Animals depleting one patch of resources must decide when to leave and switch to a fresh patch. Foraging theory has predicted various decision mechanisms; which is best depends on environmental variation in patch quality. Previously we tested whether these mechanisms underlie human decision making when foraging for external resources; here we test whether humans behave similarly in a cognitive task seeking internally generated solutions. Subjects searched for meaningful words made from random letter sequences, and as their success rate declined, they (...) could opt to switch to a fresh sequence. As in the external foraging context, time since the previous success and the interval preceding it had a major influence on when subjects switched. Subjects also used the commonness of sequence letters as a proximal cue to patch quality that influenced when to switch. Contrary to optimality predictions, switching decisions were independent of whether sequences differed little or widely in quality. (shrink)

We agree that much of language evolution is likely to be adaptation of languages to properties of the brain. However, the attempt to rule out the existence of language-specific adaptations a priori is misguided. In particular, the claim that adaptation to cannot occur is false. Instead, the details of gene-culture coevolution in language are an empirical matter.

One way of dealing with the proliferation of conjectures that accompany the diverse study of the evolution of language is to develop precise and testable models which reveal otherwise latent implications. We suggest how verbal theories of the role of individual development in language evolution can benefit from formal modeling, and vice versa.

Evolutionary psychologists should go beyond research on individual differences in attitudes and focus more on detailed models of psychological mechanisms. We argue for complementing attitude research with agent-based computational modeling of mate choice. Agent-based models require detailed specification of individual choice mechanisms that can be evaluated in terms of both their psychological plausibility and the population-level outcomes they produce.