It seems reasonable to assume that Wooly Mammoths will have been wooly to retain their heat during the last Ice Age. But it turns out that the hair of modern elephants has the opposite effect to that of their ancestors; it helps them lose heat…
Biologists recognise that every organism has characteristics that are the product of its genetic structure and environmental conditions. Characteristics that alter according to environmental influences are referred to as phenotypically plastic and many popular accounts of evolution suggest that these environmentally induced traits are at times genetically assimilated through selection to become fixed in the development of novel traits and species (Price et al., 2003; de Jong, 2005). The term genetic accommodation is applied to describe the process whereby a novel phenotype, that is generated through mutation or environmental influence becomes ‘canalised’ to a point at which plasticity disappears (West-Eberhard, 2003). At that point it has become fully genetically assimilated. In an extended discussion of the causes and consequences of genetic assimilation Ehrenreich and Pfennig (2015) provide the following Figure:
Piaget understood cognitive adaptation in just the same way with Assimilation associated with the increased canelisation (or the ‘hard wiring’) of schematic knowledge. Elenor Gibson (1988) wrote in a similar way about this in the context of the commonly observed ‘transporting scheme‘ that is often applied by young children in their play:
Theories of the evolution of bipedal locomotion in man have sometimes proposed that the advantage of being able to carry food, young, materials for shelter, tools, etc greatly favored the emergence of walking on two legs . Observing the joy of a novice walker in carrying small objects around, often handing them to someone and then retrieving them to transport again, the possibility does not seem fanciful” (p33)
“Carrying is especially interesting to the developmental psychologist who wishes to relate detection of new affordances to developing cognition because it suggests a spiralling process, beginning with perception of the simplest affordances, such as separability and contactability, then moving on to chewability and graspability, then to reachability, to hideability, and eventually to all the refinements of transportability. With each new coil of the spiral, new properties of surfaces, objects, and events are perceived as consequences of exploratory activity, building an ever richer cognitive world. Detecting new affordances provides the means of differentiating the properties of things”. (p34)
Following the work of Athey and Bruce many early childhood eucators are familiar with this ‘scheme’ of transporting. Piaget (1971) is very clear in his elaboration of the processes that are involved; a phenomenon, e.g. ‘containment’ is only meaningful to the child when they have assimilated it to their motor activity and once assimilated, they ‘accommodate’ those schemata of assimilation to the details of external facts’ – in Gibsonian terms, he is describing how the object of their attention gains those affordances:
“ Then, assimilation becomes more and more closely combined with accommodation, the first of these is reduced to deductive activity itself, the second to experimentation, and the union of these two becomes that indissociable relation between deduction and experience that is the characteristic of reason” (p158)
The idea of a neural pathway has become very popular and I find it helpful, even if only as a metaphor for ‘cognitive cannalisation’. We can imagine habits of thought, or complex motor operations being stored away in our minds like pathways in a forest – the more we use them the stronger they get…the bio chemistry would appear to support the idea as well – It seems like the neuro transmitters – dopamine especially – may energise the signal so that it does something like cutting a deeper pathway or accelerating connectivity….perhaps serotonin has the opposite effect. They therefore associate our actions and perceptions with our moods and emotional expression.
Athey, C. (1990) Extending Thought in Young Children, London: Paul Chapman
Bruce, T. (2011) Early Childhood Education, Oxon: Hodder
Gibson E. (1988) Exploratory Behavior In The Development Of Perceiving, Acting, And The Acquiring of Knowledge, Ann. Rev. Psychol. 1988. 39:1-41
Piaget, J. (1971) The Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child, Penguin Books