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Cooperative breeding (CB) can be defined as a reproductive system in which individuals other than the mother (allomothers) deliver routine care. Among primates, the strongest reliance on allomaternal care is found in callitrichids and humans. The cooperative breeding system requires the support of special motivational and cognitive processes, including increased social tolerance or attentional bias toward monitoring motivations and behaviors of others. Allomaternal care can explain the spectacular increase in brain size in the hominin lineage (the expensive brain hypothesis). This phenomenon can also account for both the emergence of menopause long before women’s death and the longevity gender gap. Moreover, the theory in question can account for impressive cognitive abilities of our species. Some issues in the field of developmental psychology have been discussed from the perspective of the CB theory.

Trivers (1974) argued that offspring demand much more parental investment than parents want to give. This conflict of interest stems from a genetic conflict. Parents are genetically equally related to all of their offspring (the coefficient of relatedness r = 0.5; children share 50% genes of each of parents) and, for the parents, they present the same value as the "vehicle" of their genes. For this reason, parents are selected to balance investment among their offspring. For the offspring, it is a different standpoint: for each “full” sibling (r = 0.5) its value is twice as much to the other sibling (because it has 100% of its own genes, and the second sibling shares only 50% of its genes), and its value is fourfold higher than the value of a half-sibling (r = 0.25). The "selfish" children, driven by their own genetic interest, try to obtain more parental investment than their parents intend to provide, even at their siblings’ disadvantage. In this situation, a parent–offspring conflict arises that concerns the distribution of parental investment, and what is important, one can expect a sibling rivalry for these resources. In this paper the social and psychological consequences of parent-offspring conflict are discussed: i.a. infanticide, mate preference conflict, sibling rivalry and allomothering as a way in which parent-offspring can be reduced

The following article is an attempt to answer a question of psycho-evolutionary mechanisms of the origins of imagination. It is assumed that the imagination is a representation of ideas coded in semantic memory - this assumption is justified by an idea of lingua mentalis and the imagination model of Z. Pylyshyn. The starting point of the analysis is a long-term memory model covering three areas: species memory, episodic memory and semantic memory. This model is used to analyse hypothetical psycho-evolutionary mechanisms which led to the emergence of imagination such as: learning processes, emotions and prototypical categorising of the world. This paper also points out to the role of working memory in the formation of visual representations. It presents a thesis that operating memory has a dynamical character - it allows to realise either recollections or images - mind representations with different time requirements.

The following article is an attempt to present possibilities of evolution. To do that two functions of evolution are discussed - homeostatic and heterostatic, and a particular role in creative evolution is assigned to the heterostatic function. Creative possibilities if evolution connected with the realisation of this function are analysed with reference to learning and imagination. It is assumed that learning - as a mechanism which is phylogenetically older and universal in the animal world - allows for the behavioural creativity which oversteps the bounds of determinism delimited by genetic stock`of an organism, and imagination - as beginning of a human mind - gave a human being a possibility of mental structuring and restructuring of the world and predicting events, which effectively increased possibilities of survival and development of homo sapiens. The paper also shows anthropological conditions of the emergence and the development of imagination.

The article focuses upon the influence of criteria of creativity on creative activity. It was assumed that during the process of creation a creator goes by such criteria. Among them originality and usefulness were recognized as the most important ones. In accordance with hypothesis of over justification it was accepted that these criteria may diminish the quality of the work. During my research I obtained the effect in the form of interaction of experimental conditions with sex.

This article is concerned with the matter of social evaluation of the creative product. The author focuses his attention on the attempt empiric answer on two questions: 1. How originality and usefulness - the basic criteria of the creative product - are represented in every day speech? 2. Whether one of these criteria - originality or usefulness - is more important in the social system of evaluation of such a product? The achieved results, according to the author, may be the supplement of research on so called tacit creative theories.