Episode 85: David Geary discusses our shrinking brains, cognitive development and sex differences
03/26/19 • 84 min
Today’s guest is Dr. David Geary, a cognitive developmental scientist whose wide-ranging interests are particularly focused on evolutionary psychology, sex differences and children’s mathematical development.
He is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri Columbia.
David’s book, “Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences,” has been described as a landmark text that provides a comprehensive evolutionary model to explain sex differences. His research on children’s mathematical development resulted in a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. In addition to authoring four books, he has published more than 300 articles and chapters across a diverse range of topics.
David has served as a member of the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel and was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Board of Directors for the Institute for Education Sciences.
Show notes:
[00:02:36] Dawn asks about David’s childhood, mentioning that his family moved around quite a bit before settling down in Northern California.
[00:03:00] Dawn asks if David’s early struggles in elementary school were due to jumping around from classroom to classroom because of family moves.
[00:03:43] David talks about how he first became interested in science.
[00:04:15] Ken asks why David decided to go to Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.
[00:04:47] David explains how he ended up majoring in developmental psychology.
[00:05:18] David recounts the story of how he went from working at an auto parts store to getting his master’s degree in clinical child and school psychology at California State University.
[00:06:06] Dawn mentions that before David earned his master’s degree, he went to work as a school psychologist and counselor. She then asks what led him to decide to enter the Ph.D. program as the University of California Riverside.
[00:07:05] After finishing his Ph.D., David had a number of university positions before landing at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Ken asks David about the school’s interdisciplinary evolution group, which was a key reason David was interested in the university.
[00:08:12] Dawn asks how children’s mathematical development and evolutionary psychology became two of David’s primary research focuses.
[00:10:04] David summarizes the factors that determine human intelligence.
[00:11:11] David explains why the attempt to define intelligence has always been a controversial issue.
[00:11:51] Ken asks about David’s research in the ‘90s that made a distinction between evolved forms of cognition, such as language, and other forms of cognition that are more dependent on schooling, such as reading and arithmetic.
[00:14:44] David talks about his interest in Evolutionary Educational Psychology, and how that relates to the insights gleaned from his recent article that argued that there is built-in scaffolding that helps a child’s mind learn to talk, use tools, and play, but that there is nothing of the sort for learning how to read, write, or do math.
[00:17:14] David has been investigating children’s mathematical cognition for nearly 25 years, including a 2015 paper on the numerical foundations of young children’s mathematical development.Dawn asks David to share his key takeaways from this research.
[00:20:08] David gives an overview of the MU Math Study, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and focuses on mathematical development from preschool all the way through high school.
[00:22:32] David discusses his research into human sex differences, and human sexual selection.
[00:23:46] Dawn asks about David’s paper that focused on human cognitive sex differences, which illustrated how sexual selection can result in sex differences in the brain and cognition. The paper also explored how these differences appear to be related to mitochondrial functioning, which led David propose a taxonomy of sex differences in human condition-dependent cognitive abilities. Dawn asks David to talk about these underlying brain systems and their development.
[00:26:36] Ken asks how disease, premature birth, and pre- and postnatal exposure to toxins affect males and females differently.
[00:28:56] Dawn mention’s
Today’s guest is Dr. David Geary, a cognitive developmental scientist whose wide-ranging interests are particularly focused on evolutionary psychology, sex differences and children’s mathematical development.
He is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor and a Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri Columbia.
David’s book, “Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences,” has been described as a landmark text that provides a comprehensive evolutionary model to explain sex differences. His research on children’s mathematical development resulted in a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health. In addition to authoring four books, he has published more than 300 articles and chapters across a diverse range of topics.
David has served as a member of the President’s National Mathematics Advisory Panel and was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Board of Directors for the Institute for Education Sciences.
Show notes:
[00:02:36] Dawn asks about David’s childhood, mentioning that his family moved around quite a bit before settling down in Northern California.
[00:03:00] Dawn asks if David’s early struggles in elementary school were due to jumping around from classroom to classroom because of family moves.
[00:03:43] David talks about how he first became interested in science.
[00:04:15] Ken asks why David decided to go to Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley.
[00:04:47] David explains how he ended up majoring in developmental psychology.
[00:05:18] David recounts the story of how he went from working at an auto parts store to getting his master’s degree in clinical child and school psychology at California State University.
[00:06:06] Dawn mentions that before David earned his master’s degree, he went to work as a school psychologist and counselor. She then asks what led him to decide to enter the Ph.D. program as the University of California Riverside.
[00:07:05] After finishing his Ph.D., David had a number of university positions before landing at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Ken asks David about the school’s interdisciplinary evolution group, which was a key reason David was interested in the university.
[00:08:12] Dawn asks how children’s mathematical development and evolutionary psychology became two of David’s primary research focuses.
[00:10:04] David summarizes the factors that determine human intelligence.
[00:11:11] David explains why the attempt to define intelligence has always been a controversial issue.
[00:11:51] Ken asks about David’s research in the ‘90s that made a distinction between evolved forms of cognition, such as language, and other forms of cognition that are more dependent on schooling, such as reading and arithmetic.
[00:14:44] David talks about his interest in Evolutionary Educational Psychology, and how that relates to the insights gleaned from his recent article that argued that there is built-in scaffolding that helps a child’s mind learn to talk, use tools, and play, but that there is nothing of the sort for learning how to read, write, or do math.
[00:17:14] David has been investigating children’s mathematical cognition for nearly 25 years, including a 2015 paper on the numerical foundations of young children’s mathematical development.Dawn asks David to share his key takeaways from this research.
[00:20:08] David gives an overview of the MU Math Study, which is supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and focuses on mathematical development from preschool all the way through high school.
[00:22:32] David discusses his research into human sex differences, and human sexual selection.
[00:23:46] Dawn asks about David’s paper that focused on human cognitive sex differences, which illustrated how sexual selection can result in sex differences in the brain and cognition. The paper also explored how these differences appear to be related to mitochondrial functioning, which led David propose a taxonomy of sex differences in human condition-dependent cognitive abilities. Dawn asks David to talk about these underlying brain systems and their development.
[00:26:36] Ken asks how disease, premature birth, and pre- and postnatal exposure to toxins affect males and females differently.
[00:28:56] Dawn mention’s
Previous Episode
Episode 84: Joe Gomes discusses optimizing human performance and resiliency in the NFL and elite warfighters
Today’s guest is Joe Gomes, the former head strength and conditioning coach for the NFL’s Oakland Raiders, who today is IHMC’s new High Performance Director.
Joe came to IHMC a little more than a year ago to be part of a new biological team that is searching for innovative ways to extend the capabilities and resilience of high-performing humans who operate in extreme environments. In today’s interview, you’ll hear Joe talk about a number of projects he’s working on, including his work with IHMC’s engineers and NASA to develop an exercise machine for long-duration space missions.
Joe was with the Raiders for the 2016 season when Oakland won 12 games and went to the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. Although Joe has spent most of his career helping professional and amateur athletes, he also spent five years in North Carolina as a senior advisor and performance director for the United States Army Special Operations Command.
Show notes:
[00:03:43] Ken asks about Joe’s childhood and whether he played a lot of sports growing up.
[00:04:14] Joe talks about being drawn to rugby because of the teamwork that’s involved.
[00:05:27] Joe describes how he and a friend decided to take some time off from school and travel to Australia.
[00:06:41] Joe discusses returning to London to go to back to school and major in sports science and rehabilitation.
[00:07:37] Ken mentions that even as a young man Joe was very interested in the science of how the human body worked, and asks Joes how it came about that he started to question some of the basic training techniques offered by coaches.
[00:08:40] Joe talks about working with John Allen, a physiotherapist who worked with the British track and field team, where he helped Allen set up a hydrotherapy program to assist injured athletes. He goes on to talk about how he also became involved in a program to screen elite athletes who were potential Olympic medalists.
[00:11:36] Joe explains how he became interested in strength and conditioning.
[00:12:52] Ken asks how a sports-medicine conference in Las Vegas led to Joe moving from London to Phoenix Arizona.
[00:14:47] Joe tells of how he began working with the Argentinian national rugby team back in 2007.
[00:16:36] Joe explains how his experience with the Argentinian rugby team helped him better understand that in addition to physical training, instilling a winning mindset is also important to get the best performance from athletes.
[00:18:36] Joe talks about his passion for teaching athletes about self-accountability.
[00:19:44] Ken asks Joe to talk about his biggest takeaways in terms of optimizing athletes’ performance after working with the Argentinian ruby team.
[00:20:43] Joe gives an account of “his own world tour,” where he hopped around working with different national teams and governing bodies for three years after his experience with the Argentinians.
[00:22:01] Ken asks for Joe to describe his time running the NFL annual scouting combine, where Joe helped train 35 first-round draft picks in a three-year period while working for EXOS as the director of performance.
[00:24:16] Ken comments on how the NFL combine seems quite artificial, focused heavily on explosive power and strength. He notes that much of the training for the combine is designed to stiffen the tendons of the athletes for better power and strength transfer. He goes on to ask if this has resulted in the tendons being stiffer than the muscles are strong, and if there has been a higher injury rate in athletes who have attended the combine training. If so, Ken asks, does it come down to how their team handled them after the combine at the start of training camp.
[00:26:54] Joe discusses how he came to work for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.
[00:28:13] Ken explains how impressed he was by the good work Joe was doing in facilitating the performance, and also preserving the health, of elite warfighters at Fort Bragg. Ken then asks about the similarities and differences between the training for the NFL as opposed to tier-1 military units.
[00:30:13] Joe describes the work he did at Fort Bragg as the most important work of his career.
[00:32:38] Joe tells the story of how he came to work with the Oakland Raiders.
[00:33:44] After arriving in Oakland, Joe helped to plan and open a new state-of-the-art training facility for the Raiders. Ken asks what the process was like and what a state-of-the-art NFL training facility entails.
[00:35:48] Ken asks Joe about the need for a personalized approach to optimize an NFL player’s performance.
[00:37:53] With injuries in the NFL, and sports in general, being a common occurrence, Joe discusses how he uses technology and science to implement strategies for mitigating the risk of injury.
[00:39:23] Ken a...
Next Episode
Episode 86: Matt Johnson talks about the power and future of human-machine teaming
Our guest today is Dr. Matt Johnson, another colleague who works with Ken and Dawn at IHMC.
Matt is a research scientist who joined the institute in 2002 after a 20-year career as Naval aviator. He focuses on human-machine teaming as it relates to technologies such as robotics, software agents and autonomous vehicles. These technologies are used in military responses and help first responders with disaster responses. They are used in space and aviation work as well. He also is part of an IHMC team developing humanoid behaviors and advanced interface concepts that will enable Boston Dynamics’ Atlas robot and NASA’s Valkyrie robot to do complex work.
Matt was in the news recently for a project he’s doing with the police department here in Pensacola. He’s leading a team to develop specialized drones that police officers will be able to use in a number of areas ranging from search and rescue operations to disaster response.
AI Magazineis running an article in its spring issue that Matt co-wrote with Alonso H. Vera, the chief of the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames Research Center. Titled,“No AI Is An Island: The Case For Teaming Intelligence,”the article argues that artificial intelligence will only reach its full potential if it has enough teaming intelligence to work well with humans.
Show notes:
[00:02:52] Matt begins by discussing his upbringing in Long Island, New York, and his unusual family dynamics.
[00:03:25] Dawn asks what lead Matt to attend the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and work on undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering.
[00:03:59] Ken brings up that after obtaining his undergraduate degree, Matt went into the Navy as an aviator, and asks what motivated that transition.
[00:04:44] Matt explains how he ended up at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi where he obtained his master’s degree in computer science.
[00:05:45] Matt talks about his transition out of the Navy and how he came to live in Pensacola and work at IHMC.
[00:07:02] Matt touches on how after a few years at IHMC, he began working on his Ph.D. through Delft University in the Netherlands.
[00:10:03] Ken mentions that Matt’s research focuses on making technology more flexible and resilient through human-machine teamwork. He asks Matt to define what he means by human-machine teamwork.
[00:11:51] Dawn brings up that Matt’s human-machine teamwork endeavors have led to a number of different projects in various fields, one of which is a partnership with the Pensacola Police Department to develop specialized drones for police use in a number of operations including search and rescue and disaster response.
[00:14:05] Matt discusses his ongoing project to help develop humanoid behaviors and advanced interface concepts for robots.
[00:15:53] Ken asks Matt to talk about an article Matt has with Alonso Vera of NASA Ames that’s appearing in the spring issue of AI Magazine.
[00:17:03] Dawn talks about how machine intelligence is making inroads into our everyday world, citing a few examples such as self-driving cars and digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. Dawn asks Matt if he can use self-driving cars as a way to explain the gaps and challenges that intelligent technologies still face.
[00:18:52] Matt talks about how humans are still far better at driving cars and that the technology for self-driving cars still has a long way to go before matching the safety record of humans.
[00:20:11] Dawn describes how Elon Musk told a group of governors that they should adopt AI legislation before robots go rouge and start roaming the streets killing people. She asks Matt if he agrees with Musk, or if the notion of rouge robots is an over exaggeration.
[00:21:23] Ken mentions that it seems natural to think of AI, and technology in general, as a means to compensate for human limitations. He goes on to mention that Matt’s article in AI Magazine warns people to be aware of misconceptions associated with this viewpoint, and asks Matt to talk about them.
[00:24:16] Matt compares human-machine teamwork with a musician playing a duet to illustrate the idea of “teaming intelligence.”
[00:25:47] Ken asks what “common ground” means in regards to the communication between humans and AI, given that “common ground” has a technical meaning in communication theory and is generally mentioned in regards to intelligent human beings who share an understanding or mental model of the world.
[00:27:14] Ken asks Matt for his takeaways from the book “Digital Apollo” by David Mindell, which described tensions that existed between the engin...
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