This has clear ramifications for understanding autism. Autism might be a 'defect' in the 'mind reading' system. However, in mild form, it would have clear advantages in terms of technical problem solving.
One might expect that having the counterpart deficiency -- specifically, poorly understanding agency yet deeply understanding the motives of others -- would manifest itself as a surfeit of social and emotional intelligence, and would be found especially in women (the way autism is more often found in men). But it would not be understood in our society as a "syndrome", the way Asperger's is, but rather as simply being "not-so-smart". Which is both unfair and untrue! And biased against women and their intuition!
In this Wikipedia article on social cognition, there is no mention of a dual system of social perception divided between agency and empathy. This might suggest that it is a relatively new notion.
However, it seems that in the relatively long history of psychology there have been dual process theories of cognition in many fields.
In psychology, a dual process theory provides an account of how a phenomenon can occur in two different ways, or as a result of two different processes. Often, the two processes consist of an implicit (automatic), unconscious process and an explicit (controlled), conscious process. Verbalized explicit processes or attitudes and actions may change with persuasion or education; though implicit process or attitudes usually take a long amount of time to change with the forming of new habits. Dual process theories can be found in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. It has also been linked with economics via prospect theory and behavioral economics.
The earliest conception of a dual process cognition seems to go back at least as far as the American philosopher William James.
The foundations of dual process theory likely comes from William James. He believed that there were two different kinds of thinking: associative and true reasoning. James theorized that empirical thought was used for things like art and design work. For James, images and thoughts would come to mind of past experiences, providing ideas of comparison or abstractions. He claimed that associative knowledge was only from past experiences describing it as “only reproductive”. James believed that true reasoning was useful for “unprecedented situations” in which using reasoning to overcome obstacles such as navigation could be overcome with reasoning power of being able to use a map.
I am slightly familiar with the writings of the economist Daniel Kahneman from his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow".
Daniel Kahneman provided further interpretation by differentiating the two styles of processing more, calling them intuition and reasoning in 2003. Intuition (or system 1), similar to associative reasoning, was determined to be fast and automatic, usually with strong emotional bonds included in the reasoning process. Kahneman said that this kind of reasoning was based on formed habits and very difficult to change or manipulate. Reasoning (or system 2) was slower and much more volatile, being subject to conscious judgments and attitudes.[6]
| System 1 | System 2 |
|---|---|
| Unconscious Reasoning | Conscious Reasoning |
| Implicit | Explicit |
| Automatic | Controlled |
| Low Effort | High Effort |
| Large Capacity | Small Capacity |
| Rapid | Slow |
| Default Process | Inhibitory |
| Associative | Rule-Based |
| Contextualized | Abstract |
| Domain Specific | Domain General |
| Evolutionarily Old | Evolutionarily Recent |
| Nonverbal | Linked to language |
| Includes recognition, perception, orientation | Includes rule following, comparisons, weighing of options |
| Modular Cognition | Fluid Intelligence |
| Independent of working memory | Limited by working memory capacity |
| Non-Logical | Logical |
| Parallel | Serial |
Now, there is a real problem with Kahneman's ideas in terms of their historicity. He portrays the rational thinking system as a recent development in humans. This sounds like a replay of the (somewhat) debunked notion of the "triune brain", which divided the human brain into the reptilian, mammalian (limbic system) sections. The current take on the triune brain model is that it is simplistic, that all of these structures have long existed in the human species and have evolved and complexified simultaneously, not in succession. Likewise, if there are two systems of cognition in the human brain, both are extraordinarily advanced and have been developing alongside one another for millions of years.
(Kahneman's conception might reflect an academic bias toward valorizing rationality.)
Now for something slightly different....
There has been a theory bandied about for a few years that humans have inherited autism from their Neanderthal ancestors.
One problem with this is that there is insufficient information on the occurrence of autism among black Africans, who basically have no Neanderthal ancestry. (Europeans have 4% Neanderthal DNA, and Asians around 2%.) Also, 'autism' has become a catchall label, thrown at everything, the way 'retarded' was decades ago, so it might be VERY over-diagnosed in the West.
It is interesting, though, that at one time mental retardation, especially Down's syndrome, was seen as a throwback to an earlier stage of human evolution ('mongoloidism'). The Neanderthal theory of autism seems to parallel that earlier theory.
Let's look at a few physiological ways that Homo neanderthalensis different from and also resembled our primary line, Homo sapiens. The neanderthals probably had language. Neanderthal skeletons have big fat holes where the hypoglossal nerve runs to the throat, and where the thoracic nerve system runs to the chest. Only modern humans have those highly developed nerve systems because we extensively vocalize; but neanderthals seem to have had them as well, although the nature of neanderthal language is unknown.
They had bigger skulls than homo sapiens, although the skulls lacked the elegance of human skulls.
http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com/legacy_blog/skulls.jpg
The large brain and skull might be related to climate. Around the world (even in places like Australia, isolated from other human groups) about 20,000 year ago, the human brain began to shrink by the size of a tennis ball; this coincides with the end of the Ice Age. The neanderthal lived in colder regions, and there could be a relationship between cold climates and bigger brains unrelated to intelligence.
The neanderthal were stockier and slightly shorter than Homo sapiens, and with shorter limbs. That also seems to be an adaptation to the cold.
Most striking, the neanderthals were not as attractive as Homo sapiens.
We have prominent chins. They did not. Scientists are puzzled by our chins, which are unnecessary for any practical purpose. But those chins are elegant, and point to the other, less mentioned mechanism, along with natural selection, that Darwin claimed drove evolution: that would be sexual selection. This is what gave the peacock's their big plumage. It's also usually driven by the choosing power of adult females.
Here is a 2013 NOVA documentary on Neanderthals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTMEDQmfOLk
The anthropologists interviewed assert that Neanderthal tools are much more sophisticated than the tools used by their Homo sapien contemporaries. For instance, the flint chip tools that Neanderthals used look heavy and crude compared to the refined chips that Homo sapiens used, but were actually more useful and much more difficult to produce. Likewise, the spearheads that the Neanderthals used were glued to their bulky spears using a compound derived from birch bark; at the time of filming, scientists still could not figure out how the compound was produced.
Here is the main tool that our Homo sapien ancestors were using for a long period of time, ranging from millions of years ago to 40,000 years ago. It's a hand axe.
But no one is sure what it is used for. In some respects, it is an all-around tool (not really strictly an axe). But some studies conclude that there is no real wear and tear on the specimens found (and there have been an abundance of specimens found). The 'hand axes' are described by archaeologists as art works that probably conferred status on the owner. So the hand axes are similar to automobiles in the 1950s and smartphones today: a very useful all-around tool that was also a status symbol.
In a way, this superficially conforms to the Neanderthal-autism hypothesis. Technologically, the Neanderthal were actually superior to Homo sapiens. Artistically, symbolically and socially, they seem to have been quite behind Homo sapiens. To be fair, the Neanderthal lived in an especially harsh climate that would demand technological accomplishments over artistic achievements.
But this "technology versus artistic symbolism" observation does not line up with Kahneman's distinction between (fast) intuition versus (slow) rational deliberation. Technological and symbolic development both require intuition and rationality.
Here is an engraving found in Gorham's cave in Gibraltar, which some have interpreted to be an example of Neanderthal art dating back 39,000 year ago, based on the surrounding sediment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorham's_Cave#Symbolic_rock_engraving
It is a hash mark, like that in a game of tic-tac-toe. It is dated to the time when Homo sapiens first entered Europe, although Homo sapiens had not yet entered Spain. Nevertheless, some anthropologists argue that it was done by either Homo sapiens from northern Africa, or by Neanderthals who were inspired by contact with Homo sapien art.
However, it could be that Neanderthal were simply evolving artistically similarly to the way Homo sapiens did, but with a time lag of tens of thousands of years.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/06/120614-neanderthal-cave-paintings-spain-science-pike/
Interestingly, there is a connection between autism and a fascination with geometric patterns.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=119438
Geometric cave art was later superseded by animal art. Ironically, autistic individuals often identify with animals. This emotional identification could be due to an erroneous assumption that animals are similar to autistic humans.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201308/do-animals-typically-think-autistic-savants
The point here is that the evolution of human art originally had a very technical aspect that grew more sophisticated, from geometric patterns to wild animals. Again, this is the dichotomy of the technical versus the symbolic, not Kahneman's dualism of intuition versus rational deliberation. And like intuition and rationality, the technical and the symbolic were evolving hand-in-hand, not one supplanting the other (despite Kahneman's assertions) -- although the technical aspects of art would have been expressed first. That is, art would have developed from simple to more complex technical achievements, although symbolic meaning would have been projected onto it at the same time. (My bias is that technical achievements in art would have driven cultural and symbolic sophistication in interpreting art, but the artistic innovations were not driven by the need for more advanced forms of expression by ordinary people.)
This brings us to an interesting question: Which individuals made the first art?
The autistic inventor Temple Grandin has asserted that the first individual(s) who harnessed the making of fire were probably autistic. The same might be true of the first artists. They would have had the same unique (non-social) skills to focus on highly technical aspects of an art that their compatriots would have understood in deep symbolic terms (and in terms of social status that might have meant little to autistic individuals).
Back to the original issue of the dual system of social cognition. Individual humans who suffer an impairment to the 'theory of mind' or 'mind reading' system of social cognition might develop their agency system of social cognition to a greater degree, with an emphasis on a technical understanding of things. They would be the pioneers of tool making (whereas the 'neurotypical' or normal tool makers who copy them would be more concerned with status), but also innovators in the technical aspects of art. It could be that the Neanderthal had such an impairment to their 'mind reading' abilities, hence their remarkable technical achievements and their relative paucity of accomplishments in symbolic culture. But it could be that the Neanderthals, more subject to the harshest aspects of the Ice Age, simply invested more of their efforts into technology than art. And maybe it is still like that. Here is a BMW commercial about a Dutch artist, Theo Jansen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXwSwQ2HKZg Here is a BMW commercial from Italy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlNvJVSKZEQ |
