Memory for Animal Tracks: A Possible Cognitive Artifact of Human Evolution

Abstract

Although many human behaviors are held to have adaptive significance, specific examples of behaviors that represent direct holdovers from the ancient world have been few, particularly in the cognitive realm. In the present research, the authors tested the hypothesis that such cognitive examples might in fact exist and be experimentally verifiable. They suggested that human predispositions to learn basic aspects of hunting with relative ease might be "left over" from human evolution in the pre-agricultural past. This hypothesis was tested in 3 experiments with reference to the learning and recall of animal tracks, an activity of probable high adaptive significance within the area of visual memory. Undergraduate students selected at random learned and recalled animal tracks with significantly greater ease than they recalled other animate and inanimate items. A single exception lay in relatively unfamiliar kitchen implements, which were recalled with greater facility than were animal tracks, consistent with current theoretical considerations. Results indicate that direct behavioral holdovers from the ancient world may exist in the cognitive realm and that these may be accessed experimentally and predictably under appropriate conditions.

Eyewitness Memory in Context: Toward a Taxonomy of Eyewitness Error

“…In our own work on relatively neglected areas of eyewitness testimony (memory for weapons and vehicles), recognition accuracy for handguns, seen only minutes previously, was consistently under 50% (Sharps et al 2003). Vehicle identification was even worse; a vehicle recognition memory task yielded only 25% accuracy on average (Villegas et al 2005), again for vehicles seen only minutes before.…”

“…Our recent studies (Sharps et al 2003;Villegas et al 2005) have built toward an understanding of memory for forensically-relevant inanimate objects such as weapons and vehicles, and toward a systematic understanding of eyewitness memory for person, object, and setting in context (Sharps et al 2007;Sharps and Hess 2008). This approach, with its emphasis on systematic variation of perpetrator, weapon, and surroundings, has allowed us to examine the kinds of errors made by eyewitnesses, and the relative prevalence of the different types of errors observed, with reference to controlled, systematically-varied contexts.…”

Social processing improves recall performance

“…As the interest in the effects of social influences on memory performance has increased, so has the interest in examining human memory from a functionalist perspective (see, e.g., Nairne, 2005;Sharps, Villegas, Nunes, & Barber, 2002). In one example of this line of inquiry, Nairne, Thompson, and Pandeirada (2007) tested a prediction that processing list items in terms of their survival value might benefit participants more than other wellestablished deep-processing manipulations.…”

“…Both the Sharps et al (2002) article-despite some item-selection issues-and the work of Nairne et al (2007) demonstrated that empirical tests of a priori predictions that are based on a functionalist analysis of human memory are possible, and they can lead to fruitful avenues of investigation. In fact, both studies pointed to the conclusion that thinking about objects in terms of their prospective uses seems to be one of the best deep-processing tasks uncovered to date.…”

Cognitive Principles for Information Management: The Principles of Mnemonic Associative Knowledge (P-MAK)

“…These search strategies are also found in human wayfinding, both in determining the next move with respect to immediate surroundings, and in reviewing available resources from a situating overview such as a map. Seeking behaviours seem to come naturally to humans, possibly because they are similar to the foraging and hunting behaviours of our ancestors (Sharps et al 2002).…”