心 理 学 报 2007, 39 (3): 381〜382Acta Psychologica SinicaThe Future of Psychology: Evoluti onary Approach to Scie ntific PsychologyLei ChangDepartment of Educational Psychlogy, The Chinese University of Hong KongDavid C. GearyUniversity of Missouri at Columbia, USA心 理 学 报 2007, 39 (3): 381〜382Acta Psychologica Sinica心 理 学 报 2007, 39 (3): 381〜382Acta Psychologica Sinicaauthorities on Ianguage evolution. Emphasizing differe nt issues (e.g., la nguage in sti net, to use the name of the author ' s classic book (Pinker, 1994) and, (Cosmides & Tooby, for Corballis, la nguage modality evoluti on or thetran siti on “ from hands to mouth ” to borrow from hisbook title (Corballis, 2002), these two papers together provide a state of the art acco unt of Ian guage evoluti on.“ Evolutionary psychology is an approach to psychology, in which kno wledge and prin ciples from evoluti onary biology are put to use in research on the structure of the huma n mind ”2001, p.1). The approach can be used to study and to provide broad theoretical framing of n early all of the issues and topics with in the traditi on ally defi ned fields of psychology. The 19 papers in cluded in this special issue on evoluti onary psychology are writte n by leadi ng scholars in the field and address topics that can be organized by the familiar divisions of cog nitive, developme ntal, and social psychology.Evoluti onary cog nitive psychology . The author of The origin of mind (Geary, 2005), David Geary leads the discussi on on evoluti onary cog nitive psychology. His paper lays out the foundations and principles for un dersta nding the brain and its cog nitive and behavioral systems. Differi ng from the all-purpose gen eral cog nitive model, an evoluti onary acco unt of huma n cog niti on, as the paper asserts, emphasizes in dividual and specialized cog nitive process ing modules that have bee n n aturally selected for solvi ng recurri ng environmen tal and social problems. Geary provides detailed acco unts of some of the familiar modules known in mai nstream psychology as folk physics, folk biology, and folk psychology, and outl ines how doma in-gen eral systems (e.g., work ing memory) may have evolved. Four other papers prese nted un der this secti on are from Gary Brase,Wa ng Xiao-tia n, Michael Corballis, and Steve n Pin ker. Gary Brase in vestigated the rather classical cog nitive topic of Bayesia n reas oning. Con siste nt with evolutionary theorizing, his empirical findings suggest that recurre nce of the format and con text in which a problem is prese nted improves huma nEvoluti onary developme ntal psychology . As theauthor of the first evoluti onary developme ntal psychology text (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002), David Bjorkl und co-authored with Jas on Grotuss, and Adria na Csin ady to discuss life history tradeoffs concerning child and adolesce nt developme nt. Why do huma ns have one of the Ion gest childhoods in the n atural world, and how does child developme nt make use of cognitive plasticity within the beneficial adaptive constraints described by articles in the first sect ion? As show n in this lead paper of the secti on, some of the an swers are bey ond simple comb in ati ons of evolutionary life history theories and those of main stream developme ntal psychology. One of the an swers has bee n provided by the n ext article by Jay Belsky, who is known for his sem inal work on how early childhood experie nee may prompt the on set of biological clock by stimulati ng differe nt reproductive strategies (Belsky, Steinberg, & Draper, 1991). In his curre nt con tributi on, Belsky re-exam ines his theory by prese nting exist ing empirical studies test ing and exte nding his origi nal work. The n ext three empirical studies (Byrd-Crave n, Geary, Vigil, & Hoard; Brumbach, Walsh, & Figueredo; Frederick & Gallup, Jr.) provide additional evidence for these evolutionary developme ntal prin ciples. Byrd-Grave n et al. in vestigated the relati on betwee n developme ntal心 理 学 报 2007, 39 (3): 381〜382Acta Psychologica Sinicastatistical reasoning. Wang ' s empirical paper shoexperience and later relationship preferences.that risk tak ing behavior and decisi on making carry evoluti onary footpri nts that can be in ferred by in vestigati ng such variables as gen ders of pare nts and children and relative versus absolute family wealth. Michael Corballis and Steve n Pin ker are leadi ngReceived 2006-12-16Correspondence should be addressed to Lei Chang, Department of Educational Psychology, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong; e-mail: leichang@cuhk.edu.hk.Brumbach et al. exam ined adolesce nts ' sexualattitudes and behaviors in a large sample of 13,000 participa nts. Exami ning den tal fluctuat ing asymmetry among 296 in dividuals of 10 species, Frederick and Gallup, Jr. con cluded that the tradeoff betwee n brain and motor developme nt may have lesse ned select i。