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Order these statements from most justified to least justified based only on finding a genetic association with a cognitive trait.

  • Many variants likely contribute small effects to the trait (polygenic architecture).

  • This variant reveals the exact brain mechanism that produces the trait.

  • This variant is definitely causal for the trait.

  • This variant is statistically associated with the trait in this population/sample.

Course
Cognitive Evolution (Evolutionary Cognitive Science): Comparativ
8 units37 lessons
Topics
Evolutionary biologyCognitive scienceComparative psychology / animal cognitionBehavioral ecologyAnthropology (paleoanthropology and archaeology)Neuroscience (comparative and systems)
About this course

This course develops an integrative, research-oriented framework for explaining how and why cognitive abilities evolve across taxa, with special attention to humans. Core coverage includes evolutionary forces (selection, drift, mutation, constraint), adaptation vs exaptation, and Tinbergen’s four questions linking mechanism, development, function, and phylogeny. Methods emphasize comparative cognition task validity, phylogenetic comparative inference, and socio-ecological/behavioral-ecology models. Competing hypotheses (e.g., Social Brain, Machiavellian, Cultural Intelligence), gene–culture coevolution, and neuroscience/genetic evidence are evaluated alongside paleoanthropological and archaeological constraints. The course culminates in designing discriminative tests and synthesizing falsifiable evolutionary accounts.