Chiappa Pilar
Departamento de Etología, Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz, Camino a Xochimilco 101, Col. San Lorenzo Huipulco, alc. Tlalpan, Mexico City 14370, Mexico.
Biology (Basel). 2025 Feb 12;14(2):187. doi: 10.3390/biology14020187.
This essay presents two lines of argument to suggest that the extension into adulthood of specific phenotypic differentiation processes, typical of early development, is fundamental to the evolution of cognition. The first of these two lines of argument is organized in three steps. The first step reviews various studies of human development, highlighting that it has slowed down throughout evolution compared to that of great apes. The second step explores the relationship between this slowed development and human cognition. The third step discusses evolutionary comparative analyses that show a correlation between the evolution of cognitive processes and developmental changes. The second line of argument examines concepts of phenotype. First, the concepts of phenotype are reviewed in correspondence to the two meanings of the word plasticity (i.e., as the ability to alternate or as the ability to shape), and it is concluded that all phenotypes -rigid, plastic, and reversible-fit the meaning of shaping. It is proposed that a phenotypical process can be seen as a continuous series of functional differentiations that occur at different times during the life of the organism and at different contextual points, both inside and outside the organism. Finally, a brief recapitulation is presented that is focused on supporting the formation of behavioral phenotypes as a sequence of differentiation processes shaping the environmental interactions from the most general to the most particular.
本文提出了两条论证思路，以表明早期发育中典型的特定表型分化过程向成年期的延伸是认知进化的基础。这两条论证思路中的第一条按三个步骤展开。第一步回顾了各种关于人类发育的研究，强调与大猩猩相比，人类发育在整个进化过程中已经放缓。第二步探讨了这种发育放缓与人类认知之间的关系。第三步讨论了进化比较分析，这些分析表明认知过程的进化与发育变化之间存在关联。第二条论证思路考察了表型的概念。首先，根据可塑性一词的两种含义（即作为交替的能力或作为塑造的能力）来回顾表型的概念，并得出结论：所有表型——刚性的、可塑性的和可逆的——都符合塑造的含义。有人提出，一个表型过程可以被看作是一系列连续的功能分化，这些分化发生在生物体生命中的不同时间以及不同的背景点上，包括生物体内外。最后，进行了简要总结，重点是支持行为表型的形成，将其作为一系列从最一般到最特殊地塑造环境相互作用的分化过程。
