give no direct evidence of cognitive processes. To get information about such processes is possible only by reconstructing the cognitive preconditions and possible outcomes of activities which are attested to by prehistoric human artifacts. Such reconstructions depend on psychological theory and use results of cross-cultural psychology. A critical approach will be proposed which is based on two assumptions. Firstly, it is assumed that long-term processes of the development of material representations of prehistoric cognitive activities significantly restrict the range of possible psychological interpretations thus providing a key for achieving empirical evidence for theoretical assumptions. Second, it is assumed that any psychological interpretations of prehistoric remains has to be based on an explicit theory of the relation between individual cognition and the social representation in the material culture. This approach will be exemplified by an analysis of the development of pictography and symbolism in the Middle East during the time period from the Upper Paleolithic culture to the period of urbanization.

The process of communication has frequently been viewed as a bifurcation of nonverbal and verbal activity, with symbolic messages being sent at the verbal level and emotional messages being sent at the nonverbal level. This bifurcation has been extended into the man-animal dichotomy with the assumption being made that all animal messages are nonverbal and therefore nonsymbolic. The language using apes present a problem for this dichotomous approach to the study of communication. this paper will present evidence to show that the bifurcation has been more constructed than real and that once it is abandoned the apparent gap between human and animal communication will cease to be evident.

A basic feature of Bowlby's Attachment Theory is that infants are biologically predisposed to form strong emotional bonds with their primary caregivers early in life. These attachment bonds provide infants with a secure base for subsequent exploration of their environment, and they also influence the nature and quality of other social relationships the infants will develop as they grow older. Compelling evidence in support of the evolutionary basis for attachment phenomena comes not only from the human cross-cultural literature but also from extensive comparative research with nonhuman primates. These studies clearly demonstrate that the basic features of early social attachments and their long-term developmental consequences are largely homologous among monkeys, apes, and humans alike.