Psychology 3490G-001
Special Topics in Psychology: Beyond Nature vs. Nurture: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology
If there is a discrepancy between the outline posted below and the outline posted on the OWL course website, the latter shall prevail.
Instructor: Adam S. CohenPrerequisites: Psychology 2820E or both Psychology 2800E and 2810
Format: Three seminar hours, 0.5 course.
Course Description: This course considers development from an evolutionary perspective. We will explore how natural selection shapes developmental processes, enabling different forms of learning and plasticity. We will examine how evolved developmental mechanisms produce flexibility in thought and behavior, including how they solve evolutionarily novel problems (e.g., learning to drive, play baseball, or read). We will also consider more generally why and how evolution and development are intertwined.
Special focus and scrutiny will be given to the nature–nurture controversy. Are nature, biology, genes, and innate the opposite of nurture, culture, environment, and learned? Or are these false dichotomies? In this course, we will discuss the scientific and logical problems with “nature vs. nurture” and with related conciliatory proposals including the idea that traits are partly genetic, partly environmental. Then we will move beyond “nature vs. nurture” by considering the modern framework of evolutionary developmental psychology, which emphasizes nature-nurture causal interactions, organized by natural selection, to explain development.
Course Goals: The purpose of this course is to help students develop (a) a (bio)logically serious understanding of development and the nature–nurture relationship, (b) a rigorous foundation in evolutionary developmental psychology, (c) an ability to think about typical and atypical development from multiple perspectives, (d) critical and original thinking skills and (e) writing skills.
Evaluation:
Weekly reading summaries: Due 24 hours before class 25%
Leading discussion: Dates assigned in class 15%
Class participation: Weekly 20%
Op-Ed assignment: Due end of week 7 15%
Final paper: Due one week after final class 25%
Weekly Assignment (25%)
Part A) Summary Section: Each week, students will write a 1 page summary on the reading. The summary includes a) a review of the main points of the reading (2-3 sentences), b) two things that you liked about the reading, c) two things that you didn’t like and wish the authors had explained or argued differently, d) one quiz question that you might pose to your classmates, and e) one research question to pursue in the future.
Part B) Question Section: Students will submit questions based on the readings. These include “clarification” questions (e.g., “What do the authors mean by X?’”) and “discussion” questions (e.g., “Could the results be explained by the alternative hypothesis that X?”).
Leading discussion (15%)
Each week, two students will lead class discussion. Discussion leaders should be prepared to first help the class briefly summarize the main points of the readings (usually no more than 5 minutes). Then they should address any points of confusion and answer any “clarification questions” they or their classmates have. The discussion leaders’ main goal, however, is to raise “discussion questions” (their own and those of their classmates) and facilitate a substantive discussion.
Class participation (20%)
Everyone in the class will be expected to have done all the readings and participate in weekly discussions. Good contributions are those that:
• Show you have carefully considered the important issues in the readings and previous discussions in class.
• Provide a new insight that is also relevant to the topic at hand (i.e., long off-track comments are not always the most constructive).
• Build on contributions from others in the class in order to move the discussion forward.
• Offer honest but respectful questions and criticisms of the readings.
Op-ed assignment (15%)
Students will be assigned an article from a major news outlet (NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, The Globe and Mail, etc.) that commits the “nature vs nurture” error and will write a 750 word (+/- 50 words) “Op-Ed” style paper.
Take home exam (25%)
Students will write short essay responses to a series of questions based on the readings. The total word count should be about 2500 words (+/- 50 words), not including the questions.
Sample Reading:
Articles
Barrett, H. C., & Kurzban, R. (2006). Modularity in cognition: framing the debate. Psychological Review, 113(3), 628–647.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Ellis, B. J. (2014). Children, childhood, and development in evolutionary perspective. Developmental Review, 34(3), 225–264.
Bjorklund, D. F., Ellis, B. J., & Rosenberg, J. S. (2007). Evolved probabilistic cognitive mechanisms: An evolutionary approach to gene x environment x development interactions. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 35, 1–36.
Buss, D. M. (2009). How can evolutionary psychology successfully explain personality and individual differences? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(4), 359–366.
Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1994). Beyond intuition and instinct blindness: Toward an evolutionarily rigorous cognitive science. Cognition, 50(1), 41–77.
Gelman, R., & Williams, E. (1998). Enabling constraints for cognitive development and learning: Domain specificity and epigenesis. In D. Kuhn and R. Siegler, (Eds.). Cognition, perception and language. Vol. 2. Handbook of Child Psychology (Fifth Ed). (pp. 575–630). W. Damon, Editor-in-Chief; New York: John Wiley and Sons.
Kaplan, H. S., & Gangestad, S. W. (2005). Life history theory and evolutionary psychology. The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, 68–95.
Maestripieri, D., & Roney, J. R. (2006). Evolutionary developmental psychology: Contributions from comparative research with nonhuman primates. Developmental Review, 26(2), 120–137.
Meaney, M. J. (2010). Epigenetics and the biological definition of gene× environment interactions. Child Development, 81(1), 41–79.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2005). Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (pp. 5-67). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Books (selected readings from the following)
Barrett, H. C. (2014). The shape of thought: How mental adaptations evolve. New York: Oxford University Press. Bateson, P., & Gluckman, P. (2011). Plasticity, robustness, development and evolution. Cambridge University Press. Carroll, S. B. (2005). Endless forms most beautiful: The new science of evo devo and the making of the animal kingdom. WW Norton & Company.
Ellis, B. J., & Bjorklund, D. F. (Eds.). (2005). Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and child development. Guilford Press.
Gallistel, C. R., & King, A. P. (2011). Memory and the computational brain: Why cognitive science will transform neuroscience (Vol. 6). John Wiley & Sons.
Marcus, G. (2004). The birth of the mind: How a tiny number of genes creates the complexities of human thought. New York: Basic Books.
Sample Topics:
Introduction (week 1)
Conceptual foundations (weeks 2-6)
Evo Devo – key theories and concepts
Life history theory
developmental systems theory/probabilistic epigenesis
Modularity and functional specialization
Innateness, learning, and innate learning mechanisms
Heritability – it’s not what you think
Gene x environment interactions
Causal
Statistical
Causal interactions ~= statistical interactions
Adaptation
Obligate vs. Facultative (conditional) adaptations
Canalization/robustness Adaptive phenotypic plasticity; Reaction norms
Ontogenetic vs. Deferred adaptations
Solving adaptive problems faced in childhood vs training for adulthood
By-products - discrepancies between ancestral and modern developmental environment
Individual differences from an evo-devo perspective
Frequency dependent selection
Life-history theory; facultative calibration
Polygenic traits
Negative mutations, neutral variants (evolutionary noise)
Special topics (weeks 7-11)
Learning about others: Social attention and theory of mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, Rutherford) Learning from others: Social learning and natural pedagogy (Csibra, Gergely, Wertz, Barrett) Development of human kin recognition (Lieberman, Cosmides, Tooby, DeBruine)
Development of human altruism, cooperation, and reciprocity (Warneken, Tomasello, Cosmides & Tooby)
Development and stress reactivity (Ellis, Boyce, Belsky, Caspi)
Biological sensitivity to context model vs. differential susceptibility model vs. diathesis stress model
Oral Presentations (weeks 12-13)
