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A Cognitive Strategy Shared By Human Infants And Our Great-Ape Kin
Nijmegen, The Netherlands (SPX) Sep 06, 2006 In a comparative study that investigates ways in which our cognitive skills and characteristics as humans have been shaped by our primate ancestry, researchers report new findings showing that human infants display the same preferences as all other great apes in their strategies for remembering where things are, but that these preferences shift as humans develop. This change in cognitive preference indicates a uniquely human developmental trajectory when compared to the cognitive development of other great apes, and it informs our general understanding of which aspects of our cognitive development have evolved within the human lineage. The findings are reported by Daniel Haun, Josep Call, Gabriele Janzen, and Stephen Levinson from the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and Psycholinguistics and appear in the September 5th issue of Current Biology, published by Cell Press. Little is known about the inherited primate "background" of skills that underlies human cognition. Yet it is possible to trace the evolution of human cognitive abilities and tendencies by contrasting them with the skills of our nearest cousins--not just chimpanzees, but all the extant great apes--and thereby identify what we are likely to have inherited from our common ancestor. In their new work, the researchers compared humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans in terms of their strategies for remembering where things are hidden. The researchers first showed that all non-human great apes and 1-year-old human infants exhibit identical preferences. This suggests that the common ancestor of all great apes enacted a similar strategy preference in employing spatial memory. The researchers then went on to examine 3-year-old human children and found that they show the reverse strategy preference. The new findings suggest that continuity exists between our species and the other great apes in the strategies we employ for spatial memory, but that this continuity is masked as human development proceeds. Related Links Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and Psycholinguistics Darwin Today At TerraDaily.com
Embosymbiont Offers Clues To How Plants Came To Be
Iowa City IA (SPX) Sep 06, 2006Plastids are the photosynthetic engines in all algae and plants, and their origin and spread among eukaryotes, ultimately giving rise to land plants, was fundamental to the evolution of plants and animals on our planet. |
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