Key concepts nativism, empiricism, constructivism, epigenetic landscape, imprinting, critical period, sensitive period, Machiavellian intelligence, theory of mind, autism, Williams syndrome, neuroconstructivism, biological preparedness, cortical plasticity

Evolutionary psychology often makes strong claims about innateness, that the child is born with innate mental modules that enable it to develop competencies in areas that have strong fitness implications. For this reason, early cognitive development has become one of the battlegrounds for evolutionary psychologists and their critics. In this chapter we evaluate the modularity hypothesis, introduced in chapter 1, and look at developmental evidence for and against this particular claim of evolutionary psychology. As a result of some evidence that apparently contradicts the notion of innate modules some have concluded that evolutionary psychology itself is untenable. Others, however, propose that modularity is not an essential component of evolutionary psychology and that evolutionary psychology can progress without a commitment to modularity.