Fillorkill: alle mitsingen: The Cognitive Trade-Off Hypothesis
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28.12.22 11:15
An evolutionary tradeoff is a situation in which evolution cannot advance one part of a biological system without distressing another part of it. In biology, and more specifically in evolutionary biology, tradeoffs refer to the process through which a trait increases in fitness at the expense of decreased fitness in another trait. A much agreed on theory on what causes evolutionary tradeoffs is that due to resources limitations (e.g. energy, habitat/space, time) the simultaneous optimization of two traits cannot be achieved. Another commonly accepted cause of evolutionary tradeoffs is that the characteristics of increasing the fitness in one trait negatively affects the fitness of another trait.[1] [2] This negative relationship is found in traits that are antagonistically pleiotropic (one gene responsible for multiple traits that are not all beneficial to the organism) or when linkage disequilibrium is present (non-random association of alleles at different loci during the gametic phase).[3]
The cognitive tradeoff hypothesis argues that in the cognitive evolution of humans, there was an evolutionary tradeoff between short-term working memory and complex language skills. Specifically, early hominids sacrificed the robust working memory seen in chimpanzees for more complex representations and hierarchical organization used in language. The theory was first brought forth by Japanese primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa, a former director of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University (KUPRI). Matsuzawa suggests that at a certain point in evolution, because of limitations in brain capacity, the human brain may have acquired new function in parallel with losing others – such as acquiring language while losing visuospatial temporal storage ability.
