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Extraordinary intelligence and the care of infants

Steven T Piantadosi1, Celeste Kidd1

  • 1Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627 spiantad@ur.rochester.edu ckidd@ur.rochester.edu.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|May 25, 2016
PubMed

Insights

Pressures for early childcare may have driven human evolution. Helpless infants requiring intelligent parents, who need larger brains, create a cycle favoring increased intelligence in primates.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Human evolution
  • Primate intelligence

Background:

  • Human intelligence is exceptionally high compared to other primates.
  • Existing theories link intelligence to social factors and reproduction.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the role of early childcare pressures in human evolution.
  • To propose an evolutionary model for the development of high intelligence.

Main Methods:

  • Developed an evolutionary model of runaway selection.
  • Analyzed primate genera to test the relationship between infant helplessness and adult intelligence.

Main Results:

  • The model suggests a feedback loop where altricial neonates drive selection for intelligent parents with large brains, necessitating more altricial offspring.
  • Infant helplessness strongly predicts adult intelligence across primate genera.

Conclusions:

  • Early childcare pressures, specifically infant helplessness, are a significant factor in primate and human intelligence evolution.
  • This theory explains the evolution of human-level intelligence in mammals and its distinctiveness from close relatives.

Keywords:
cognitive sciencedevelopmental modelingevolutionary dynamics

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