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Related Experiment Videos

Laterality and human evolution.

M C Corballis

    Psychological Review
    |July 1, 1989
    PubMed
    Summary
    This summary is machine-generated.

    Human cognitive evolution shows a distinctively generative representation mode, possibly unique to humans and linked to the left brain hemisphere, emerging around 1.5 million years ago. This contrasts with an analogue representation mode shared with other species and associated with the right hemisphere.

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    Area of Science:

    • Evolutionary Anthropology
    • Cognitive Neuroscience
    • Paleoanthropology

    Background:

    • Human right-handedness and left-cerebral language representation are discussed as potential markers of human uniqueness.
    • These traits may date back to Homo habilis, over 2 million years ago.

    Purpose of the Study:

    • To explore the emergence of a distinctively human mode of cognitive representation.
    • To investigate the role of generativity and its association with the left cerebral hemisphere.

    Main Methods:

    • Comparative analysis of hominin evolution and cognitive traits.
    • Review of evidence from paleoanthropology and neuroscience.

    Main Results:

    • A uniquely human mode of cognitive representation, characterized by generativity, may have emerged with Homo erectus and the Acheulean tool culture (approx. 1.5 million years ago).

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  • This generative mode, involving multipart representations from elementary parts (e.g., phonemes, geons), is hypothesized to be associated with the left cerebral hemisphere.
  • An analogue mode of representation, shared with other species, is linked to the right hemisphere in humans.

    • Conclusions:

    • Generativity may represent a fundamental cognitive discontinuity between humans and other primates.
    • The evolution of flexible speech in Homo sapiens sapiens (last 200,000 years) may represent a culmination of this generative capacity.