Evolutionary Developmental Psychology - Domain-Specificity Vs. Domain-Generality

Domain-Specificity Vs. Domain-Generality

A fundamental issue is how best to characterize the cognitive mechanisms that afford humans such flexibility in problem-solving. Authors Leda Cosmides and John Tooby would argue that human beings simply possess a greater number of content-specific modules, each of which specializes in solving a specific type of adaptive problem. And it is the sheer number of these content-specific modules which lends humans such great problem-solving flexibility.

Other authors, such as Robert Burgess and Kevin B. MacDonald, while agreeing that content-specific modules exist, favor a differing view. They would say instead that the flexibility of human problem-solving ability is owed primarily to powerful domain-generality, and that humans use the same non-specific cognitive machinery for a multitude of different tasks. It is also important to point out that this is not an either/or argument for the legitimacy of the domain-specific or the domain-general position, but is concerned simply with the importance of both in regards to our problem-solving capabilities.