Preparedness in cultural learning

It is clear throughoutCognitive Gadgets(2018) Heyes believes the development of cognitive capacities results from the interaction of genes and experience. However, she opposescognitive instinctstheorists to her own view that uniquely human capacities arecognitive gadgets. Instinct theorists believe that cognitive capacities are substantially produced by selection, with the environment playing a triggering role. Heyes's position is that humans have similar general learning capacities to those present across taxa, and that sophisticated human cognition is substantially created by our socioculturally transmitted environment. It is a core strategy of Heyes (Cognitive gadgets: the cultural evolution of thinking. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2018) to provide evidence of learning altering a cognitive capacity to conclude that a capacity is a cognitive gadget and not an instinct. We draw on recent work on the evolution of learning preparedness to examine the adequacy of this strategy. In particular, we analyse experimental evolution work showing how selection affects cognition within the laboratory. First, this work reveals that change due to learning can still be retained under genetic assimilation. This suggests that domain-specific adaptation can coexist with learning,moderate nativism, an option missed by theinstinctversusgadgetdistinction. Second, we describe the conditions that select for increased preparedness in learning: certainty, reliability, and particular costs. We consider how these conditions can be used when conducting evolutionary reasoning about cognition, applying them to the important capacity for imitation. We find that the conditions lend theoretical support to moderate nativism about the capacity to imitate, which is supported by psychological evidence.

Automated summary

In Cognitive Gadgets (2018), Heyes argues that cognitive capacities develop through the interaction of genes and experience, opposing instinct theorists and proposing that uniquely human capacities are cognitive gadgets. She contends that human cognition is largely shaped by sociocultural transmission and provides evidence of how learning can alter cognitive capacities.