Abstract
The concept of modularity has been central in behavioral and neural sciences since the publication of Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind (1983). Fodor strived to explain the functional architecture of the mind based on the distinction between modular and central systems. Modular systems were deemed to have certain architectural features, such as automaticity, encapsulation, and domain specificity. Evolutionary psychologists have adopted the concept to characterize purportedly evolved human adaptations. In an influential paper, Barrett and Kurzban (Psychol Rev 113(3):628–647, 2006) proposed a definition of modules purely in terms of functional specialization. It is here argued that such strategy marks a shift in Evolutionary Psychology’s theoretical emphasis, as it trivializes the investigation of proximate causes in evolutionary theorizing; furthermore, it leaves the door open to too much flexibility on what counts as evidence for purportedly evolved modules.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Marr’s distinction among levels of description and the importance he gave to questions of function were not informed by evolutionary theory but by work on brain-lesioned patients in human neuropsychology. For a discussion, see Shapiro and Epstein (1998).
It is important to note that such interactions are also assumed in EP: When and how they take place is typically not a matter of empirical exploration but post hoc speculation (see Lickliter and Honeycutt 2003, for a similar point).
For a similar argument, see Chiappe and Gardner (2012).
As previously discussed, speech perception is indeed a complicated affair. It is affected by the presentation of both visual (McGurk and MacDonald 1976) and tactile (Gick and Derrick 2009) stimuli. Such influence is highly specific and was hypothesized to occur based on an in-depth knowledge of how speech perception systems work. For example, inaudible air puffs applied on participants’ right hand or neck while they listened to syllables caused participants to mishear ‘b’ (non-aspirated) as ‘p’ (aspirated; Gick and Derrick 2009). These results demonstrate that perceivers integrate event-relevant tactile information in auditory perception and provide evidence for an extensive degree of integration across sensory modalities.
Contrast this position with that of Price and Friston (2005), who call for a rigorous investigation before claiming that a brain region exhibits functionally specialization: “To infer functional specificity requires a demonstration that an area is activated only by tasks that engage its function and no others” (p. 265).
B&K consider informative the activation of different brain areas by different types of stimuli to establish that the two stimulus sets engage different systems, and I agree. However, even in this case, careful investigation is necessary to establish the meaning of differential brain activation, as it might reflect a variety of factors (e.g., differences in non-critical physical characteristics, levels of practice, levels of attention). In order to identify what brain regions are necessary for a given function, functional specialization at the neural level needs to be investigated.
I am not endorsing a rigid distinction between levels of explanation, as the utility of such distinction has been questioned in the light of new empirical findings (see Laland et al. 2011; Bateson and Laland 2013 for recent discussions). What I am arguing is that the study of proximal causes (development and neurobiological processes) cannot be neglected in evolutionary sciences, as such processes have been shown to shape evolutionary pathways (Lickliter and Honeycutt 2003).
See Gantt et al. (2012) for a critique of the use of the term “mechanism” in EP.
References
Amedi, A., L. Merabet, F. Bermpohl, and A. Pascual-Leone. 2005. The occipital cortex in the blind: Lessons about plasticity and vision. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(6): 306–311.
Balaban, E. 2006. Cognitive developmental biology: History, process and fortune’s wheel. Cognition 101: 298–332.
Barrett, H.C. 2005. Enzymatic computation and cognitive modularity. Mind and Language 20: 259–287.
Barrett, H.C. 2008. Evolved cognitive mechanisms and human behavior. In Foundations of evolutionary psychology, ed. C. Crawford, and D. Krebs, 173–189. New York, NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Barrett, H.C. 2012. A hierarchical model of the evolution of human brain specializations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 109: 10733–10740.
Barrett, H.C., D. Frederick, M. Haselton, and R. Kurzban. 2006. Can manipulations of cognitive load be used to test evolutionary hypotheses? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 91(3): 513–518.
Barrett, H.C., and R. Kurzban. 2006. Modularity in cognition: Framing the debate. Psychological Review 113(3): 628–647.
Barrett, H.C., and R. Kurzban. 2012. What are the functions of System 2 modules? A reply to Chiappe and Gardner. Theory & Psychology 22(5): 683–688.
Bates, E., and J.C. Goodman. 1997. On the inseparability of grammar and the lexicon: Evidence from acquisition, aphasia, and real-time processing. Language and Cognitive Processes 12(5/6): 507–584.
Bateson, P., and K.N. Laland. 2013. Tinbergen’s four questions: An appreciation and an update. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 28(12): 712–718.
Berger, J., J.E. Swenson, and I.-L. Persson. 2001. Recolonizing carnivores and naïve prey: Conservation lessons from Pleistocene extinctions. Science 291: 1036–1039.
Blanchette, I. 2006. Snakes, spiders, guns, and syringes: How specific are evolutionary constraints on the detection of threatening stimuli? The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 59(8): 1484–1504.
Bolhuis, J., G. Brown, R. Richardson, and K.N. Laland. 2011. Darwin in mind: New opportunities for evolutionary psychology. PLoS Biology 9(7): 1–8. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001109.
Brosch, T., and D. Sharma. 2005. The role of fear-relevant stimuli in visual search: A comparison of phylogenetic and ontogenetic stimuli. Emotion 5(3): 360–364.
Buller, D.J. 2005. Adapting minds: Evolutionary psychology and the persistent quest for human nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Buss, D.M. 1998. Sexual strategies theory: Historical origins and current status. The Journal of Sex Research 35(1): 19–31.
Buss, D.M., and M.G. Haselton. 2005. The evolution of jealousy. Trends in Cognitive Science 9(11): 506–507.
Buss, D.M., R.J. Larsen, D. Westen, and J. Semmelroth. 1992. Sex differences in jealousy: Evolution, physiology, and psychology. Psychological Science 3: 251–255.
Buss, D.M., R.J. Larsen, and D. Westen. 1996. Sex differences in jealousy: Not gone, not forgotten, and not explained by alternative hypotheses. Psychological Science 7(6): 373–375.
Buss, D.M., T.K. Shackelford, L.A. Kirkpatrick, J. Chloe, H.K. Lim, M. Hasegawa, T. Hasegawa, and K. Bennett. 1999. Jealousy and beliefs about infidelity: Tests of competing hypotheses in the United States, Korea, and Japan. Personal Relationships 6: 125–150.
Carlson, J.M., A.L. Fee, and K.S. Reinke. 2009. Backward masked snakes and guns modulate spatial attention. Evolutionary Psychology 7(4): 534–544.
Chiappe, D., and R. Gardner. 2012. The modularity debate in evolutionary psychology. Theory & Psychology 22(5): 669–682.
Cohen Kadosh, K., and M.H. Johnson. 2007. Develo** a cortex specialized for face perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11(9): 367–369.
Coltheart, M. 1999. Modularity and cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 3(3): 115–120.
Confer, J.C., J.A. Easton, D.S. Fleischman, C.D. Goetz, D.M. Lewis, C. Perilloux, and D.M. Buss. 2010. Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations. American Psychologist 65(2): 110–126.
Cosmides, L., and J. Tooby. 1994. Origins of domain-specificity: The evolution of functional organization. In Map** the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture, ed. L. Hirschfeld, and S. Gelman, 85–116. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Cosmides, L., and J. Tooby. 1997. Evolutionary psychology: A primer. Retrieved January 7, 2014, from http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html.
Cosmides, L., and J. Tooby 2003. Evolutionary psychology: Theoretical foundations. In Encyclopedia of cognitive science, ed. L. Nadel, 54–64. London: Macmillan.
DeSteno, D., M.Y. Bartlett, J. Braveman, and P. Salovey. 2002. Sex differences in jealousy: Evolutionary mechanism or artifact of measurement? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 83(5): 1103–1116.
Duchaine, B., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. 2001. Evolutionary psychology and the brain. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 11(2): 225–230.
Ellis, B.J., and D.F. Bjorklund (eds.). 2005. Origins of the social mind. Evolutionary psychology and child development. New York: The Guilford Press.
Farah, M.J. 1994. Neuropsychological inference with an interactive brain: A critique of the locality assumption. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17: 43–104.
Fodor, J.A. 1983. The modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Fontanini, A., and D.B. Katz. 2008. Behavioral states, network states, and sensory response variability. Journal of Neurophysiology 100: 1160–1168.
Fox, E., L. Griggs, and E. Mouchlianitis. 2007. The detection of fear-relevant stimuli: Are guns noticed as quickly as snakes? Emotion 7(4): 691–696.
Friston, K.J. 1997. Imaging cognitive anatomy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 1(1): 21–27.
Friston, K.J., and C.J. Price. 2001. Dynamic representations and generative models of brain function. Brain Research Bulletin 54(3): 275–285.
Gantt, E.E., B.S. Melling, and J.S. Reber. 2012. Mechanisms or metaphors? The emptiness of evolutionary psychology explanations. Theory & Psychology 22(6): 823–841.
Gauthier, I., T. Curran, K.M. Curby, and D. Collins. 2003. Perceptual interference supports a non-modular account of face processing. Nature Neuroscience 6(4): 428–432.
Gauthier, I., P. Skudlarski, J.C. Gore, and A.W. Anderson. 2000. Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nature Neuroscience 3(2): 191–197.
Gauthier, I., and M.J. Tarr. 2002. Unraveling mechanisms for expert object recognition: Bridging brain activity and behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 28(2): 431–446.
Gauthier, I., M.J. Tarr, A.W. Anderson, P. Skudlarski, and J.C. Gore. 1999. Activation of the middle fusiform ‘face area’ increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nature Neuroscience 2(6): 568–573.
Ghanzanfar, A.A., and C.E. Schroeder. 2006. Is neocortex essentially multisensory? Trends in Cognitive Science 10(6): 278–285.
Gick, B., and D. Derrick. 2009. Aero-tactile integration in speech perception. Nature 462(7272): 502–504.
Gottlieb, G. 1998. Normally occurring environmental and behavioral influences on gene activity: From central dogma to probabilistic epigenesis. Psychological Review 105(4): 792–802.
Hugdahl, K., and B.H. Johnsen. 1989. Preparedness and electrodermal fear conditioning: Ontogenetic vs phylogenetic explanations. Behavioral Research and Therapy 27: 269–278.
Kanwisher, N. 2000. Domain specificity in face perception. Nature Neuroscience 3: 759–763
Kanwisher, N., and G. Yovel. 2006. The fusiform face area: A cortical region specialized for the perception of faces. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 361: 2109–2128.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. 2006. Modules, genes and evolution: What have we learned from atypical development? In Attention and Performance XXI: Processes of Change in Brain and Cognitive Development, ed. Y. Munakata, and M.H. Johnson, 563–583. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. 2013. Challenging the use of adult neuropsychological models for explaining neurodevelopmental disorders: Developed versus develo** brains. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 66(1): 1–14.
Jung, K., E. Ruthruff, J. Tybur, N. Gaspelin, and G. Miller. 2012. Perception of facial attractiveness requires some attentional capacity: Implications for the “automaticity” of psychological adaptations. Evolution and Human Behavior 33: 241–250.
Laland, K.N., N. Sterelny, J. Odling-Smee, W. Hoppitt, and T. Uller. 2011. Cause and effect in biology revisited: Is Mayr’s proximate–ultimate dichotomy still useful? Science 334: 1512–1516.
Lickliter, R., and H. Honeycutt 2003. Developmental dynamics and contemporary evolutionary psychology: Status quo or irreconcilable views? Reply to Bjorklund (2003), Krebs (2003), Buss and Reeve (2003), Crawford (2003), and Tooby et al. (2003). Psychological Bulletin 129(6):866–872.
Lloyd, E.A. 1999. Evolutionary psychology: The burdens of proof. Biology and Philosophy 14: 211–233.
Marr, D. 1982/2010. Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Masataka, N. 1993. Effects of experience with live insects on the development of fear of snakes in squirrel monkeys, Saimiri sciureus. Animal Behavior 46: 741–746.
McIntosh, A.R. 2000. Towards a network theory of cognition. Neural Networks 13: 861–870.
McGurk, H., and J. MacDonald. 1976. Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature 264: 746–748.
McKeeff, T.J., R.W. McGugin, F. Tong, and I. Gauthier. 2010. Expertise increases the functional overlap between face and object perception. Cognition 117(3): 355–360.
Mineka, S., M. Davidson, M. Cook, and R. Keir. 1984. Observational conditioning of snake fear in rhesus monkey. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 93(4): 355–372.
Mineka, S., and A. Öhman. 2002. Phobias and preparedness: The selective, automatic, and encapsulated nature of fear. Biological Psychiatry 52: 927–937.
Neville, H.J., and D.L. Mills. 1997. Epigenesis of language. Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 3: 282–292.
New, J., L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby. 2007. Category-specific attention for animals reflects ancestral priorities, not expertise. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(42): 16593–16603.
Oyama, S. 2000. The ontogeny of information: Developmental systems and evolution, 2nd ed. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
Picton, T.W., S. Bentin, P. Berg, E. Donchin, S.A. Hillyard, S.A. Johnson, and M.J. Taylor. 2000. Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: Recording standards and publication criteria. Psychophysiology 37: 127–152.
Pinker, S. 1997. How the mind works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Price, C.J., and K.J. Friston. 2005. Functional ontologies for cognition: The systematic definition of structure and function. Cognitive Neuropsychology 22(3/4): 262–275.
Price, C., G. Thierry, and T. Griffiths. 2005. Speech-specific auditory processing specific: Where is it? Trends in Cognitive Science 9(6): 271–276.
Richardson, R.C. 2007. Evolutionary psychology as maladapted psychology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sperber, D. 1994. The modularity of thought and the epidemiology of representations. In Map** the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture, ed. L.A. Hirschfeld and S.A. Gelman, 39–67. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Shapiro, L., and W. Epstein. 1998. Evolutionary theory meets cognitive psychology: A more selective perspective. Mind and Language 13(2): 171–194.
Stone, V.E., L. Cosmides, J. Tooby, N. Kroll, and R.T. Knight. 2002. Selective impairment of reasoning about social exchange in a patient with bilateral limbic system damage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 99(17): 11531–11536.
Takahashi, H., M. Matsuura, N. Yahata, M. Koeda, T. Suhara, and Y. Okubo. 2006. Men and women show distinct brain activations during imagery of sexual and emotional infidelity. Neuroimage 32(3): 1299–1307.
Tipples, J., A.W. Young, P. Quinlan, P. Broks, and A.W. Ellis. 2002. Searching for threat. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 55A(3): 1007–1026.
Tooby, J., and L. Cosmides. 1992. The psychological foundations of culture. In The adapted mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, ed. J. Barkow, L. Cosmides, and J. Tooby, 19–136. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tooby, J., and L. Cosmides. 2005. Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. In The handbook of evolutionary psychology, ed. D.M. Buss, 5–67. Hoboken (NJ): Wiley.
Vargha-Khadem, F., K. Watkins, K. Alcock, P. Fletcher, and R. Passingham. 1995. Praxic and nonverbal cognitive deficits in a large family with a genetically transmitted speech and language disorder. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 92(3): 930–933.
Westermann, G., D. Mareschal, M.H. Johnson, S. Sirois, M.W. Spratling, and M.S.C. Thomas. 2007. Neuroconstructivism. Developmental Science 10(1): 75–83.
White, A.E., D.T. Kenrick, and S.L. Neuberg. 2013. Beauty at the ballot box: Disease threats predict preferences for physically attractive leaders. Psychological Science 24(12): 2429–2436.
Wojciulik, E., N. Kanwisher, and J. Driver. 1998. Covert visual attention modulates face-specific activity in the human fusiform gyrus: fMRI study. Journal of Neurophysiology 79: 1574–1578.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Alison Nash, Suzanne Kelly, Gowri Parameswaran, and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Grossi, G. A module is a module is a module: evolution of modularity in Evolutionary Psychology. Dialect Anthropol 38, 333–351 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-014-9355-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-014-9355-0