On some statistical and cerebral aspects of the limits of Working Memory capacity in Anthropoid Primates, with particular reference to Pan and Homo, and their significance for Human Evolution

Abstract

Some comparative ontogenetical data imply that effective working-memory capacity develops in ways that are independent of brain size in humans. These are interpreted better from neuroscientific considerations about the continuing development of neuronal architecture in adolescents and young adults, than from one about gross brain mass which already is reached in childhood. By contrast, working-memory capacity in Pan never develops beyond that of three- or four-year-old children. The phylogenetical divergence begs the question of whether it is any longer plausible to infer from the fossil record that over the past two million years an ostensibly gradual increase in endocranial volumes of mature crania assigned to the genus Homo can be correlated in a scientifically-meaningful manner with the gradual evolution of our effective executive working memory. It is argued that whereas Pan’s effective working-memory capacity is relatively similar to that of its storage working-memory, ours is relatively larger with deeper executive control, perhaps implicating a greater component of meta-memory consequent on the evolution of human metacognition.