PSYC 3100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Reverse Engineering, Decision Rule, Heterozygote Advantage

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3100
• Professor: Pat Barclay

Document Summary

Adaptationism: a trait or set of traits that evolved because they serve a function, raises reproductive success; solves some evolutionary problem. A mutation might allow it to be better at detecting food, or avoiding pray. (different functions an adaptation can serve: for example, fur color function is to blend in with the background, reverse engineering- inferring function from form. Build a device to do a particular thing and infer what the best form or way to do that is given what we want it to do. So reverse is you see the adaptation and wonder what the function is. How to recognize an adaptation: four criteria, reliability: is the behavior always produced? (emotion of hunger) False positive, act like one isn"t there when there is miss, act like one isn"t there when there isn"t one correct rejection. If food is valuable than a big benefit for getting it: by-products (a. k. a.