THE ROLE OF VOCALIZATION, MEMORY RETRIEVAL, AND EXTERNAL SYMBOLS IN COGNITIVE EVOLUTION

The human vocal apparatus is part of a vertically integrated system, a nd I agree with Lieberman that modern high-speed phonology co-evolved with our capacity for grammar. Olson and I agree that some distinctly human thought skills appear to be fairly recent cultural acquisitions related to the introduction of new symbolic technologies and external (that is, nonbiological) memory storage. Stenning's concern with my us e of the term ''episodic'' can be resolved by distinguishing between e pisodic storage and retrieval. Baum's suggestions regarding courtship and cognitive evolution seem to apply better to mimetic expression tha n to language.