A satisfactory account of human cognitive evolution will explain not only the psychological mechanisms that make our species unique, but also how, when, and why these traits evolved. To date, researchers have made substantial progress toward defining uniquely human aspects of cognition, but considerably less effort has been devoted to questions about the evolutionary processes through which these traits have arisen. In this article, I aim to link these complementary aims by synthesizing recent advances in our understanding of what makes human cognition unique, with theory and data regarding the processes of cognitive evolution. I review evidence that uniquely human cognition depends on synergism between both representational and motivational factors and is unlikely to be accounted for by changes to any singular cognitive system. I argue that, whereas no nonhuman animal possesses the full constellation of traits that define the human mind, homologies and analogies of critical aspects of human psychology can be found in diverse nonhuman taxa. I suggest that phylogenetic approaches to the study of animal cognition-which can address questions about the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms driving cognitive change-have the potential to yield important insights regarding the processes through which the human cognitive phenotype evolved.

This thesis takes its start from the identification of a gap in knowledge between the act of musical utterance and its significance for human being. Based on the proposition that music education could benefit from what it most appears to lack, a deep epistemology, the study first examines the knowledge gap as an epistemological omission in music curriculum and discourse, and then argues the case for retrieval of a logos epistemology to rectify the omission. The recovery of the meaning of the musical act, it is argued, is an ethical, biographical initiative taken up by the individual who senses the need to strive towards freedom of moral decision. Recovery consists in developing an epistemology specific to human utterance, namely, a logos epistemology. Since the logos is an original form-bestowing power whose sanctuary is the human being, it seeks and finds expression in uttered forms, and it is through fully conscious observation of one's own contribution to the emergence of these forms that one can find oneself as knower. It is significant that it is characteristic of the logos in the current era, however, that it is hidden from the (dual) perspective which humanity has taken up in its cognitive evolution. The condition of its recovery, then, is that it must be 'unconcealed' for it is obscured by its own forms, and consequently, by aesthetic and linguistic theory derived, not from efforts made towards enhanced musical experience, but inferred from the sense-perceptible elements of experience. It is argued that it is educationally responsible to cultivate the individual's latent epistemic resources, namely, self-observed, consciously directed intentionally, so that the meaning of the original experience of musical phenomena, tone and interval, can be raised to awareness, and musical culture renewed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

abstract: This research uses Peircean Semiotics to model the evolution of symbolic behavior in the human lineage and the potential material correlates of this evolutionary process in the archaeological record. The semiotic model states the capacity for symbolic behavior developed in two distinct stages. Emergent capacities are characterized by the sporadic use of non-symbolic and symbolic material culture that affects information exchange between individuals. Symbolic exchange will be rare. Mobilized capacities are defined by the constant use of non-symbolic and symbolic objects that affect both interpersonal and group-level information exchange. Symbolic behavior will be obligatory and widespread. The model was tested against the published archaeological record dating from ~200,000 years ago to the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in three sub-regions of Africa and Eurasia. A number of Exploratory and Confirmatory Data Analysis techniques were used to identify patterning in artifacts through time consistent with model predictions. The results indicate Emergent symboling capacities were expressed as early as ~100,000 years ago in Southern Africa and the Levant. However, capacities do not appear fully Mobilized in these regions until ~17,000 years ago. Emergent symboling is not evident in the European record until ~42,000 years ago, but develops rapidly. The results also indicate both Anatomically Modern Humans and Neanderthals had the capacity for symbolic behavior, but expressed those capacities differently. Moreover, interactions between the two populations did not select for symbolic expression, nor did periodic aggregation within groups. The analysis ultimately situates the capacity for symbolic behavior in increased engagement with materiality and the ability to recognize material objects can be made meaningful– an ability that must have been shared with Anatomically Modern Humans’ and Neanderthals’ most recent common ancestor. Consequently, the results have significant implications for notions of ‘modernity’ and human uniqueness that drive human origins research. This work pioneers deductive approaches to cognitive evolution, and both strengths and weaknesses are discussed. In offering notable results and best practices, it effectively operationalizes the semiotic model as a viable analytical method for human origins research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Appendices A-N: Spreadsheets / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

<p>Humans are natural politicians. We obsessively collect social information that is both observable (e.g., about third-party relationships) and unobservable (e.g., about others’ psychological states), and we strategically employ that information to manage our cooperative and competitive relationships. To what extent are these abilities unique to our species, and how did they evolve? The present dissertation seeks to contribute to these two questions. To do so, I take a comparative perspective, investigating social decision-making in humans’ closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees. In Chapter 1, I review existing literature on theory of mind—or the ability to understand others’ psychological states—in these species. I also present a theoretical framework to guide further investigation of social cognition in bonobos and chimpanzees based on hypotheses about the proximate and ultimate origins of their species differences. In Chapter 2, I experimentally investigate differences in the prosocial behavior of bonobos and chimpanzees, revealing species-specific prosocial motivations that appear to be less flexible than those exhibited by humans. In Chapter 3, I explore through decision-making experiments bonobos’ ability to evaluate others based on their prosocial or antisocial behavior during third-party interactions. Bonobos do track the interactions of third-parties and evaluate actors based on these interactions. However, they do not exhibit the human preference for those who are prosocial towards others, instead consistently favoring an antisocial individual. The motivation to prefer those who demonstrate a prosocial disposition may be a unique feature of human psychology that contributes to our ultra-cooperative nature. In Chapter 4, I investigate the adaptive value of social cognition in wild primates. I show that the recruitment behavior of wild chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania is consistent with the use of third-party knowledge, and that those who appear to use third-party knowledge receive immediate proximate benefits. They escape further aggression from their opponents. These findings directly support the social intelligence hypothesis that social cognition has evolved in response to the demands of competing with one’s own group-mates. Thus, the studies presented here help to better characterize the features of social decision-making that are unique to humans, and how these abilities evolved.</p> / Dissertation

<p>What makes our minds human? How did they evolve to be this way? This dissertation presents data from two complementary lines of research driven by these orienting questions. The first of these explores the `what' of human cognitive evolution through comparative studies with chimpanzees and bonobos. The general aim of these studies is to understand which aspects of cognition are unique to humans, and which are shared with our closest living relatives. Chapters 2-3 test the hypothesis that humans have unique cognitive skills for reasoning about the attention of other individuals (theory of mind), and unique motivation to use these skills in cooperative contexts with conspecifics. In Chapter 2 I show that understanding others' attention is unlikely to be the `small difference that makes the big difference', as some researchers have proposed. However, my data support the possibility that species differences in the ontogeny of these skills may have robust consequences for the adult cognitive phenotype. In Chapter 3 I show that (contrary to previous reports) nonhuman apes are also motivated to engage in some simple triadic social activities, which resemble those characteristic of human children. Again however, I identify important differences between humans and other apes in their spontaneous preferences for these types of activities, and their attitudes toward a partner when cooperative behaviors are interrupted. The second half of this dissertation (Chapters 4-5) explores the `why' and `how' of cognitive evolution. Chapter 4 outlines the kind of research questions and methods that comparative psychologists will need to embrace in order to use the comparative method to its full potential in the study of cognitive evolution. Chapter 5 provides a proof of principle for this approach using a dataset including 33 species tested on two cognitive tasks measuring inhibitory control. Here I show that cognitive skills for inhibitory control are closely related to phylogeny across species, and strongly predicted by absolute (but not relative) brain size. Further, I show that two of the other leading hypotheses put forth to explain primate intelligence, namely sociality and diet, do not predict cognitive skills on these tasks. These data illustrate the power of the comparative method for understanding cognitive evolution, and provide a starting point for future studies embracing this approach. Collectively, this research refines our understanding of how human cognition differs from that of other primates, and illustrates the utility of studying cognitive evolution from an explicitly phylogenetic comparative framework.</p> / Dissertation

<p>Primates in the wild face complex foraging decisions where they must assess the most valuable of different potential resources to exploit, as well recall the location of options that can be widely distributed. While differences in diet and ecology have long been thought to be an important factor influencing brain evolution in primates, it is less well understood what psychological abilities animals actually use when making foraging decisions. This dissertation examines cognitive domains that play a crucial role in supporting foraging behaviors--spatial memory and decision-making--by integrating both psychological and biological approaches to behavior. In particular, the research presented here examines multiple species of primates to address the cognitive skills that different animals use to solve foraging problems (at the proximate level of analysis), as well as why some species appear to solve such problems differently than other species (at the ultimate level of analysis).</p><p>The first goal of the dissertation is to compare closely-related species that vary in ecological characteristics, in order to illuminate how evolution shapes the cognitive skills used in foraging contexts. This component focuses on comparisons between chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), humans' closest extant relatives. In addition, this component reports comparisons amongst strepsirrhines (Lemur catta, Eulemur mongoz, Propithecus coquereli, and Varecia subsp.) to model cognitive evolution in a taxonomic group with greater ecological diversity than Pan. The first two chapters test the hypothesis that more frugivorous species exhibit more accurate spatial memory skills, first by comparing apes' spatial memory abilities (Chapter 2), and then by comparing four species of lemurs on a related set of spatial memory tasks (Chapter 3). In subsequent chapters, I examine apes' decision-making strategies to test the hypothesis that chimpanzees are more willing to pay decision-making costs than are bonobos, due to differences in their feeding ecology. I focus on preferences about the timing of payoffs (Chapter 4); preferences about risk, or the variability in payoffs (Chapters 4 and 5); and preferences about ambiguity, or knowledge about available options (Chapter 6). </p><p>The second goal of the dissertation is to compare the psychological mechanisms that human and nonhuman great apes use for foraging, in order to identify potentially human-unique cognitive abilities. In terms of spatial memory, I examine whether other apes also exhibit human-like patterns of spatial memory development (Chapter 2). In terms of decision-making, I examine whether apes exhibit a suite of human-like biases when making value-based choices. In particular, I test whether emotional and motivational processes, which are critical components of human decision-making, also play a role in apes' choices (Chapters 4); whether apes are sensitive to social context when making economic decisions (Chapter 5); and whether apes are sensitive to their degree of knowledge when making choices under uncertainty (Chapter 6). Finally, I directly compare human and ape preferences on a matched task to assess whether humans use any unique psychological abilities when making decisions about risk (Chapter 7). In sum, this dissertation links studies of mechanism with hypotheses about function in order to illuminate the evolutionary roots of human's unique cognitive phenotype.</p> / Dissertation

Submitted by Cláudia Bueno (claudiamoura18@gmail.com) on 2015-10-16T21:23:43Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Sergio Almeida Loiola - 2014.pdf: 8526084 bytes, checksum: 2948c2f6e11578a77db5880e24463e41 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2015-10-19T13:30:31Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Sergio Almeida Loiola - 2014.pdf: 8526084 bytes, checksum: 2948c2f6e11578a77db5880e24463e41 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-10-19T13:30:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tese - Sergio Almeida Loiola - 2014.pdf: 8526084 bytes, checksum: 2948c2f6e11578a77db5880e24463e41 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This thesis proposes hypothesis about the evolution of complex adaptive systems in the context of the interaction between society and the paleoclimate variability, based on comparative studies of bibliographic sources available in the literature: articles, research reports and data. The research was oriented in one cognitive and evolutionary perspective, subsidized by the complex geographical approach, structured by the author. Founded on archaeological evidence, the thesis argues that complex adaptive systems developed after 40 thousand years ago are between the main factors which cooperated in the social and cultural complexity, fixing on the territory, organizing large groups, the continuous pursuit of innovation and acceleration of cultural evolution and cognitive, established before the Holocene, as well as diversification of similar adaptive strategies in different parts of the world during this period; case of systematic collect, cultivation, domestication and agriculture. Between complex adaptive systems developed before the Holocene is cited: the science, the belief system, art, spoken language, symbolic communication, and the socio-political organization to manage large groups. Transferred by cultural exchanges, complex adaptive systems migrated with people, giving great adaptive differential to their carriers to favorable conditions in interglacial Holocene: an increase of temperature, humidity, rainfall, CO² in the atmosphere from 180 ppm to 280 ppm, and expansion the diversity and productivity of the species. Under non- linear processes, the successive period of intensification of innovation were associated with severe glacial and interglacial transitions of the 26 Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich events (D-O and H), during the Würm Glacial, especially from 40,000 years ago, after “great leap” of modern humans. Based on the successes and failures of societies, imprevisibility and frequency of abrupt paleoclimatic changes, we present a proposal for Adaptive Sustainability Panel, focusing on three scenarios: global warming (Plan A), global cooling (Plan B) and climatic instability (Plan C), in order to increase the potential for proactive resilience in societies. / Esta tese propõe hipótese acerca da evolução de sistemas complexos adaptativos no contexto da interação entre a sociedade e a variabilidade paleoclimática, pautada em estudos comparativos de fontes bibliográficas disponíveis na literatura: artigos, relatórios de pesquisa e dados. A pesquisa foi orientada numa perspectiva cognitiva e evolutiva, subsidiada pela abordagem geográfica complexa, estruturada pelo autor. A partir de evidências arqueológicas, a tese argumenta que sistemas complexos adaptativos desenvolvidos após 40 mil anos atrás estão entre os principais fatores que cooperaram para a complefixificação sociocultural, fixação no território, organização de grandes grupamentos, a continua busca de inovação e a aceleração da evolução cultural e cognitiva, estabelecidas antes do Holoceno, bem como a diversificação de estratégias adaptativas similares, em diferentes partes do globo nesse período; caso da coleta sistemática, do cultivo, da domesticação e da agricultura. Entre os sistemas complexos adaptativos desenvolvidos antes do Holoceno estiveram à ciência, o sistema de crenças, a arte, a linguagem falada, a comunicação simbólica, e a organização sociopolítica para gerir grandes grupos. Transferidos por trocas culturais, os sistemas complexos adaptativos migraram junto com os povos, conferindo grande diferencial adaptativo aos seus portadores às condições favoráveis do interglacial Holoceno: incremento da temperatura, da umidade, das chuvas, do CO² na atmosfera de 180 ppm para 280 ppm, e a ampliação da diversidade e a produtividade das espécies. Sob processos não lineares, os sucessivos período de intensificação da inovação estiveram correlacionados com severas transições glaciais e interglaciais dos 26 eventos Dansgaard-Oeschger e Heinrich (D-O e H), durante o Glacial Würm, especialmente a partir de 40 mil anos atrás, após o grande salto dos humanos modernos. Com base nos sucessos e fracassos das sociedades, a imponderabilidade e a frequência das alterações paleoclimáticas abruptas, apresentamos uma proposta para um Painel da Sustentabilidade Adaptativa, focando três cenários: de aquecimento global (Plano A), resfriamento global (Plano B) e instabilidade climática (Plano C), a fim de elevar o potencial pró-ativo de resiliências nas sociedades.