The Enhanced Working Memory Model

2019 ◽  
pp. 406-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Genetic Event ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Temporal Sequencing ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Cognitive Consequence ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
Multicomponent Model

This chapter traces the origins and currents of Frederick Coolidge’s collaborations with archaeologist Thomas Wynn. It begins with their first article, in 2001, in which they traced a cultural explosion some 50,000 years ago in the archaeological record (as attested by the appearance of things like cave paintings, highly ritualized burials, depictive figurines) to enhanced executive functions (i.e., temporal sequencing, inhibition, planning, and organization) that perhaps resulted from an earlier genetic or epigenetic event not shared by Neandertals. As evidence of enhanced executive functioning in Homo sapiens, Wynn and Coolidge offered barbed points from Katanda, bow-and-arrow technology, agriculture, and the colonization of the Sahul. In their more recent papers, they labeled the cognitive consequence of this genetic event enhanced working memory, thus incorporating their ideas into Baddeley’s multicomponent model of working memory. The chapter ends with speculations on the evolutionary origins of learning and memory systems, looking back to the very beginnings of life on earth.

scholarly journals Cognitive Archaeology and the Cognitive Sciences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick L. Coolidge ◽  
Thomas Wynn ◽  
Karenleigh A. Overmann ◽  
James M. Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Genetic Event ◽  
Second Stage ◽  
Cognitive Archaeology ◽  
Parietal Lobes ◽  
Terrestrial Life ◽  
Psychological Models ◽  
Modern Cognition ◽  
Working Memory Model

Cognitive archaeology uses cognitive and psychological models to interpret the archaeological record. This chapter outlines several components that may be essential in building effective cognitive archaeological arguments. It also presents a two-stage perspective for the development of modern cognition, primarily based upon the work of Coolidge and Wynn. The first describes the transition from arboreal to terrestrial life in later Homo and the possible cognitive repercussions of terrestrial sleep. The second stage proposes that a genetic event may have enhanced working memory in Homo sapiens (specifically in terms of Baddeley’s multicomponent working memory model). The present chapter also reviews the archaeological and neurological bases for modern thinking, and the latter arguments are primarily grounded in the significance of the morphometric rescaling of the parietal lobes, which appears to have distinguished Homo sapiens from Neandertals.

Working, Declarative, and Procedural Memory in Children With Developmental Language Disorder

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4162-4178
Author(s):  
Emily Jackson ◽  
Suze Leitão ◽  
Mary Claessen ◽  
Mark Boyes
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Language Disorder ◽  
Declarative Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Procedural Memory ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Visual Spatial

Purpose Previous research into the working, declarative, and procedural memory systems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) has yielded inconsistent results. The purpose of this research was to profile these memory systems in children with DLD and their typically developing peers. Method One hundred four 5- to 8-year-old children participated in the study. Fifty had DLD, and 54 were typically developing. Aspects of the working memory system (verbal short-term memory, verbal working memory, and visual–spatial short-term memory) were assessed using a nonword repetition test and subtests from the Working Memory Test Battery for Children. Verbal and visual–spatial declarative memory were measured using the Children's Memory Scale, and an audiovisual serial reaction time task was used to evaluate procedural memory. Results The children with DLD demonstrated significant impairments in verbal short-term and working memory, visual–spatial short-term memory, verbal declarative memory, and procedural memory. However, verbal declarative memory and procedural memory were no longer impaired after controlling for working memory and nonverbal IQ. Declarative memory for visual–spatial information was unimpaired. Conclusions These findings indicate that children with DLD have deficits in the working memory system. While verbal declarative memory and procedural memory also appear to be impaired, these deficits could largely be accounted for by working memory skills. The results have implications for our understanding of the cognitive processes underlying language impairment in the DLD population; however, further investigation of the relationships between the memory systems is required using tasks that measure learning over long-term intervals. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.13250180

scholarly journals New indices to characterize drawing behavior in humans (Homo sapiens) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lison Martinet ◽  
Cédric Sueur ◽  
Satoshi Hirata ◽  
Jérôme Hosselet ◽  
Tetsuro Matsuzawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Pan Troglodytes ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Ontogenetic Development ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Spatial Measures ◽  
Development And Evolution ◽  
Cave Art ◽  
Drawing Skills

AbstractTechniques used in cave art suggest that drawing skills emerged long before the oldest known representative human productions (44,000 years bc). This study seeks to improve our knowledge of the evolutionary origins and the ontogenetic development of drawing behavior by studying drawings of humans (N = 178, 3- to 10-year-old children and adults) and chimpanzees (N = 5). Drawings were characterized with an innovative index based on spatial measures which provides the degree of efficiency for the lines that are drawn. Results showed that this index was lowest in chimpanzees, increased and reached its maximum between 5-year-old and 10-year-old children and decreased in adults, whose drawing efficiency was reduced by the addition of details. Drawings of chimpanzees are not random suggesting that their movements are constrained by cognitive or locomotor aspect and we cannot conclude to the absence of representativeness. We also used indices based on colors and time and asked children about what they drew. These indices can be considered relevant tools to improve our understanding of drawing development and evolution in hominids.

scholarly journals Occipital Cortex of Blind Individuals Is Functionally Coupled with Executive Control Areas of Frontal Cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 1633-1647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Deen ◽  
Rebecca Saxe ◽  
Marina Bedny
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Blind Individuals

In congenital blindness, the occipital cortex responds to a range of nonvisual inputs, including tactile, auditory, and linguistic stimuli. Are these changes in functional responses to stimuli accompanied by altered interactions with nonvisual functional networks? To answer this question, we introduce a data-driven method that searches across cortex for functional connectivity differences across groups. Replicating prior work, we find increased fronto-occipital functional connectivity in congenitally blind relative to blindfolded sighted participants. We demonstrate that this heightened connectivity extends over most of occipital cortex but is specific to a subset of regions in the inferior, dorsal, and medial frontal lobe. To assess the functional profile of these frontal areas, we used an n-back working memory task and a sentence comprehension task. We find that, among prefrontal areas with overconnectivity to occipital cortex, one left inferior frontal region responds to language over music. By contrast, the majority of these regions responded to working memory load but not language. These results suggest that in blindness occipital cortex interacts more with working memory systems and raise new questions about the function and mechanism of occipital plasticity.

Intelligence and working memory systems: evidence of neural efficiency in alpha band ERD

2004 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.H Grabner ◽  
A Fink ◽  
A Stipacek ◽  
C Neuper ◽  
A.C Neubauer
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Alpha Band ◽  
Neural Efficiency

scholarly journals Neocortical Ectopias in BXSB Mice: Effects upon Reference and Working Memory Systems

1996 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 696-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary W. Boehm ◽  
Gordon F. Sherman ◽  
Glenn D. Rosen ◽  
Albert M. Galaburda ◽  
Victor H. Denenberg
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Bxsb Mice

P3-096 Effects of galantamine challenge on episodic and working memory systems in patients with mild cognitive impairment: an FMRI study

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. S381-S382
Author(s):  
Philip Scheltens ◽  
Rutger Goekoop ◽  
Serge A. Rombouts ◽  
Luc Truyen ◽  
Frederik Barkhof
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Fmri Study

scholarly journals Is working memory inherently more ‘precise’ than long-term memory? Extremely high fidelity visual long-term memories for frequently encountered objects

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annalise Miner ◽  
Mark Schurgin ◽  
Timothy F. Brady
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Visual Working Memory ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Continuous Measure ◽  
High Fidelity ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
Naturalistic Setting

Long-term memory is often considered easily corruptible, imprecise and inaccurate, especially in comparison to working memory. However, most research used to support these findings relies on weak long-term memories: those where people have had only one brief exposure to an item. Here we investigated the fidelity of visual long-term memory in more naturalistic setting, with repeated exposures, and ask how it compares to visual working memory fidelity. Using psychophysical methods designed to precisely measure the fidelity of visual memory, we demonstrate that long-term memory for the color of frequently seen objects is as accurate as working memory for the color of a single item seen 1 second ago. In particular, we show that repetition greatly improves long-term memory, including the ability to discriminate an item from a very similar item ('fidelity'), in both a lab setting (Exps. 1-3) and a naturalistic setting (brand logos, Exp. 4). Overall our results demonstrate the impressive nature of visual long-term memory fidelity, which we find is even higher fidelity than previously indicated in situations involving repetitions. Furthermore, our results suggest that there is no distinction between the fidelity of visual working memory and visual long-term memory, but instead both memory systems are capable of storing similar incredibly high fidelity memories under the right circumstances. Our results also provide further evidence that there is no fundamental distinction between the ‘precision’ of memory and the ‘likelihood of retrieving a memory’, instead suggesting a single continuous measure of memory strength best accounts for working and long-term memory.

scholarly journals The challenge of the abstract mind: symbols, signs and notational systems in European prehistory

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 221-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Haarmann
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Homo Erectus ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Symbiotic Interaction ◽  
Homo Neanderthalensis ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Naturalistic Pictures

Since the earliest manifestations of symbolic activity in modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the Upper Palaeolithic, there is evidence for two independent cognitive procedures, for the production of representational images (naturalistic pictures or sculptures) and of abstract signs. The use of signs and symbols is attested for archaic humans (Homo neanderthalensis) and for Homo erectus while art in naturalistic style is an innovation among modern humans. The symbiotic interaction of the two symbolic capacities is illustrated for the visual heritage of Palaeolithic cave paintings in Southwestern Europe, for rock engravings in the Italian Alps (Val Camonica) and for the vivid use of signs and symbols in Southeastern Europe during the Neolithic. Around 5500 BC, sign use in Southeastern Europe reached a sophisticated stage of organization as to produce the earliest writing system of mankind. Since abstractness is the main theme in the visual heritage of the region, this script, not surprisingly, is composed of predominantly abstract signs.

scholarly journals Archaeology and the origins of human cumulative culture: a case study from the earliest Oldowan at Gona, Ethiopia.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dietrich Stout
Keyword(s):  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Cumulative Culture ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Replication Experiment ◽  
Technological Analysis

Homo sapiens’ capacity for the inter-generational accumulation of complex technologies, practices, and beliefs is central to contemporary accounts of human distinctiveness. However, the actual antiquity and evolutionary origins of cumulative culture are not known. Here we propose and exemplify a research program for studying the origins of cumulative culture using archaeological evidence. Our step-wise approach disentangles assessment of the observed fidelity of behavior reproduction from inferences regarding required learning mechanisms (e.g. teaching, imitation) and the explanation of larger-scale patterns of change. It is empirically grounded in technological analysis of artifact assemblages using well-validated experimental models. We demonstrate with a case study using a tool-making replication experiment to assess evidence of behavior copying across three 2.6 million-year-old Oldowan sites from Gona, Ethiopia. Results fail to reveal any effects of raw material size, shape, quality, or reduction intensity that could explain the observed details of inter-site technological variation in terms of individual learning across different local conditions. This supports the view that relatively detailed copying of tool-making methods was already a feature of Oldowan technological reproduction ~2.6 mya. We conclude with a discussion of prospects and implications for further research on the evolution of human cumulative culture.

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