title: Evolution of working memory.
abstract: Working memory (WM) is fundamental to many aspects of human life, including learning, speech and text comprehension, prospection and future planning, and explicit "system 2" forms of reasoning, as well as overlapping heavily with fluid general intelligence. WM has been intensively studied for many decades, and there is a growing consensus about its nature, its components, and its signature limits. Remarkably, given its central importance in human life, there has been very little comparative investigation of WM abilities across species. Consequently, much remains unknown about the evolution of this important human capacity. Some questions can be tentatively answered from the existing comparative literature. Even studies that were not intended to do so can nonetheless shed light on the WM capacities of nonhuman animals. However, many questions remain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. pcarruth@umd.edu
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Carruthers
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005075:Biological Evolution; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: attention; default network; episodic memory; mental rehearsal; primate