NewsandViewsTheeffectofenhancedworkingmemoryonlanguageThomasWynn a,*,FrederickL.CoolidgebaDepartmentofAnthropology,UniversityofColorado,ColoradoSprings,CO809337150,USAbDepartmentofPsychology,UniversityofColorado,ColoradoSprings,CO809337150,USAReceived7November2005;accepted15November2005Although we are in almost complete agreement with Mart n-Loeches(2006), his critiqueofour argument presentsus withanopportunityforclarication. Wecommendhisdescriptionof the possibleneural basis for enhancedworkingmemory(EWM),especiallythepossibleroleofparallelactivation.Ashemakes clear (clearer thanwedid), EWMneednot havebeen basedin a massive increase in the number of neurons.WedifferfromMart n-Loechesprimarilyinourtreatmentof language. One of our motivations for advancing theEWMhypothesis was adesiretochallengetheheavy(andoftenuncritical) reliancethat manyanthropologistsplaceonlanguage as the key to cognitive modernity. Language issuch a powerful ability, and our understanding of it is somuchmorecomprehensivethanthatofmanyothercognitiveabilities,that it tends to eclipse ourunderstanding of all otherdevelopments. Mart n-Loeches reworking of our argument forthe phonological loop reects, we believe, this bullying ef-fect of language, andsyntaxinparticular. We suggest thatmuch of what Mart n-Loeches attributes to a language proces-sormight bemoreparsimoniouslyexplainedbyelementsofBaddeleysoriginal model ofworkingmemory. Onecompo-nent of WMmentioned, but not emphasized, by Mart n-Loechesisitsaccesstolongtermmemory(LTM). Ericsson(Ericsson and Delaney, 1999), for example, has built a power-ful explanation of expert performance based on facilitatedaccess to LTM via WM. In essence, cues held in and manipu-latedbyWMprovidequickaccesstomuchlongerandmorecomplex encodings held in LTM. This strikes us as being pre-ciselywhathappensinWatersandCaplans(1996)psycho-linguisticresourcepool,whenthemoreautomaticaccessto complex syntax occurs. In other words, this cognitive abilitymay be a general feature of WM tapping into a long term storeof syntactical models, rather thananythingspecic tolan-guage. Andthepost-interpretiveprocessingusedinverbalreasoningstrikes us as afunctionof theepisodicbuffer ofthecentralexecutive,ratherthanaseparatemodule.Itisinterestingthatourdifferingaccountsoftherelation-ship between language and WMultimately take us to thesame place, for we too would argue for Mart n-Loches secondevolutionaryscenarioethat thedevelopments inWMthatproducedthe modernmindenhancedthe capabilities of analready-existing language (syntactical) processor. Recursionprovides atellingexampleof howthis wouldhaveworked(andespeciallypertinentassomelinguistsnowmaintainthatrecursion is the crucial piece to syntax [Hauser et al.,2002]). Recursionisthemechanismingrammarthatenablesa speaker to use an entire phrase as an object of a higher levelphrase(e.g., Hesaidthat shesaid.). It isthisfeaturethatsuppliesnative speakers ofalanguage withtheabilitytopro-duce, in principle, an innite number of meaningful sentences.In practice, the size of this innity is constrained by severalpracticallimitations,oneofwhichis WM.Thenumberofre-cursions must be held and processed in attention if they are tobeunderstood. Hesaidthat shesaidthat theysaidthat wesaid that I said that George W. Bush is a true Texan, is a gram-matically correct sentence, but one that just about exhausts thecapacity of WM to analyze. Add two more levels of recursionandfewnativespeakerscouldkeeptrack.Therecursiverule,heldpresumablyinasyntactical processor, hasnot changed,butthesheersizeofthetaskhas. Perhapsthesimplestinter-pretation of the effect EWM had on linguistic communicationistoconcludethat it enlargedtherecursivecapacityof lan-guage. An enhancement of WM would yield immediate resultsinthe lengthandcomplexityof sentences. Mart n-Loechesmaywell be correct inarguingthat thephonological loop,sensustrictu, istoospecialized(ortooencapsulated)toade-quately encompass this increased capacity (TW and FC them-selves disagreeamicably on this point).However, we arealsoreluctant tosubdivideWMintosmaller andsmaller subsys-tems if features of the general model can account for theexperimentalresults.*Correspondingauthor.E-mailaddress:twynn@uccs.edu(T.Wynn).0047-2484/$-seefrontmatter 2005ElsevierLtd.Allrightsreserved.doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2005.11.006JournalofHumanEvolution50(2006)230e231Resolvingthisdifferenceininterpretationisofcoursenota minor point, as it bears on the whole nature of the interrela-tionship between language and WM. However, the current un-derstanding of WM is still far from complete, and we can onlyhopethatfurtherresearchwillclarifytherelationship.AcknowledgementsWe wouldliketothankDr.Mart n-Loechesforhiscarefulconsideration of our work, and the editors of JHEfor theopportunitytorespond.ReferencesEricsson, K., Delaney, P., 1999. Long-term working memory as an alternativetocapacitymodelsofworkingmemoryineverydayskilledperformance.In: Miyake, A., Shah, P. (Eds.), Models of Working Memory: Mechanismsof Active Maintenance and Executive Control. Cambridge UniversityPress,Cambridge,pp.257e297.Hauser, M., Chomsky, N., Fitch, W., 2002. The faculty of language: what is it,whohasit,andhowdiditevolve.Science298,1569e1579.Mart n-Loaches, M., 2006. On the uniqueness of humankind: is languageworkingmemorythenalpiecethatmadeushuman?J. Hum. Evol. 50,219e222.Waters, G., Caplan, D., 1996. The capacity theory of sentence comprehension:critiqueofJustandCarpenter(1992).Psychol.Rev.4,761e772.231 T.Wynn,F.L.Coolidge/JournalofHumanEvolution50(2006)230e231