Rosati Alexandra G, Wobber Victoria, Hughes Kelly, Santos Laurie R
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Evol Psychol. 2014 Apr 29;12(2):448-73. doi: 10.1177/147470491401200211.
The fields of developmental and comparative psychology both seek to illuminate the roots of adult cognitive systems. Developmental studies target the emergence of adult cognitive systems over ontogenetic time, whereas comparative studies investigate the origins of human cognition in our evolutionary history. Despite the long tradition of research in both of these areas, little work has examined the intersection of the two: the study of cognitive development in a comparative perspective. In the current article, we review recent work using this comparative developmental approach to study non-human primate cognition. We argue that comparative data on the pace and pattern of cognitive development across species can address major theoretical questions in both psychology and biology. In particular, such integrative research will allow stronger biological inferences about the function of developmental change, and will be critical in addressing how humans come to acquire species-unique cognitive abilities.
发展心理学和比较心理学领域都试图阐明成人认知系统的根源。发展研究关注成人认知系统在个体发育过程中的出现，而比较研究则探究人类认知在我们进化史上的起源。尽管这两个领域都有着悠久的研究传统，但很少有研究探讨二者的交叉点：从比较的角度研究认知发展。在本文中，我们回顾了最近使用这种比较发展方法来研究非人类灵长类动物认知的工作。我们认为，跨物种认知发展的速度和模式的比较数据可以解决心理学和生物学中的主要理论问题。特别是，这种整合性研究将使我们能够对发展变化的功能做出更强有力的生物学推断，并且对于解决人类如何获得物种独特的认知能力至关重要。
