Domain specificity is a theoretical position in
cognitive science (especially modern
cognitive development
Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult bra ...
) that argues that many aspects of
cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
are supported by specialized, presumably evolutionarily specified, learning devices. The position is a close relative of
modularity of mind Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have b ...
, but is considered more general in that it does not necessarily entail all the assumptions of
Fodorian modularity (e.g., informational encapsulation). Instead, it is properly described as a variant of
psychological nativism
In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities ...
. Other cognitive scientists also hold the mind to be modular, without the modules necessarily possessing the characteristics of Fodorian modularity.
Domain specificity emerged in the aftermath of the
cognitive revolution
The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes. It later became known collectively as cognitive science. The relevant areas of interchange were between th ...
as a theoretical alternative to
empiricist
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
theories that believed all learning can be driven by the operation of a few such general learning devices. Prominent examples of such domain-general views include
Jean Piaget
Jean William Fritz Piaget (, , ; 9 August 1896 – 16 September 1980) was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development. Piaget's theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemolog ...
’s theory of cognitive development, and the views of many modern
connectionists. Proponents of domain specificity argue that domain-general learning mechanisms are unable to overcome the
epistemological
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
problems facing learners in many domains, especially language. In addition, domain-specific accounts draw support from the surprising competencies of infants, who are able to reason about things like numerosity, goal-directed behavior, and the physical properties of objects all in the first months of life. Domain-specific theorists argue that these competencies are too sophisticated to have been learned via a domain-general process like
associative learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of learnin ...
, especially over such a short time and in the face of the infant’s perceptual, attentional, and motor deficits.
Current proponents of domain specificity argue that
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
equipped humans (and indeed most other species) with specific
adaptation
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the po ...
s designed to overcome persistent problems in the environment. For humans, popular candidates include reasoning about objects, other intentional agents, language, and number. Researchers in this field seek evidence for domain specificity in a variety of ways. Some look for unique cognitive signatures thought to characterize a domain (e.g. differences in ways infants reason about inanimate versus animate entities). Others try to show selective impairment or competence within but not across domains (e.g. the increased ease of solving the
Wason Selection Task
The Wason selection task (or ''four-card problem'') is a logic puzzle devised by Peter Cathcart Wason in 1966. It is one of the most famous tasks in the study of deductive reasoning. An example of the puzzle is:
A response that identifies a card ...
when the content is social in nature). Still, others use learnability arguments to argue that a cognitive process or specific cognitive content could not be learned, as in
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
’s
poverty of the stimulus argument for language.
Prominent proponents of domain specificity include
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
,
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
,
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
, Elizabeth Spelke,
Susan Carey,
Lawrence Hirschfeld
Lawrence may refer to:
Education Colleges and universities
* Lawrence Technological University, a university in Southfield, Michigan, United States
* Lawrence University, a liberal arts university in Appleton, Wisconsin, United States
Preparator ...
,
Susan Gelman[Susan Gelman]
,
faculty profile, University of Michigan, Department of Psychology
and many others.
See also
*
Connectionism
Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial in ...
*
Domain-specificity vs. domain-generality in evolutionary developmental psychology
*
Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
*
Modularity of mind Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have b ...
*
Nature versus nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the balance between two competing factors which determine fate: genetics (nature) and environment (nurture). The alliterative expression "nature and nurture" in English h ...
*
Neural processing for individual categories of objects Discrete categories of objects such as faces, body parts, tools, animals and buildings have been associated with preferential activation in specialised areas of the cerebral cortex, leading to the suggestion that they may be produced separately in d ...
*
Psychological nativism
In the field of psychology, nativism is the view that certain skills or abilities are "native" or hard-wired into the brain at birth. This is in contrast to the "blank slate" or tabula rasa view, which states that the brain has inborn capabilities ...
*
Psychology of reasoning
The psychology of reasoning (also known as the cognitive science of reasoning) is the study of how people reason, often broadly defined as the process of drawing conclusions to inform how people solve problems and make decisions. It overlaps w ...
Notes
Further reading
Abstractsfrom chapters in ''Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in Cognition and Culture'', a collection of essays on domain-specificity.
{{Authority control
Developmental psychology
de:Nativismus (Psychologie)
nl:Aangeboren kennis
pl:Natywizm