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.
Understanding street-level bureaucrats’ attitude towards clients: Towards a measurement instrument