This hypothesis suggests that living in larger groups promotes cognitive development. This hypothesis is under the idea that maintaining social bonds as well as anticipating the actions of others is the central driver of cognitive evolution. The potential for group-size-dependent cognitive traits to come under selection is not completely understood. However, this theory hypothesizes that social intelligence and social demands were the central force in the developing size of the human brain. This theory is backed up by the fact that key growth periods in human brain size are directly correlated to times where early humans were living in more complex groups which required greater mental capacity that potentially led to the evolution of language. Therefore, social intelligence is not fixed but rather involves complex information-processing that can be acquired and has an adaptive equilibrium directly related to the individual and the environment.
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