¡Ai, caramba! Let's not jump to conclusions about chimp working memory

For years, Ai the chimpanzee has been stunning researchers with feats of memory that surpass those of her nearest cousins. Ai, part of the Ai project at Kyoto University, is famously able to remember the location of a series of numbers on a screen within a fraction of a second, and to recall them in their correct sequence (1-19), where it would take you or me in the region of a few seconds. It's really worth checking out.

The Ai project has produced many great papers relating to chimpanzee cognition and behaviour over the years and occasionally the popular press picks up on them. Recently The Independent newspaper declared that, based on research with Ai and her son Ayumu, “Chimpanzees have faster working memory than humans”.

Whilst I am nowhere near qualified to make any sensible judgement on this research, I have to share my hesitation in jumping to such conclusions. In short, I am sceptical that working memory is so simple and binary that from such recall experiments we can say, unequivocally, that chimps have it better than us. Is working memory not involved in all reasoning and comprehension? Is working memory not involved in all verbal and non-verbal communication? Processes involved in these tasks seem, at least in part, more complex in humans- could this not be a relevant factor?

The Articles goes on to claim that,

Professor Matsuzawa suggested that chimps have developed this part of their memory because they live in the “here and now” whereas humans are thinking more about the past and planning for the future.

What does living in the “here and now" mean exactly? If a human individual became better at living in the “here and now” would their working memory improve? 

Ai getting down to monkey business...sigh

It seems to me that all the experiment that The Independent cites shows us is that chimps are better at particular recall tasks, and working memory processes involved with such tasks are more efficient.

It may be prudent from here to theorise that the reason why this is the case is that there is some trade off in humans between “present” memorisation and recall capacity, for other reflective and future considering capacities (which surely involve working memory at some level). This is far more conservative than claiming that chimps unequivocally have better working memory because they “live more in the present”.

I'm guessing part of the problem is sloppy science journalism. It would be interesting to hear in more depth what conclusions the team at Kyoto draw about working memory.