Understanding Human Cognitive Uniqueness

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Abstract

Humanity has regarded itself as intellectually superior to other species for millennia, yet human cognitive uniqueness remains poorly understood. Here, we evaluate candidate traits plausibly underlying our distinctive cognition (including mental time travel, tool use, problem solving, social cognition, and communication) as well as domain generality, and we consider how human cognitive uniqueness may have evolved. We conclude that there are no traits present in humans and absent in other animals that in isolation explain our species’ superior cognitive performance; rather, there are many cognitive domains in which humans possess unusually potent capabilities compared to those found in other species. Humans are flexible cognitive all-rounders, whose proficiency arises through interactions and reinforcement between cognitive domains at multiple scales.

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Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition.

Michael Tomasello, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call … (2005)

We propose that the crucial difference between human cognition and that of other species is the ability to participate with others in collaborative activities with shared goals and intentions: shared intentionality. Participation in such activities requires not only especially powerful forms of intention reading and cultural learning, but also a unique motivation to share psychological states with others and unique forms of cognitive representation for doing so. The result of participating in these activities is species-unique forms of cultural cognition and evolution, enabling everything from the creation and use of linguistic symbols to the construction of social norms and individual beliefs to the establishment of social institutions. In support of this proposal we argue and present evidence that great apes (and some children with autism) understand the basics of intentional action, but they still do not participate in activities involving joint intentions and attention (shared intentionality). Human children's skills of shared intentionality develop gradually during the first 14 months of life as two ontogenetic pathways intertwine: (1) the general ape line of understanding others as animate, goal-directed, and intentional agents; and (2) a species-unique motivation to share emotions, experience, and activities with other persons. The developmental outcome is children's ability to construct dialogic cognitive representations, which enable them to participate in earnest in the collectivity that is human cognition.

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Daniel Schacter, Donna Addis, Randy L. Buckner (2007)

A rapidly growing number of recent studies show that imagining the future depends on much of the same neural machinery that is needed for remembering the past. These findings have led to the concept of the prospective brain; an idea that a crucial function of the brain is to use stored information to imagine, simulate and predict possible future events. We suggest that processes such as memory can be productively re-conceptualized in light of this idea.

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Unity and diversity of executive functions: Individual differences as a window on cognitive structure.

Naomi Friedman, Akira Miyake (2017)

Executive functions (EFs) are high-level cognitive processes, often associated with the frontal lobes, that control lower level processes in the service of goal-directed behavior. They include abilities such as response inhibition, interference control, working memory updating, and set shifting. EFs show a general pattern of shared but distinct functions, a pattern described as "unity and diversity". We review studies of EF unity and diversity at the behavioral and genetic levels, focusing on studies of normal individual differences and what they reveal about the functional organization of these cognitive abilities. In particular, we review evidence that across multiple ages and populations, commonly studied EFs (a) are robustly correlated but separable when measured with latent variables; (b) are not the same as general intelligence or g; (c) are highly heritable at the latent level and seemingly also highly polygenic; and (d) activate both common and specific neural areas and can be linked to individual differences in neural activation, volume, and connectivity. We highlight how considering individual differences at the behavioral and neural levels can add considerable insight to the investigation of the functional organization of the brain, and conclude with some key points about individual differences to consider when interpreting neuropsychological patterns of dissociation.

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Author and article information

Journal

Title: Annual Review of Psychology

Abbreviated Title: Annu. Rev. Psychol.

Publisher: Annual Reviews

ISSN (Print): 0066-4308

ISSN (Electronic): 1545-2085

Publication date Created: January 04 2021

Publication date (Print): January 04 2021

Volume: 72

Issue: 1

Pages: 689-716

Affiliations

[1 ]School of Biology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9ST, United Kingdom;

[2 ]School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JP, United Kingdom

Article

DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-062220-051256

PubMed ID: 33400565

SO-VID: da060205-a368-4dc2-ba7b-344dd7c90b44

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