title: Cognitive adaptations for gathering-related navigation in humans.
abstract: Current research increasingly suggests that spatial cognition in humans is accomplished by many specialized mechanisms, each designed to solve a particular adaptive problem. A major adaptive problem for our hominin ancestors, particularly females, was the need to efficiently gather immobile foods which could vary greatly in quality, quantity, spatial location and temporal availability. We propose a cognitive model of a navigational gathering adaptation in humans and test its predictions in samples from the US and Japan. Our results are uniformly supportive: the human mind appears equipped with a navigational gathering adaptation that encodes the location of gatherable foods into spatial memory. This mechanism appears to be chronically active in women and activated under explicit motivation in men.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, USA.
authors.forename: Max M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Krasnow
authors.forename: Danielle
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Truxaw
authors.forename: Steven J C
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Gaulin
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: New
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ozono
authors.forename: Shota
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Uono
authors.forename: Taiji
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ueno
authors.forename: Kazusa
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Minemoto
keywords: Domain specificity; Gathering; Navigation; Sex differences; Spatial cognition