Welcome to the Adaptive Memory Lab

Human memory evolved subject to the constraints of nature's criterion-differential survival and reproduction. Consequently, our capacity to remember and forget is likely tuned to solving fitness-based problems, particularly those prominent in the ancestral environments in which memory evolved.

Do the operating characteristics of memory continue to bear the footprint of nature's criterion? This is ultimately an empirical question, and our laboratory has been conducting experiments exploring evolutionary constraints on remembering and forgetting. For further information on our research program, including copies of our published work, please explore the links listed above.