Humans aren’t actually worse at memory games than chimps; it’s just that the tests were literally designed to make monkeys look good.
For years, a famous study suggested humans 'lost' certain spatial memory abilities that chimps retained. New research overturns this, showing that when the task structure and time pressure are adjusted, human memory is just as sharp as our primate cousins.
Beaten by Chimpanzees or by the Task? Rethinking Visuospatial Memory Comparisons
PsyArXiv · 72yj9_v1
Humans often perform worse than chimpanzees in rapid visuospatial memory tasks, which has been interpreted as evidence for lower human working memory (WM) capacity. However, these tasks also impose strong time pressure and require remembering both locations and order, which may make them especially difficult for humans. We tested how presentation mode (sequential vs. simultaneous), encoding time, and memory load affect performance in a visuospatial WM task previously tested with chimpanzees. Two