The Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis

[Fort Fun Indiana]

It postulates a tradeoff between detailed, short-term memory and language.



Worth the 24 minute watch.

Spoiler alert: our short term memory is pathetic, compared to chimps.

 

[MisterBeale]

I think it would have been a lot more helpful, since he has been studying this since the seventies, if he had introduced bonobos as a control group.

Likewise, to find out if this ability had existed a priori, and not developed a posteriori, it would be helpful to study a lesser ape, like the baboon, which inhabits the same ecological niche that they hypothesize our ancestors did.

I noted in the video, that Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa stated that no other primate "imagined," a future, or remembered the past. The work of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has found that the symbolic and ritual communications in bonobo culture in their inner lives, they do, indeed have the capacity, though rudimentary, for abstract thought. If their results on his tests were less than the chimpanzees? It would go a long way toward proving his theory.

If, OTH, Baboons can't preform them at all because of their inability to focus or be trained, who knows if this part of the brain structure evolves independently. . .