Editing Evolutionary psychology (section)

====Language====
{{See also|Evolutionary linguistics|Evolutionary psychology of language}}

According to [[Steven Pinker]], who builds on the work by [[Noam Chomsky]], the universal human ability to learn to talk between the ages of 1 – 4, basically without training, suggests that language acquisition is a distinctly human psychological adaptation (see, in particular, Pinker's ''[[The Language Instinct]]''). Pinker and [[Paul Bloom (psychologist)|Bloom]] (1990) argue that language as a mental faculty shares many likenesses with the complex organs of the body which suggests that, like these organs, language has evolved as an adaptation, since this is the only known mechanism by which such complex organs can develop.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Pinker |first1=S. |last2=Bloom |first2=P. |year=1990 |title=Natural language and natural selection |journal=[[Behavioral and Brain Sciences]] |volume=13 |issue=4 |pages=707–27 |doi=10.1017/S0140525X00081061 |citeseerx=10.1.1.116.4044 |s2cid=6167614 }}</ref>

Pinker follows Chomsky in arguing that the fact that children can learn any human language with no explicit instruction suggests that language, including most of grammar, is basically innate and that it only needs to be activated by interaction. Chomsky himself does not believe language to have evolved as an adaptation, but suggests that it likely evolved as a byproduct of some other adaptation, a so-called [[Spandrel (biology)|spandrel]]. But Pinker and Bloom argue that the organic nature of language strongly suggests that it has an adaptational origin.<ref>Workman, Lance and Will Reader (2004) Evolutionary psychology: an introduction. Cambridge University Press p. 259</ref>

Evolutionary psychologists hold that the [[FOXP2]] gene may well be associated with the evolution of human language.<ref name=10WR>Workman, Lance and Will Reader (2008). Evolutionary psychology: an introduction. 2nd Ed. Cambridge University Press. Chapter 10.</ref> In the 1980s, psycholinguist [[Myrna Gopnik]] identified a dominant gene that causes language impairment in the [[KE family]] of Britain.<ref name=10WR/> This gene turned out to be a mutation of the FOXP2 gene.<ref name=10WR/> Humans have a unique allele of this gene, which has otherwise been closely conserved through most of mammalian evolutionary history.<ref name=10WR/> This unique allele seems to have first appeared between 100 and 200 thousand years ago, and it is now all but universal in humans.<ref name=10WR/> However, the once-popular idea that FOXP2 is a 'grammar gene' or that it triggered the emergence of language in ''[[Homo sapiens]]'' is now widely discredited.<ref>Diller, K. C. and R. L. Cann 2009. Evidence against a genetic-based revolution in language 50,000 years ago. In R. Botha and C. Knight (eds), ''The Cradle of Language.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–49.</ref>

Currently, several competing theories about the evolutionary origin of language coexist, none of them having achieved a general consensus.<ref name=W&R-2008:277>Workman & Reader 2008:277 "There are a number of hypotheses suggesting that language evolved to fulfill a social function such as social grooming (to bind large groups together), the making of social contracts (to enable monogamy and male provisioning) and the use of language to impress potential mates. While each of these hypotheses has its merits, each is still highly speculative and requires more evidence from different areas of research (such as linguistics and anthropology)."</ref> Researchers of language acquisition in primates and humans such as [[Michael Tomasello]] and [[Talmy Givón]], argue that the innatist framework has understated the role of imitation in learning and that it is not at all necessary to posit the existence of an innate grammar module to explain human language acquisition. Tomasello argues that studies of how children and primates actually acquire communicative skills suggest that humans learn complex behavior through experience, so that instead of a module specifically dedicated to language acquisition, language is acquired by the same cognitive mechanisms that are used to acquire all other kinds of socially transmitted behavior.<ref>Workman, Lance and Will Reader (2004) Evolutionary psychology: an introduction. Cambridge University Press p. 267</ref>

On the issue of whether language is best seen as having evolved as an adaptation or as a spandrel, evolutionary biologist [[W. Tecumseh Fitch]], following [[Stephen J. Gould]], argues that it is unwarranted to assume that every aspect of language is an adaptation, or that language as a whole is an adaptation. He criticizes some strands of evolutionary psychology for suggesting a pan-adaptionist view of evolution, and dismisses Pinker and Bloom's question of whether "Language has evolved as an adaptation" as being misleading. He argues instead that from a biological viewpoint the evolutionary origins of language is best conceptualized as being the probable result of a convergence of many separate adaptations into a complex system.<ref>W. Tecumseh Fitch (2010) The Evolution of Language. Cambridge University Press pp. 65–66</ref> A similar argument is made by [[Terrence Deacon]] who in ''[[The Symbolic Species]]'' argues that the different features of language have co-evolved with the evolution of the mind and that the ability to use symbolic communication is integrated in all other cognitive processes.<ref>Deacon, Terrence W. (1997) The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. W.W. Norton & Co</ref>

If the theory that language could have evolved as a single adaptation is accepted, the question becomes which of its many functions has been the basis of adaptation. Several evolutionary hypotheses have been posited: that language evolved for the purpose of social grooming, that it evolved as a way to show mating potential or that it evolved to form social contracts. Evolutionary psychologists recognize that these theories are all speculative and that much more evidence is required to understand how language might have been selectively adapted.<ref>Workman, Lance and Will Reader (2004) Evolutionary psychology: an introduction. Cambridge University Press p. 277</ref>