Hauser Defines the ‘Humanique’

Marc D. Hauser knows what makes you “humanique.”

The Harvard psychology professor has compiled a list of the four major characteristics that he believes differentiate human from animal cogntition.

Hauser, who debuted his “Humaniqueness” hypothesis earlier this month, says that humans, unlike other animals, have the ability to create interfaces between domains of knowledge and convert representative symbols to digital symbols.

Unique to humans is also the capacity of recursive and combinatorial thought and the detachment of computation and sensory input.

Hauser said animals have “laser beam” intelligence, while human intelligence is better characterized as “floodlight.”

“Laser beam intelligence is restricted to one context,” Hauser said at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting.

While animals may possess advanced cognitive abilities like episodic memory, these capabilities only exist to solve a particular problem.

In birds, for example, episodic memory is only utilized for the retrieval of food. In contrast, humans can apply many of their cognitive systems to new emerging problems.

Hauser also said that while humans generate digital symbols—such as for numbers—to represent what they perceive, animals do not do so spontaneously.

“At some point in time we were able to spontaneously place digital symbols on representation,” Hauser said in an interview after his presentation. “All of a sudden memory coding became much more simple [in humans].”

Hauser added that complex systems of human cognition are not limited to one sensory channel but can take in any type of input.

“Complex computation has been separated from any kind of modality,” said Hauser.

Hauser, who directs the Cognitive Evolution Lab, said that the compilation of his list of “humanique” qualities is a result of 20 years of research and experimenting.

“Those are the kind of ingredients that have repeatedly popped up,” Hauser said. “People that I have talked to in my department think I’m on the right track.”

—Staff writer Bora Fezga can be reached at bfezga@fas.harvard.edu.

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