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. 2020 Dec:2:225-246.
doi: 10.1146/annurev-devpsych-051820-121446. Epub 2020 Sep 21.

The Origins of Social Knowledge in Altricial Species

Katerina M Faust  1 , Samantha Carouso-Peck  1 , Mary R Elson  1 , Michael H Goldstein  1
Affiliations

The Origins of Social Knowledge in Altricial Species

Katerina M Faust et al. Annu Rev Dev Psychol. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Human infants are altricial, born relatively helpless and dependent on parental care for an extended period of time. This protracted time to maturity is typically regarded as a necessary epiphenomenon of evolving and developing large brains. We argue that extended altriciality is itself adaptive, as a prolonged necessity for parental care allows extensive social learning to take place. Human adults possess a suite of complex social skills, such as language, empathy, morality, and theory of mind. Rather than requiring hardwired, innate knowledge of social abilities, evolution has outsourced the necessary information to parents. Critical information for species-typical development, such as species recognition, may originate from adults rather than from genes, aided by underlying perceptual biases for attending to social stimuli and capacities for statistical learning of social actions. We draw on extensive comparative findings to illustrate that, across species, altriciality functions as an adaptation for social learning from caregivers.

Keywords: altriciality; comparative development; developmental niche; exogenetic inheritance; social learning.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Spectrum of sources of information for a developing organism. Species-typical behaviors are often regarded as being derived entirely from genes or wholly from learned information gleaned from the environment. For example, at the left side of the spectrum are innate behaviors, determined by genetic information and immutable by experience, such as reflexes. On the far right end of the spectrum are behaviors that cannot be achieved without information from external environmental or social influences, such as learned tool use. However, most behaviors originate through a combination of genetic and learned factors; for example, songbirds instinctually produce song, but are unable to achieve a species-typical and reproductively adaptive song without the aid of learning from conspecifics. Similarly, human face recognition is learned but bolstered by an innate perceptual bias for attending to faces. These behaviors fall along the information spectrum according to the known relative degree of influence from genetic and environmental sources. Behaviors are color-coded according to domain: Orange represents reflexes; green, recognition/perceptual ability; and blue, social/communicative ability.
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