Kathleen R. Gibson

Object manipulation, tool use and sensorimotor intelligence as feeding adaptations in cebus monkeys and great apes

In this paper we propose a typology for classifying object manipulation and tool use. We then classify tool use as context specific or intelligent tool use on the basis of criteria drawn from Piagets Sensorimotor Intelligence Series in human infants. In an extension of Hamiltons hypothesis we argue that intelligent tool use and tertiary sensorimotor intelligence in cebus monkeys and great apes is an adaptation for feeding on a variety of seasonally limited embedded food sources, while context specific tool use is an adaptation for feeding on one class of embedded food sources. We also argue that the evolution of specific object manipulation schemata must be considered separately from the evolution of intelligence.

Brain maturation and cognitive development : comparative and cross-cultural perspectives

This volume adopts a unique, multidisciplinary approach to the study of the development of the human brain and early behavior. It includes chapters by researchers from several disciplines whose work addresses specific aspects of brain-behavioral interactions in development. The chapters provide strong evidence that the development of both brain and behavior is a response to biological and environmental variations. Language is also discussed, and provides a useful example of biosocial development because linguistic and brain functions and development can be examined under controlled conditions of both genetic and environmental deprivation. Research in this area has produced particularly exciting results pointing to the universality of language capacity among humans and illuminating the processes by which language competence develops. Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development provides new views in the understanding of human nature and present new, biosocially oriented research directions that are unique in their focus.

Expansion of the neocerebellum in Hominoidea.

Technological and conceptual breakthroughs have led to more serious consideration of the cerebellum as an essential element in cognition. Recent studies show the lateral cerebellum, seat of the neocerebellum, to be most active in cognitive tasks. An examination of the relative volumes of the cerebellar hemispheres in anthropoids would reveal whether some groups show greater neocerebellar development through hemispheric expansion beyond expected allometry, implying a greater contribution of the lateral hemispheres to cognition. This study expands the existing data on primate brain and brain part volumes by incorporating data from both magnetic resonance scans and histological sections for a total sample size of 97 specimens, including 42 apes, 14 humans and 41 monkeys. The resulting volumes of whole brain, cerebellum, vermis, and hemisphere enable a reliable linear regression contrast between hominoids and monkeys, and demonstrate a striking increase in the lateral cerebellum in hominoids. The uniformity of the grade shift suggests that this increase took place in the common ancestor to the hominoids. The importance of the neocerebellum in visual-spatial skills, planning of complex movements, procedural learning, attention switching, and sensory discrimination in manipulation would facilitate the adaptation of these early hominoids to frugivory and suspensory feeding.

Evolution of Human Intelligence: The Roles of Brain Size and Mental Construction

Two competing philosophical paradigms characterize approaches to the evolution of the human mind. One postulates continuity between animal and human behavioral capacities. The other assumes that humans and animals are separated by major qualitative behavioral and mental gaps. This paper presents a continuity model that suggests that expanded human mental capacities primarily reflect the increased information processing capacities of the enlarged human brain including the enlarged neocortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. These increased information processing capacities enhance human abilities to combine and recombine highly differentiated actions, perceptions, and concepts in order to construct larger, more complex, and highly variable behavioral units in a variety of behavioral domains including language, social intelligence, tool-making, and motor sequences. Environmental input, including self-generated input, interacts with mental constructional capacities to assure that developing humans acquire species-typical and culturally-specific behavioral patterns. This mental constructional model is compatible with our current understanding of differences between human and non-human primate brains, of human brain plasticity, and of the minimal genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees.

The Oxford handbook of language evolution

PART 1: INSIGHTS FROM COMPARATIVE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR PART 2: THE BIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION: ANATOMY, GENETICS, AND NEUROLOGY PART 3: THE PRE-HISTORY OF LANGUAGE: WHEN AND WHY DID LANGUAGE EVOLVE? PART 4: LAUNCHING LANGUAGE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LINGUISTIC SPECIES PART 5: LANGUAGE CHANGE, CREATION, AND TRANSMISSION

The Cerebellum: An Asset to Hominoid Cognition

The human brain in its size and organization remains the single most important anatomical adaptation of the genus Homo, and details of its evolution are a source of intense curiosity. The human brain can be compared to the brains of our closest relatives to reveal what aspects of anatomy and organization are unique or outstandingly developed in our species. However, our brain is also a product of primate evolution as a whole and hominoid evolution in particular. To understand the brain, we must look beyond ourselves and explore events in brain evolution that are deeper than the last few million years, events that we have shared with the apes.

Human tool-making capacities reflect increased information-processing capacities: continuity resides in the eyes of the beholder.

Chimpanzee/human technological differences are vast, reflect multiple interacting behavioral processes, and may result from the increased information-processing and hierarchical mental constructional capacities of the human brain. Therefore, advanced social, technical, and communicative capacities probably evolved together in concert with increasing brain size. Interpretations of these evolutionary and species differences as continuities or discontinuities reflect differing scientific perspectives.

Solving the language origins puzzle: Collecting and assembling all pertinent pieces

Wilkins & Wakefield fall short of solving the language origin puzzle because they underestimate the cognitive and linguistic capacities of great apes. A focus on ape capacities leads to the recognition of varied levels of cognition and language and to a gradualistic model of language emergence in which early hominid language skills exceed those of the apes but fall far short of those of modern humans or later fossil hominid groups.

Susan Perry: Manipulative Monkeys. The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal

Capuchins are long-lived (≥50 years), relatively large brained, slowly-maturing, New World monkeys that parallel chimpanzees and humans in their omnivorous foraging patterns, in their frequent use of tools in captivity and at some study sites, and in their occasional tendencies to engage in coalitional intraspecific lethal aggression. These life history and behavioral commonalities suggest that ancestral capuchins faced some selective pressures similar to those experienced by ancestral humans and apes. Fortunately, information about the behavior and ecology of wild capuchins that may enable meaningful cross-species comparisons is now emerging as a result of several studies, including the now 18-yr study of populations of Cebus capucinus at Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica. Manipulative Monkeys places the behavior of the Lomas Barbudal capuchins within the contexts of key theoretical questions. It addresses, but does not necessarily resolve, such issues as social versus foraging challenges in relationship to brain size and intelligence, the possible existence of a capuchin theory of mind, the complexity of capuchin social interactions in comparison to those of Old World monkeys, the adaptive significance of alloparenting, infanticide, and coalitional lethal aggression, and social learning in capuchins. Pertinent, often spell-binding, descriptions of the behaviors and fates of many of the study-site’s >100 named monkeys accompany each theoretical discussion. This method provides readers with vivid images of capuchin behaviors and personalities, while, at the same time, piquing their interest in important scientific issues. Perry depicts capuchins as pugnacious, fearless, persistent animals that apply similar behavioral styles across a wide range of behaviors. They use probing, pounding, and rubbing techniques to extract a variety of plant and animal food Int J Primatol (2008) 29:1119–1120 DOI 10.1007/s10764-008-9279-0

Book Review: Comparative Vertebrate Lateralization. Edited by Lesley J. Rogers and Richard J. Andrew, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002, ix + 660 pp., US

Anthropologists and primatologists long held the opinion that lateralized brain functions and anatomical asymmetries are uniquely human traits. This view is still sufficiently influential that discoveries of great ape neural asymmetries continue to make scientific headlines. Yet, a decade ago, a important volume by Bradshaw and Rogers (1993) demonstrated the pervasiveness of lateralization throughout the animal kingdom. The current volume complements the earlier work by providing in depth reviews of recent research in neural and behavioral lateralization across the chordate spectrum and by placing current knowledge about lateralization in evolutionary and theoretical perspectives. In the first section, chapters by Vallortigara and Bisazza, Andrew, and Rogers demonstrate that larval amphioxus possess lateralized brain functions and anatomical asymmetries that resemble those in fish, amphibians, birds, and mammals. Specifically, in most, possibly all vertebrate species, the left hemisphere is primarily dedicated to detailed analyses of sensorimotor information while the right is more emotional and synthetic. For vertebrates with totally crossed optic tracts, this means that the right eye is usually the most active when acquiring food, while the left is most important for detecting predators and social companions. This pattern may have originated in bottom dwelling fish and other chordates that tended to lie on their right sides, thus keeping the right eye attuned to the floor and the left to the water. If this volume offered nothing but clear documentation of behavioral and neural asymmetries across the vertebrate order, it would be a must read for all students of brain and behavior evolution. The scientific caliber of the editors and contributors, however, is that they chose not to stop there. Landmark papers in the second section (Andrew, Deng and Rogers, Güntürkün, Cowell and Denenberg, and Damerose and Vauclair) are reviews of experimental work on the development of lateralization in various