Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory?
Do chimpanzees have better spatial working memory than humans? In a previous report, a juvenile chimpanzee outperformed 3 university students on memory for briefly displayed digits in a spatial array (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007). The authors described these abilities as extraordinary and likened the chimpanzee's performance to eidetic memory. However, the chimpanzee received extensive practice on a non-time-pressured version of the task; the human subjects received none. Here we report that, after adequate practice, 2 university students substantially outperformed the chimpanzee. There is no evidence for a superior or qualitatively different spatial memory system in chimpanzees.
Cook
Peter
P
Department of Cognitive Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. pcook@ucsc.edu
Wilson
Margaret
M
D000818:Animals; D001076:Aptitude; D004538:Eidetic Imagery; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009949:Orientation; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000523:psychology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance