Working Memory and Working Attention What Could Possibly Evolve?

The concept of "working" memory is traceable back to nineteenth-century theorists, but the term itself was not used until the mid-twentieth century. A variety of different explanatory constructs have since evolved that all make use of the working-memory label. This history is briefly reviewed, and alternative formulations of working memory (as language processor, executive attention, and global work space) are considered as potential mechanisms for cognitive change within and between individuals and between species. A means, derived from the literature on human problem solving, of tracing memory and computational demands across a single task is described and applied to two specific examples of tool use by chimpanzees and early hominids. The examples show how specific proposals for necessary and/or sufficient computational and memory requirements can be more rigorously assessed on a task-by-task basis. General difficulties in connecting cognitive theories (arising from the observed capabilities of individuals deprived of material support) with archaeological data (primarily remnants of material culture) are discussed.