The DOI matches its Crossref record; 78 of the 80 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Social intelligence, innovation, and enhanced brain size in primates
Open accessAbstract
Despite considerable current interest in the evolution of intelligence, the intuitively appealing notion that brain volume and “intelligence” are linked remains untested. Here, we use ecologically relevant measures of cognitive ability, the reported incidence of behavioral innovation, social learning, and tool use, to show that brain size and cognitive capacity are indeed correlated. A comparative analysis of 533 instances of innovation, 445 observations of social learning, and 607 episodes of tool use established that social learning, innovation, and tool use frequencies are positively correlated with species' relative and absolute “executive” brain volumes, after controlling for phylogeny and research effort. Moreover, innovation and social learning frequencies covary across species, in conflict with the view that there is an evolutionary tradeoff between reliance on individual experience and social cues. These findings provide an empirical link between behavioral innovation, social learning capacities, and brain size in mammals. The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have played pivotal roles in primate brain evolution.
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“One implication is that the ratio measures of relative brain structure size used commonly in comparative studies, such as neocortex ratio [8], ‘executive’ brain ratio [7,10,11] and ‘cerebrotype’ [50] conflate allometric scaling with selection on specific brain regions.”
From Embodied cognitive evolution and the cerebellum (2012) · cites this paper as [11]
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Cellular Scaling Rules for the Brains of Marsupials: Not as “Primitive” as Expected
Santos, S. E. D., Porfírio, J., Cunha, F., Manger, P. R., Tavares, W. C., Pessôa, L. M., Raghanti, M. A., Sherwood, C. C., & Herculano‐Houzel, S. (2017) · Brain Behavior and Evolution · doi:10.1159/000452856 · Cited by 2,652
Dunbar, R., & Shultz, S. (2007) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1145463 · Cited by 1,580
Socially intelligent robots: Dimensions of human-robot interaction
Dautenhahn, K. (2007) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2006.2004 · Cited by 1,210
survival with an asymmetrical brain: advantages and disadvantages of cerebral lateralization
Vallortígara, G., & Rogers, L. J. (2005) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x05000105 · Cited by 1,133
Fitch, W. T. (2010) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511817779 · Cited by 594
Metadata
- Authors
- Reader, S. M., & Laland, K. N.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Reader, Simon M.
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2002-03-12
- Volume
- 99
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 4436-4441
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC123666
- OpenAlex
- W2156834836
- Cited by
- 1,126
- References
- 80
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 36 · 2023: 50 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 88 · 2020: 72 · 2019: 66 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 54 · 2016: 64 · 2015: 40 · 2014: 58 · 2013: 52 · 2012: 79
- FWCI
- 31.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- eScholarship@McGill (McGill) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Royal Society
- Directorate for Biological Sciences
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- social intelligence, behavioral innovation, social learning, tool use, brain size, primate cognition, brain evolution, evolutionary trade-offs, comparative cognition
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Brain, Biological Evolution, Intelligence, Learning, Primates, Social Behavior
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