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Högberg 2025 — socio-technical niche and AI cognitive co-evolution (Frontiers in Psychology)
Conceptual argument that the human cognitive niche co-evolves with the technologies humans build into it, and that AI is the latest iteration of a long arc (stone tools → writing → print → networked media → AI) in which the medium reshapes attention, memory, and decision-making in real time.
Conceptual / theoretical contribution (cognitive niche framing applied to AI); no primary quantitative findingN/A — argument paper
- Sample
- N/A — theoretical paper
- Methodology
- Conceptual synthesis bridging niche construction theory (Laland / Odling-Smee), extended-cognition literature (Clark / Chalmers), and AI-as-medium framing.
What this means
- Bridges the niche-construction-theory and history-of-mediation-technologies traditions explicitly — the encyclopedia's Part I §1.3 can cite this for the integrated framing rather than citing both traditions separately.
- Names the methodological consequence: each technological medium continuously reshapes the cognitive environment, so cross-sectional 'snapshot' studies of AI effects systematically miss the moving target.
Source
Becoming human in the age of AI: cognitive co-evolutionary processes
Frontiers in Psychology · Andreas Högberg · 2025 · peer-reviewed
Context
- What came before
- Two parallel traditions — niche construction theory (NCT) in evolutionary biology and history of mediation technologies in media studies — were largely siloed. Högberg's argument is one of the explicit bridges.
- What comes next
- Pair with Sterelny (Evolved Apprentice) and Heyes (Cognitive Gadgets) for the cultural-niche-construction lineage the encyclopedia's foundations chapter draws from.
- Where this lands
- Encyclopedia Part I §1.3 (methodology gap — long arc framing) — a citation rather than a load-bearing finding.