The role of socio-communicative rearing environments in the development of social and physical cognition in apes

The cultural intelligence hypothesis (CIH) claims that humans’ advanced cognition is a direct result of human culture and that children are uniquely specialized to absorb and utilize this cultural experience ( Tomasello, 2000 ). Comparative data demonstrating that 2.5‐year‐old human children outperform apes on measures of social cognition but not on measures of physical cognition support this claim ( Herrmann et al., 2007 ). However, the previous study failed to control for rearing when comparing these two species. Specifically, the human children were raised in a human culture whereas the apes were raised in standard sanctuary settings. To further explore the CIH, here we compared the performance on multiple measures of social and physical cognition in a group of standard reared apes raised in conditions typical of zoo and biomedical laboratory settings to that of apes reared in an enculturated socio‐communicatively rich environment. Overall, the enculturated apes significantly outperformed their standard reared counterparts on the cognitive tasks and this was particularly true for measures of communication. Furthermore, the performance of the enculturated apes was very similar to previously reported data from 2.5‐year‐old children. We conclude that apes who are reared in a human‐like socio‐communicatively rich environment develop superior communicative abilities compared to apes reared in standard laboratory settings, which supports some assumptions of the cultural intelligence hypothesis.     

Embodied and disembodied cognition: Spatial perspective-taking

Although people can take spatial perspectives different from their own, it is widely assumed that egocentric perspectives are natural and have primacy. Two studies asked respondents to describe the spatial relations between two objects on a table in photographed scenes; in some versions, a person sitting behind the objects was either looking at or reaching for one of the objects. The mere presence of another person in a position to act on the objects induced a good proportion of respondents to describe the spatial relations from that person’s point of view (Experiment 1). When the query about the spatial relations was phrased in terms of action, more respondents took the other’s perspective than their own (Experiment 2). The implication of action elicits spontaneous spatial perspective-taking, seemingly in the service of understanding the other’s actions.     

Spatial cognition in apes and humans

The debate on whether language influences cognition is sometimes seen as a simple dichotomy: cognitive development is governed either by innate predispositions or by influences of language and culture. In two recent papers on spatial cognition, Haun and colleagues break new ground in bringing together a comparative cognition approach with a cross-linguistic framework to arrive at a third position: that humans begin with the same spatial reference frames as our near relatives, the great apes, and diverge later owing to the influence of language and culture.     

Spatial cognition: evidence from visual neglect

Recent work on human attention and representational systems has benefited from a growing interplay between research on normal attention and neuropsychological disorders such as visual neglect. Research over the past 30 years has convincingly shown that, far from being a unitary condition, neglect is a protean disorder whose symptoms can selectively affect different sensory modalities, cognitive processes, spatial domains and coordinate systems. These clinical findings, together with those of functional neuroimaging, have increased knowledge about the anatomical and functional architecture of normal subsystems involved in spatial cognition. We provide a selective overview of how recent investigations of visual neglect are beginning to elucidate the underlying structure of spatial processes and mental representations.     

Spatial cognition and neighborhood use: the relationship in older adults.

Measures of spatial cognition, neighborhood knowledge, and neighborhood use from the research described by Walsh, Krauss, and Regnier (1981) were examined to determine if laboratory tests of spatial cognition were significant predictors of older adults' use of their neighborhoods. The overall results show that laboratory-based measures of spatial cognition and subjects' knowledge of their neighborhoods are both significant predictors of their use of neighborhood goods and services. The ability to learn and remember the location and orientation of objects, when contextual cues were not provided at test, was more predictive of the participants' neighborhood use than either the participants' number of years in the neighborhood or their mobility. Spatial memory as measured by the Educational Testing Service Building Memory task predicted neighborhood knowledge, which was predictive of neighborhood use.     

Spatial knowledge of adults and children in a virtual environment: The role of environmental structure

This study investigated the effect of environmental structure's regularity on spatial knowledge in a total of 60 participants: second graders, sixth graders, and adults. A desktop virtual environment was used in which participants moved in a controlled self-determined way. The regularity of environmental structure did not influence spatial knowledge as measured by direction estimations and distances walked in route knowledge and detour tasks. In all measurements, an overall developmental increase of achievement from second graders to adults was found. Furthermore, gender differences were found for children as well as for adults, favouring males in all measurements. In addition, orientation specificity of spatial representations was found for adults and for children. Thus, the results reveal a number of interesting aspects regarding spatial knowledge acquisition of children and adults by using a virtual environmental approach.     

Growing in circles: rearing environment alters spatial navigation in fish

ABSTRACT— Animals of many species use the geometric shape of an enclosed rectangular environment to reorient, even in the presence of a more informative featural cue. Manipulating the rearing environment affects performance on spatial tasks, but its effect on the use of geometric versus featural navigational cues is unknown. Our study varied the geometric information available in the rearing environment (circular vs. rectangular rearing tanks) of convict cichlids ( Archocentrus nigrofasciatus ) and tested their use of navigational cues. All the fish used geometric information to navigate when no features were present. When features were present, the fish used geometric and featural information separately. If cues were in conflict, fish raised in a circular tank showed significantly less use of geometric information than fish raised in a rectangular tank. Thus, the ability to use geometry to navigate does not require exposure to angular geometric cues during rearing, though rearing environment affects the dominance of featural and geometric cues.     

Sex differences in cognition: the role of testosterone and sexual orientation

The performance of both heterosexual and homosexual males and females was compared on four cognitive tasks which have been shown to reveal evidence of sexual dimorphism. In one spatial and one verbal task, significant sex and orientation effects were found. Significant relationships were also found between salivary free-testosterone levels and performance on both spatial tasks, but no significant associations were found for performance on the two verbal tasks. The present study revealed both within- and between-sex differences in cognition and indicates that these differences may be partly accounted for by the activational effects of free testosterone.     

Reconnecting cognition in the lab and cognition in real life: The role of compensatory social and motivational factors in explaining how cognition ages in the wild

The papers in this Special Issue compellingly show that older adults' everyday cognitive life is governed not by the decline in elementary cognitive processes as measured in the lab, but by a multitude of compensatory mechanisms, most of which are of the social/motivational variety. Much of this compensatory behavior can be elicited with no or only little experimental prodding, underscoring the self-organizing or self-initiated nature of this type of behavior, even in advanced old age. We suggest that the study of compensation and the orchestration of cognitive, social, and motivational compensatory mechanisms in effective and healthy aging provides a meaningful challenge to traditional ways of examining developmental changes in cognitive performance.     

A cross-cultural survey of the effects of anxiety on the relationship between child rearing and cognition

A cross-cultural study involving a basic pool of 44 societies throughout the world was conducted to analyze the effect of anxiety on the relationship between certain child-rearing variables and cultural measures of cognitive complexity and self-esteem. The research demonstrated that societies utilizing anxiety-arousing techniques did so consistently across a variety of apparently contradictory child-rearing variables. The introduction of anxiety to the rearing experience had the general effect of changing previously established patterns of interaction, sometimes with major sex differences. Thus, socialization toward group norms and away from independent activity was positively associated with indicators of cognitive development (Zern, 1983). When anxiety over the socialization experience existed, however, no systematic relationship was demonstrated for either sex. Self-esteem was also positively related to pressures to socialize when no anxiety existed. For women, when anxiety was introduced, there was a strong negative relationship. For men, anxiety caused no systematic connections of any kind between pressures to socialize and self-esteem.     

Septal lesions and behavior: effects of presurgical rearing and strain of mouse.

Male mice (C57BL/10J or SJL/J strains) were reared in either enriched social cages or restricted individual cages from 25 days of age until they underwent septal or control surgery 1 mo later. Enrichment differentially altered septal or control behavior as measured by: fluid consumption of water, saccharin, and quinine; performance on a rotorod; and the acquisition of an active avoidance task. The interactions of presurgical history with brain damage were manifested differently in the two strains of mice. The importance of attending more to genetic and presurgical history in attempts to define the effects of brain damage on behavior and to determine the function of brain structures is discussed.     

Spatial cognition: gathering strategies used by preschool children

How preschool children retrieve hidden objects was examined in two cross-sectional studies. The first was a simple task in which 1- and 3-year-olds saw two treats hidden in their living room. The newly walking infants generally sought the closer treat first, providing evidence for a least-distance spatial strategy. However, this strategy was affected by a tendency to approach the hiding place most recently baited. Three-year-old children used a least-distance strategy regardless of the order of hidings. In Experiment 2, 3- and 5-year-olds saw 12 puzzle pieces hidden in various containers equally spaced within a naturally furnished children's laboratory. Factors in addition to age were the distinctiveness of the containers and a requirement to return to the center of the array after each retrieval. Overall, children of both age groups were quite successful at this task, retrieving 11 of the pieces. However, 3-year-olds were less efficient, retrieving fewer pieces and requiring more searches. Detailed analyses of errors and patterns of choices indicated differential processes in achieving their performance. Three-year-old children showed the use of memories for events, discrimination of classes of hiding places, and efficient spatial biases. Five-year-old children were more likely to exhibit these processes concurrently.     

Spatial cognition in the gerbil: computing optimal escape routes from visual threats

Previous studies in our laboratory have shown that when presented with a sudden stimulus simulating an oncoming predator, Mongolian gerbils can compute the optimal trajectory to a safe refuge, taking into account the position of the threat, the location of a clearly visible refuge, and several other contextual variables as well. In the present studies, the main goal was to explore the abilities of gerbils to use mental representations of spaces that were visually occluded by opaque barriers to compute efficient escape trajectories. In all studies, gerbils were placed into a round open field containing a single refuge. On each trial, an overhead visual stimulus was caused to ‘fly’ overhead, eliciting robust escape movements from the gerbils. By manipulating the shape and position of a series of opaque barriers that were interposed between the gerbils and the refuge, we were able to show that gerbils can compute the shortest route to an invisible target, even when the available routes to the target are made complex by using elaborate barrier shapes. These findings suggest that gerbils can maintain representations of their locations with respect to salient environmental landmarks and refuges, even when such locations are not continuously visible.     

Bridging cognition and personality in education: the role of style in performance and development

In an attempt to illuminate the interrelatedness of noncognitive and cognitive domains—or, more pointedly, of affection, conation, and cognition—emphasis is placed on variables that not only operate across these domains but are also potentially integrative. Prominent among such variables are personal styles, particularly cognitive styles. The properties and problems of cognitive styles are examined, with special emphasis on field independence versus field sensitivity and on two stylistic dimensions of attentional scanning. The role of cognitive styles as both competence variables and performance variables is addressed, along with the difficulty of disentangling style from ability because of reciprocal determinism in their development. The educational implications of cognitive styles are explored, especially as they bear on the problem of the match between student characteristics and educational experiences and on the value-laden nature of style-based pedagogical decisions.