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  1. Natural language and natural selection.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-27.
    Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...)
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  • Animal Signals: Mind-Reading and Manipulation.John R. Krebs & Richard Dawkins - 1978 - In John R. Krebs & Nicholas B. Davies (eds.), Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. Blackwell Scientific. pp. 380–402.
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  • The cultural evolution of shamanism.Manvir Singh - 2018 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 41:e66.
    Shamans, including medicine men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession,” representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. In this article, I propose a cultural evolutionary theory to explain why shamanism consistently develops and, in particular, (1) why shamanic traditions exhibit recurrent features around the (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Descent of Man.Charles Darwin - 1948 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 4 (2):216-216.
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  • A Generative Theory of Tonal Music.Fred Lerdahl & Ray Jackendoff - 1987 - Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46 (1):94-98.
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  • Natural selection and natural language.Steven Pinker & Paul Bloom - 1990 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13 (4):707-784.
    Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers (...)
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  • Introduction: Evolutionary psychology and conceptual integration.Leda Cosmides, John Tooby & Jerome H. Barkow - 1992 - In Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford University Press. pp. 3--15.
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  • Nonhuman primates prefer slow tempos but dislike music overall☆.J. Mcdermott & M. Hauser - 2007 - Cognition 104 (3):654-668.
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  • Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures.David M. Buss - 1989 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 12 (1):1-14.
    Contemporary mate preferences can provide important clues to human reproductive history. Little is known about which characteristics people value in potential mates. Five predictions were made about sex differences in human mate preferences based on evolutionary conceptions of parental investment, sexual selection, human reproductive capacity, and sexual asymmetries regarding certainty of paternity versus maternity. The predictions centered on how each sex valued earning capacity, ambition— industriousness, youth, physical attractiveness, and chastity. Predictions were tested in data from 37 samples drawn from (...)
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  • Reciprocal causation and the proximate–ultimate distinction.T. E. Dickins & R. A. Barton - 2013 - Biology and Philosophy 28 (5):747-756.
    Laland and colleagues have sought to challenge the proximate–ultimate distinction claiming that it imposes a unidirectional model of causation, is limited in its capacity to account for complex biological phenomena, and hinders progress in biology. In this article the core of their argument is critically analyzed. It is claimed that contrary to their claims Laland et al. rely upon the proximate–ultimate distinction to make their points and that their alternative conception of reciprocal causation refers to phenomena that were already accounted (...)
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  • The signal functions of early infant crying.Joseph Soltis - 2004 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27 (4):443-458.
    In this article I evaluate recent attempts to illuminate the human infant cry from an evolutionary perspective. Infants are born into an uncertain parenting environment, which can range from indulgent care of offspring to infanticide. Infant cries are in large part adaptations that maintain proximity to and elicit care from caregivers. Although there is not strong evidence for acoustically distinct cry types, infant cries may function as a graded signal. During pain-induced autonomic nervous system arousal, for example, neural input to (...)
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  • Language as shaped by the brain.Morten H. Christiansen & Nick Chater - 2008 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31 (5):489-509.
    It is widely assumed that human learning and the structure of human languages are intimately related. This relationship is frequently suggested to derive from a language-specific biological endowment, which encodes universal, but communicatively arbitrary, principles of language structure (a Universal Grammar or UG). How might such a UG have evolved? We argue that UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change (...)
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  • Simultaneous Cooperation and Competition in the Evolution of Musical Behavior: Sex-Related Modulations of the Singer's Formant in Human Chorusing.Peter E. Keller, Rasmus König & Giacomo Novembre - 2017 - Frontiers in Psychology 8.
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  • Orchestrated Sex: The Representation of Male and Female Musicians in World-Class Symphony Orchestras.Desmond Charles Sergeant & Evangelos Himonides - 2019 - Frontiers in Psychology 10.
    This study examines the representation of male and female musicians in world-class symphony orchestras. Personnel of 40 orchestras of three regions, UK, Europe and the USA and distributions of men and women across the four orchestral departments: strings, woodwind, brass and percussion are compared. Significant differences in representation between orchestras of the three regions are reported. Practices adopted by orchestras when appointing musicians to vacant positions are reviewed and numbers of males and females appointed to rank-and-file and Section Principals are (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Principles of Psychology.William James - 1890 - Les Etudes Philosophiques 11 (3):506-507.
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  • Signaling Theory and Technologies of Communication in the Paleolithic.Steven L. Kuhn - 2014 - Biological Theory 9 (1):42-50.
    Between 300,000 and 250,000 years ago early humans in Africa and Eurasia began to use durable material substances and objects as media for signaling. Initially material signals were confined to ochre and other pigments, but over time objects such as beads were also added as technologies for sending messages. Changes in the types of materials used, their durability and costs, and the contexts of their disposal indicate a series of transitions in how early humans employed signaling media. Signaling theory from (...)
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  • The nature of music from a biological perspective.Isabelle Peretz - 2006 - Cognition 100 (1):1-32.
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  • Music and dance as a coalition signaling system.Edward H. Hagen & Gregory A. Bryant - 2003 - Human Nature 14 (1):21-51.
    Evidence suggests that humans might have neurological specializations for music processing, but a compelling adaptationist account of music and dance is lacking. The sexual selection hypothesis cannot easily account for the widespread performance of music and dance in groups (especially synchronized performances), and the social bonding hypothesis has severe theoretical difficulties. Humans are unique among the primates in their ability to form cooperative alliances between groups in the absence of consanguineal ties. We propose that this unique form of social organization (...)
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  • Musicality: Instinct or Acquired Skill?Gary F. Marcus - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (4):498-512.
    Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain‐specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.
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  • On Modeling Cognition and Culture: Why cultural evolution does not require replication of representations.Robert Boyd - 2002 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 2 (2):87-112.
    Formal models of cultural evolution analyze how cognitive processes combine with social interaction to generate the distributions and dynamics of ‘representations.’ Recently, cognitive anthropologists have criticized such models. They make three points: mental representations are non-discrete, cultural transmission is highly inaccurate, and mental representations are not replicated, but rather are ‘reconstructed’ through an inferential process that is strongly affected by cognitive ‘attractors.’ They argue that it follows from these three claims that: 1) models that assume replication or replicators are inappropriate, (...)
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  • Love and Death in the Stone Age: What Constitutes First Evidence of Mortuary Treatment of the Human Body?Mary C. Stiner - 2017 - Biological Theory 12 (4):248-261.
    After we die, our persona may live on in the minds of the people we know well. Two essential elements of this process are mourning and acts of commemoration. These behaviors extend well beyond grief and must be cultivated deliberately by the survivors of the deceased individual. Those who are left behind have many ways of maintaining connections with their deceased, such as burials in places where the living are likely to return and visit. In this way, culturally defined places (...)
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  • The capacity for music: What is it, and what’s special about it?Ray Jackendoff & Fred Lerdahl - 2006 - Cognition 100 (1):33-72.
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  • Cross-cultural music cognition: cognitive methodology applied to North Sami yoiks.C. Krumhansl - 2000 - Cognition 76 (1):13-58.
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  • Age preferences in mates reflect sex differences in human reproductive strategies.Douglas T. Kenrick & Richard C. Keefe - 1992 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 15 (1):75-91.
    The finding that women are attracted to men older than themselves whereas men are attracted to relatively younger women has been explained by social psychologists in terms of economic exchange rooted in traditional sex-role norms. An alternative evolutionary model suggests that males and females follow different reproductive strategies, and predicts a more complex relationship between gender and age preferences. In particular, males' preferences for relatively younger females should be minimal during early mating years, but should become more pronounced as the (...)
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  • The cognitive foundations of cultural stability and diversity.Dan Sperber & Lawrence A. Hirschfeld - 2004 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (1):40-46.
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  • Cognitive science and the cultural nature of music.Ian Cross - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (4):668-677.
    The vast majority of experimental studies of music to date have explored music in terms of the processes involved in the perception and cognition of complex sonic patterns that can elicit emotion. This paper argues that this conception of music is at odds both with recent Western musical scholarship and with ethnomusicological models, and that it presents a partial and culture‐specific representation of what may be a generic human capacity. It argues that the cognitive sciences must actively engage with the (...)
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  • Cognition and the evolution of music: Pitfalls and prospects.Henkjan Honing & Annemie Ploeger - 2012 - Topics in Cognitive Science 4 (4):513-524.
    What was the role of music in the evolutionary history of human beings? We address this question from the point of view that musicality can be defined as a cognitive trait. Although it has been argued that we will never know how cognitive traits evolved (Lewontin, 1998), we argue that we may know the evolution of music by investigating the fundamental cognitive mechanisms of musicality, for example, relative pitch, tonal encoding of pitch, and beat induction. In addition, we show that (...)
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  • Processing structure in music.Stefan Koelsch & Walter A. Siebel - 2005 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (12):578-584.
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  • Aesthetics and Its Origins: Some Psychobiological and Evolutionary Considerations.Nathan Kogan - 1994 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 61:139-166.
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  • Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate.J. Mcdermott & M. Hauser - 2004 - Cognition 94 (2):B11-B21.
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