The Origins of Domain Specificity:
The Evolution of
Functional Organization
REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OF “THE ORIGINS OF
DOMAIN-SPECIFICITY: THE EVOLUTION OF
FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION” BY COSMIDES.
LEDA, AND JOHN TOOBY (1994)
PRESENTATION BY CHRISTINE ROSAKRANSE
FOR HUMAN-MEDIA INTERACTION,
PROFESSOR CARLOS GODOY, RPI

While the work of Cosmides, Leda &
A Short
John Tooby represents an excellent
Critique and
resource for journeying into cognitive
Caveat
science, the organization of the paper
itself is not as straightforward as would
be optimal.
Therefore, for this presentation, certain
points have been reordered to fit a more
logical progression.
Also, being such a rich topic for
discussion, I would have found a
glossary of terms to be most helpful, but
previous experience in this realm was
probably assumed by the authors.
Questions for discussion will be
permitted at the end of the
presentation.

What is Domain Specificity?
“Domain-specificity is a theoretical position in cognitive
science that argues that many aspects of cognition are
supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily
specified, learning devices.”
--Wikipedia
“The work on domain specificity in cognitive development has not been, for the most
part, motivated by evolutionary considerations or, indeed, by any larger program
intended to discover how the human mind regulates behavior. Instead, it was spurred
by philosophical arguments that combinatorial explosion will prevent a blank slate -
or its technologically modern equivalent, the general-purpose computer - from
learning anything in real time (e.g., Carey, 1985; Keil, 1989; Markman, 1989).”
--The Origins of Domain Specificity

And how did that happen?

The evolutionary process acting
The Evolution
on our hunter-gatherer ancestors
of Mind
led to certain evolved adaptations.
Hence, this is an adaptationist
approach to cognitive evolution.
Key – design changes that
enhanced their own propagation
Function of a design ->
were those that were then
ex. sexual jealousy ->
selected for.

Defined as an evolutionary recurrent
problem whose solution promoted
An Adaptive
reproduction.
Problem
Beyond the basics,
Our diverse range of adaptations
including: information
include a myriad of necessary tasks,
gathering, inference &
from “solicitation of assistance from
decision making
one's parents, to language acquisition,
to modeling the spatial distribution of
local objects, to coalition formation and
cooperation, to the deduction of
intentions on the basis of facial
expressions, to avoiding incest, to
allocating effort between activities, to
the interpretation of threats, to mate
selection, to object recognition.”

Time for a little contrast

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity
A domain-general psychological architecture cannot guide
behavior in ways that promote fitness for these reasons:
1. “Fit” behavior differs
Reason 1:
from domain to
The definition of
domain, so there is no
error is domain-
domain-general
dependent.
criterion of success or
failure.
ex. Vervet Monkeys (ex. sex w/ kin)

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity
2. Adaptive courses of
action can be neither
Reason 2:
deduced nor learned by
Many relationships
general criteria, because
necessary to the
they depend on statistical
successful regulation
relationships between
of action cannot be
features of the
observed by any
environment, behavior,
individual during
and fitness that emerge
their lifetime.
over many generations
and are, therefore, not
observable in a single
lifetime.

Now for the Really Interesting One

Domain-Generality vs. Domain-Specificity
3. “Combinatorial Reason 3: Due to
explosion” paralyzes the permutations of
any truly domain- possible outcomes,
general system when alternatives
encountering real- increase
world complexity. exponentially as the
problem complexity
increases.

Certain constraints on the system
Domain-
decide what adaptations can be
Specific
selected for (evolvability
Reasoning in
constraints from recurring
Children
conditions).
Because the world has certain
“enduring properties” we can go
beyond what is perceptible to
develop an accurate model of
reality.
(ex. Chomskyan psycholinguistics)

Evolution, domain specificity, and culture

Not everything is taught. Some
comes about from natural
Go Team
selection.
Human!
We develop these mechanisms
according to the “local situations”.
Also, the existence of domain-
specific mechanisms signifies that
there is a level of universal human
mental content – a universal
human \"culture\" (e.g., Universal
Grammar, social exchange logic,
object permanence, theory of
mind) !!!!!!

Optimal foraging theory suggests
(1) that we should have domain-
Example –
specific information-processing
Food Sharing
mechanisms governing foraging
and sharing
(2) these mechanisms should be
sensitive to information regarding
variance in foraging success,
causing us to prefer one set of
sharing rules for high variance
items and another set for low
variance items.
Ex. The !Kung San

Anthropology and psychology have
The Future of the same basis in theory: a
Domain- description of the reliably
Specific developing architecture of the
Research human mind, a collection of
cognitive adaptations.
This approach represents a link
between mind, culture, and the
world.
Domain-specific performance is the
signature of these evolved
mechanisms, a signature that can
lead us to a comprehensive mapping
of the human mind.

Questions? Thoughts? Ideas?