Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Advances in Understanding Adaptive Memory

Book excerpt: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Advances in Understanding Adaptive Memory presents the latest theories and research on what is known about adaptive memory, often referred to as survival memory. Conceptually, this is the study of memory systems that evolved to aid remembering survival and fitness-relevant information. In this volume survival is contextualized from many converging perspectives within psychology, including comparative psychology. Therefore, adaptive memory in animals, especially non-human primates, is covered in one of the book's four sections. The unification of viewpoints is achieved thematically, stemming from forensic science, cognitive neuroscience, biology, computer science, and anthropology. This interdisciplinary approach binds the chapters together and facilitates an integrative analysis of adaptive-survival memory in the concluding chapter.