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Narvaez et al. (2022), in their article "Evolving Evolutionary Psychology," argue that mainstream evolutionary psychology is based on misguided neo-Darwinian adaptationist thinking and an antiquated computationalist, "mind-as-computer" framework and offer their own developmentally informed theory as an alternative. While applauding Narvaez et al. for promoting the role of development in evolutionary explication and as a potential metatheory for psychology, we point out that contemporary evolutionary-developmental accounts address the shortcomings of mainstream evolutionary psychology they describe, while maintaining an adaptationist perspective that includes a central role of evolved, domain-specific information-processing mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The contributions of evolutionary processes to human sex differences are vigorously debated. One counterargument is that the magnitude of many sex differences fluctuates from one context to the next, implying an environment origin. Sexual selection provides a framework for integrating evolutionary processes and environmental influences on the origin and magnitude of sex differences. The dynamics of sexual selection involve competition for mates and discriminative mate choices. The associated traits are typically exaggerated and condition-dependent, that is, their development and expression are very sensitive to social and ecological conditions. The magnitude of sex differences in sexually selected traits should then be largest under optimal social and ecological conditions and shrink as conditions deteriorate. The basics of this framework are described, and its utility is illustrated with discussion of fluctuations in the magnitude of human physical, behavioral, and cognitive sex differences., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Sex-specific brain and cognitive deficits emerge with malnutrition, some infectious and neurodegenerative diseases, and often with prenatal or postnatal toxin exposure. These deficits are described in disparate literatures and are generally not linked to one another. Sexual selection may provide a unifying framework that integrates our understanding of these deficits and provides direction for future studies of sex-specific vulnerabilities. Sexually selected traits are those that have evolved to facilitate competition for reproductive resources or that influence mate choices, and are often larger and more complex than other traits. Critically, malnutrition, disease, chronic social stress, and exposure to man-made toxins compromise the development and expression of sexually selected traits more strongly than that of other traits. The fundamental mechanism underlying vulnerability might be the efficiency of mitochondrial energy capture and control of oxidative stress that in turn links these traits to current advances in neuroenergetics, stress endocrinology, and toxicology. The key idea is that the elaboration of these cognitive abilities, with more underlying gray matter or more extensive inter-modular white matter connections, makes them particularly sensitive to disruptions in mitochondrial functioning and oxidative stress. A framework of human sexually selected cognitive abilities and underlying brain systems is proposed and used to organize what is currently known about sex-specific vulnerabilities., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

General intelligence or g is one of the most thoroughly studied concepts in the behavioral sciences. Measures of intelligence are predictive of a wide range of educational, occupational, and life outcomes, including creative productivity and are systematically related to physical health and successful aging. The nexus of relations suggests 1 or several fundamental biological mechanisms underlie g, health, and aging, among other outcomes. Cell-damaging oxidative stress has been proposed as 1 of many potential mechanisms, but the proposal is underdeveloped and does not capture other important mitochondrial functions. I flesh out this proposal and argue that the overall efficiency of mitochondrial functioning is a core component of g; the most fundamental biological mechanism common to all brain and cognitive processes and that contributes to the relations among intelligence, health, and aging. The proposal integrates research on intelligence with models of the centrality of mitochondria to brain development and functioning, neurological diseases, and health more generally. Moreover, the combination of the maternal inheritance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), the evolution of compensatory nuclear DNA, and the inability of evolutionary processes to purge deleterious mtDNA in males may contribute to the sex difference in variability in intelligence and in other cognitive domains. The proposal unifies many now disparate literatures and generates testable predictions for future studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Sexual selection describes the reproductive dynamics that drive the evolution of many sex differences but is rarely used to guide the study of brain development or function. This Mini-Review describes how these dynamics can result in trait elaboration in one sex or the other and why these traits have a heightened sensitivity to stressors. The framework provides a conceptual model that will help to organize what we know about sex differences in brain and cognition, a means to focus the search for additional sex differences, and a means to predict brain systems that are particularly vulnerable to disruption by exposure to stressors. This Mini-Review briefly illustrates these points using sex differences in birdsong and spatial navigation to highlight the benefits and the nuances of using evolutionary theory to help frame neuroscience studies of sex differences. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Traits that facilitate competition for reproductive resources or that influence mate choice generally have a heightened sensitivity to stressors. They have evolved to signal resilience to infectious disease and nutritional and social stressors, and they are compromised by exposure to man-made toxins. Although these traits can differ from one species or sex to the next, an understanding of the dynamics of competition and choice can in theory be used to generate a priori predictions about sex-, age-, and trait-specific vulnerabilities for any sexually reproducing species. I provide a review of these dynamics and illustrate associated vulnerabilities in nonhuman species. The age- and sex-specific vulnerability of such traits is then illustrated for stressor-related disruptions of boys' and girls' physical growth and play behavior, as well as for aspects of boys' and girls' and men's and women's personality, language, and spatial abilities. There is much that remains to be determined, but enough is now known to reframe trait sensitivity in ways that will allow scientists and practitioners to better identify and understand vulnerable human traits, and eventually ameliorate or prevent their expression., (© The Author(s) 2016.)

The current study assessed the heritability of personality in a traditional natural-fertility population, the Ache of eastern Paraguay. Self-reports (n = 110) and other-reports (n = 66) on the commonly used Big Five Personality Inventory (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness) were collected. Self-reports did not support the Five Factor Model developed with Western samples, and did not correlate with other-reports for three of the five measured personality factors. Heritability was assessed using factors that were consistent across self- and other-reports and factors assessed using other-reports that showed reliabilities similar to those found in Western samples. Analyses of these items in combination with a multi-generation pedigree (n = 2,132) revealed heritability estimates similar to those found in most Western samples, although we were not able to separately estimate the influence of the common environment on these traits. We also assessed relations between personality and reproductive success (RS), allowing for a test of several mechanisms that might be maintaining heritable variation in personality. Phenotypic analyses, based largely on other-reports, revealed that extraverted men had higher RS than other men, but no other dimensions of personality predicted RS in either sex. Mothers with more agreeable children had more children, and parents mated assortatively on personality. Of the evolutionary processes proposed to maintain variation in personality, assortative mating, selective neutrality, and temporal variation in selection pressures received the most support. However, the current study does not rule out other processes affecting the evolution and maintenance of individual differences in human personality.

The postauricular reflex (PAR) is anomalous because it seems to be potentiated during positive emotions and inhibited during negative states, unlike eyeblink and other components of the startle reflex. Two evolutionary explanations based on simian facial emotion expressions were tested. Reflexes were elicited while 47 young adult volunteers made lip pursing or grimacing poses and viewed neutral, intimidating, or appetitive photos. The PAR was enhanced during appetitive slides, but only as subjects carried out the lip-pursing maneuver. These results support the nursing hypothesis, which assumes that infant mammals instinctively retract their pinnae while nursing in order to comfortably position the head. Appetitive emotions prime the ear-retraction musculature, even in higher primates whose postauricular muscles are vestigial., (Copyright © 2011 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Comments on Evolutionary psychology: Controversies, questions, prospects, and limitations (see record 2010-02208-001) by Confer et al. We applaud Confer et al.'s (February-March 2010) clarifications of the many misconceptions surrounding the use of evolutionary analyses in psychology. As they noted, such misunderstandings are common and result in a curious tendency of some of our colleagues to criticize evolutionary psychology without a firm understanding of evolution itself. Confer et al. also did an admirable job acknowledging current unresolved issues among evolutionary psychologists (e.g., the relative importance of group selection on humans). The above said, we disagree with their view that a current limitation of evolutionary psychology is its inability to explain phenomena "that appear to reduce an individual's reproductive success, and cannot be explained by mismatches with, or hijacking of, our psychological mechanisms by modern-day novel inputs" (Confer et al., 2010, p. 122). Mismatches between modern environments and environments of evolutionary adaptedness are only one set of explanations for seemingly maladaptive traits (Nesse, 2005). Another set involves evolutionary trade-offs., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.)

Evolutionary educational psychology is the study of how children's evolved learning and motivational biases influences their ability and motivation to learn in school. Evolved learning and motivational biases are organized around the domains of folk psychology, folk biology, and folk physics. There are also domain-general systems that comprise attentional control, working memory, and problem-solving competence that can be used to act on and modify folk systems. The combination supports the creation of cultural and academic innovations and children's learning of these evolutionarily novel innovations in school. The basic premises and principles of evolutionary educational psychology are described, and their potential utility is illustrated by discussion of the relation between folk psychology and children's learning to read and the relation between evolved motivational dispositions and children's academic motivation.

Boys and girls, and men and women show consistent differences, on average, in interests, activity preferences, and social styles. This article summarizes sex differences in human development from infancy through the childhood years and considers how these differences in developmental patterns relate to human evolutionary history. Evidence is reviewed suggesting that the psychological traits that were advantageous differed consistently for men and women during human evolution, consistent with Darwin's (1871) sexual selection as a mechanism through which cognitive and behavioural sex differences evolve and develop during lifetimes. The result is that some sex differences are found very early in development in predispositions to engage in different activities, to attend to different social information, and in methods of social influence. These early differences, in turn, prepare children for somewhat different tasks and roles in adulthood. Although these differences have strong biological origins, developmental experiences serve to flesh out and elaborate on these differences, or to minimize them, depending on the demands of the culture in which the child is situated.

A distinction between potentially evolved, or biologically-primary forms of cognition, and the culturally-specific, or biologically-secondary forms of cognition that are built from primary systems is used to explore mathematical learning disability (MLD). Using this model, MLD could result from deficits in the brain and cognitive systems that support biologically-primary mathematical competencies, or from the brain and cognitive systems that support the modification of primary systems for the creation of secondary knowledge and secondary cognitive competencies. The former include visuospatial long-term and working memory and the intraparietal sulcus, whereas the latter include the central executive component of working memory and the anterior cingulate cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex. Different forms of MLD are discussed as related to each of the cognitive and brain systems.

J. Weeden and J. Sabini's finding of small to no relation between traits rated as attractive in a mate and health of that mate might be interpreted as consistent with C. Darwin's (1859) proposal that these traits are arbitrary signs of beauty. However, such a conclusion would be premature. A combination of consistent empirical findings with nonhuman species and theoretical reasons argues for a continued search for honest signals of genetic fitness and reproductive health in human mate choices. Moreover, (a) even quite small relationships can be important when viewed across generations, and (b) traits that make a potential mate attractive at one age can result in poor health or early death at a later age. These life-history trade-offs greatly complicate the empirical study of attractiveness-health relations, and their potential importance has been underestimated by J. Weeden and J. Sabini.

This article provides a review of evolutionary theory and empirical research on mate choices in nonhuman species and uses it as a frame for understanding the how and why of human mate choices. The basic principle is that the preferred mate choices and attendant social cognitions and behaviors of both women and men, and those of other species, have evolved to focus on and exploit the reproductive potential and reproductive investment of members of the opposite sex. Reproductive potential is defined as the genetic, material, and/or social resources an individual can invest in offspring, and reproductive investment is the actual use of these resources to enhance the physical and social well- being of offspring. Similarities and differences in the mate preferences and choices of women and men are reviewed and can be understood in terms of similarities and differences in the form of reproductive potential that women and men have to offer and their tendency to use this potential for the well-being of children.

Genetic and neurobiological research is reviewed as related to controversy over the extent to which neocortical organization and associated cognitive functions are genetically constrained or emerge through patterns of developmental experience. An evolutionary framework that accommodates genetic constraint and experiential modification of brain organization and cognitive function is then proposed. The authors argue that 4 forms of modularity and 3 forms of neural and cognitive plasticity define the relation between genetic constraint and the influence of developmental experience. For humans, the result is the ontogenetic emergence of functional modules in the domains of folk psychology, folk biology, and folk physics. The authors present a taxonomy of these modules and review associated research relating to brain and cognitive plasticity in these domains.

In more than 95% of mammalian species, males provide little direct investment in the well-being of their offspring. Humans are one notable exception to this pattern and, to date, the factors that contributed to the evolution and the proximate expression of human paternal care are unexplained (T. H. Clutton-Brock, 1989). The nature, extent, and influence of human paternal investment on the physical and social well-being of children are reviewed in light of the social and ecological factors that are associated with paternal investment in other species. On the basis of this review, discussion of the evolution and proximate expression of human paternal investment is provided.

Evolutionary developmental psychology is the study of the genetic and ecological mechanisms that govern the development of social and cognitive competencies common to all human beings and the epigenetic (gene-environment interactions) processes that adapt these competencies to local conditions. The basic assumptions and domains of this emerging field, as related to human life history and social and cognitive development, are outlined, as are implications for issues of importance in contemporary society.

An evolution-based framework for understanding biological and cultural influences on children's cognitive and academic development is presented. The utility of this framework is illustrated within the mathematical domain and serves as a foundation for examining current approaches to educational reform in the United States. Within this framework, there are two general classes of cognitive ability, biologically primary and biologically secondary. Biologically primary cognitive abilities appear to have evolved largely by means of natural or sexual selection. Biologically secondary cognitive abilities reflect the co-optation of primary abilities for purposes other than the original evolution-based function and appear to develop only in specific cultural contexts. A distinction between these classes of ability has important implications for understanding children's cognitive development and achievement.