The evolution of primate short-term memory
(2021)- Abstract
- Short-term memory is implicated in a range of cognitive abilities and is critical for understanding primate cognitive evolution. To investigate the effects of phylogeny, ecology and sociality on short-term memory ability, we tested 421 non-human primates across 41 species in a pre-registered, experimental delayed-response task. Our results confirm previous findings that longer delays decrease memory performance across species and taxa. Our analyses demonstrate a considerable contribution of phylogeny over ecological and social factors on the distribution of short-term memory performance in primates; closely related species had more similar short-term memory abilities. However, interdependencies between phylogeny and socioecology of a given... (More)
- Short-term memory is implicated in a range of cognitive abilities and is critical for understanding primate cognitive evolution. To investigate the effects of phylogeny, ecology and sociality on short-term memory ability, we tested 421 non-human primates across 41 species in a pre-registered, experimental delayed-response task. Our results confirm previous findings that longer delays decrease memory performance across species and taxa. Our analyses demonstrate a considerable contribution of phylogeny over ecological and social factors on the distribution of short-term memory performance in primates; closely related species had more similar short-term memory abilities. However, interdependencies between phylogeny and socioecology of a given species present an obstacle to disentangling the effects of each of these factors on the evolution of short-term memory capacity. The dataset corresponding to the study is freely accessible and constitutes an important resource for studying the evolution of primate cognition. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/39ca3f14-eb58-4911-bb83-8e582a8a87df
- author
- Jacobs, Ivo LU ; Persson, Tomas LU ; Sauciuc, Gabriela-Alina LU and Zablocki-Thomas, Pauline
- author collaboration
- organization
- publishing date
- 2021
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- cognitive evolution, phylogenetic analysis, primate cognition, short-term memory
- pages
- 63 pages
- publisher
- PsyArXiv
- DOI
- 10.31234/osf.io/5etnf
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 39ca3f14-eb58-4911-bb83-8e582a8a87df
- date added to LUP
- 2022-11-28 15:05:07
- date last changed
- 2023-03-11 02:28:41
@misc{39ca3f14-eb58-4911-bb83-8e582a8a87df, abstract = {{Short-term memory is implicated in a range of cognitive abilities and is critical for understanding primate cognitive evolution. To investigate the effects of phylogeny, ecology and sociality on short-term memory ability, we tested 421 non-human primates across 41 species in a pre-registered, experimental delayed-response task. Our results confirm previous findings that longer delays decrease memory performance across species and taxa. Our analyses demonstrate a considerable contribution of phylogeny over ecological and social factors on the distribution of short-term memory performance in primates; closely related species had more similar short-term memory abilities. However, interdependencies between phylogeny and socioecology of a given species present an obstacle to disentangling the effects of each of these factors on the evolution of short-term memory capacity. The dataset corresponding to the study is freely accessible and constitutes an important resource for studying the evolution of primate cognition.}}, author = {{Jacobs, Ivo and Persson, Tomas and Sauciuc, Gabriela-Alina and Zablocki-Thomas, Pauline}}, keywords = {{cognitive evolution; phylogenetic analysis; primate cognition; short-term memory}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Preprint}}, publisher = {{PsyArXiv}}, title = {{The evolution of primate short-term memory}}, url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5etnf}}, doi = {{10.31234/osf.io/5etnf}}, year = {{2021}}, }