Biography:Frederick L. Coolidge

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Short description: American psychologist

Frederick L. Coolidge, Professor, is an American psychologist known for his work in cognitive archaeology. He has been a Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs since 1979.[1] He also teaches for the Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.[2]

Education

Coolidge completed his doctorate in psychology in 1974 at the University of Florida, followed by a clinical internship (1974–1975) and postdoctoral fellowship (1975–1976) in clinical neuropsychology at Shands Teaching Hospital, University of Florida.[1]

Research

Often in collaboration with archaeologist Thomas G. Wynn, Coolidge has published more than 50+ articles and book chapters in cognitive archaeology. He has also published more than 140+ articles in psychological research, including personality assessment and behavior genetics.[1] With his colleague Thomas Wynn, Coolidge developed the "Enhanced Working Memory Hypothesis", the idea that small but heritable changes in working memory and other executive functions were critical to human cognitive evolution.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Coolidge and Wynn have also collaborated on Neandertal cognition,[10][11] cognitive differences between Neandertals and contemporary Homo sapiens,[12][13] technical cognition, and creativity.[14] In 2008, Coolidge co-chaired the 139th Numbered Wenner-Gren Symposium with Wynn. Entitled "Working Memory: Beyond Language and Symbolism," the proceedings were published as a special issue of Current Anthropology.[15] In 2011, he and Wynn established the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.[16]

Honors

  • In 1987, 1992, and 2005, Coolidge was awarded Fulbright Fellowships for work in India.[1][2]
  • In 1990, Coolidge was designated as a University of Colorado Presidential Teaching Scholar.[1][2]
  • In 2005, Coolidge received the UCCS Letters, Arts and Sciences Annual Outstanding Research and Creative Works Award.[1][2]
  • In 2007, Coolidge received the UCCS Annual Faculty Award for Excellence in Research.[1][2]
  • In 2015, Coolidge was appointed Senior Visiting Scholar at Keble College, University of Oxford.[1]
  • In 2020, Coolidge was appointed Guest Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.[1][2]

Enhanced Working Memory Hypothesis (EWMH)

The Enhanced Working Memory Hypothesis (EWMH) proposes that a small but heritable change in executive functioning may have been the reason why Homo sapiens persisted and flourished, while cousin species like the Neandertals went extinct.[3][4] Executive functions are the higher-level cognitive skills used to control and coordinate other abilities and behaviors; they consist of the abilities to make decisions, plan, strategize, organize, inhibit behavior, and temporally sequence events. The EWMH was inspired, in part, by Coolidge’s reaction to an article by paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall[17] that had suggested the between-species difference related to language.[18] From his work in behavior genetics,[19] Coolidge understood the heritability of the executive functions and surmised that possible differences in the executive functioning of the two human species had perhaps enabled Homo sapiens to outcompete the Neandertals.[18] He proposed the idea to his colleague, archaeologist Thomas Wynn, resulting in a collaboration to operationalize executive functions so they could be detected in the archaeological record, as for example, resourcing strategies like traps suggest the involvement of executive functions like planning and inhibition because they involve significant amounts of time between an action (building and setting a trap) and its reward (harvesting prey).[18] Coolidge and Wynn have focused in particular on the executive function Working Memory, expanding on the classic model by psychologist Alan Baddeley[20][21] and examining signs of change in Working Memory in the archaeological record[22] and its effects in domains like technical cognition and creativity.[14]

Selected works in cognitive archaeology and cognitive evolution

  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "Executive Functions of the Frontal Lobes and the Evolutionary Ascendancy of Homo sapiens," Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 11, no. 3 (2001): 255–260.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "A Cognitive and Neuropsychological Perspective on the Châtelperronian," Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 60, no. 1 (2004): 55–73.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "Working Memory, Its Executive Functions, and the Emergence of Modern Thinking," Cambridge Archaeological Journal, vol. 15, no. 1 (2005): 5–26.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "The Working Memory Account of Neandertal Cognition—How Phonological Storage Capacity May Be Related to Recursion and the Pragmatics of Modern Speech," Journal of Human Evolution, vol. 52, no. 6 (2007): 707–710.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "Commentary on Henshilwood and Dubreuil, The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77–59 Ka: Symbolic Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind during the African Middle Stone Age," Current Anthropology, vol. 52, no. 3 (2011): 380–382.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "Cognitive Prerequisites for the Evolution of Indirect Speech," in The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution, Oxford University Press (2012): 216–223.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., "Mind: The Brain's Leaky Organ," Brain, vol. 137, no. 8 (2014): 2396–2398.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, "An Introduction to Cognitive Archaeology," Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 25, no. 6 (2016): 386–392.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., "The Ultimate Origins of Learning and Memory Systems," Human Evolution, vol. 34 (2019): 21–38.
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., "The Role of the Cerebellum in Creativity and Expert Stone Knapping," Adaptive Behavior (2020).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Karenleigh A. Overmann, and Thomas Wynn, "On the Problem of the Interpretation of Symbols and Symbolism in Archaeology," in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology, Oxford University Press (2022).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Thomas Wynn, and Karenleigh A. Overmann, "The Expert Neandertal Mind and Brain, Revisited," in The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology, Oxford University Press (2022).

Authored books

  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking, Routledge (2009).
  • Wynn, Thomas, and Frederick L. Coolidge, How to Think like a Neandertal, Oxford University Press (2012).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., and Thomas Wynn, The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press (2018).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Evolutionary Neuropsychology: An Introduction to the Evolution of the Structures and Functions of the Human Brain, Oxford University Press (2020).
  • Wynn, Thomas, and Coolidge, Frederick L., An Introduction to Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology, Routledge (2022).

Edited volumes

  • De Beaune, Sophie A., Frederick L. Coolidge, and Thomas Wynn (editors), Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution, Cambridge University Press (2009).
  • Wynn, Thomas, and Frederick L. Coolidge (editors), Cognitive Models in Palaeolithic Archaeology, Oxford University Press (2017).
  • Overmann, Karenleigh A., and Frederick L. Coolidge (editors), Squeezing Minds from Stones: Cognitive Archaeology and the Evolution of the Human Mind, Oxford University Press (2019).
  • Wynn, Thomas, Karenleigh A. Overmann, and Frederick L. Coolidge (editors), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology, Oxford University Press (2023).

Other selected works

Authored books

  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Dream Interpretation as a Psychotherapeutic Technique, Radcliffe (2006).
  • Daniel L. Segal, Frederick L. Coolidge, and Erlene Rosowsky, Personality Disorders and Older Adults: Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment, Wiley (2006).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Memory Consolidation as Function of Sleep and the Circadian Rhythm, Andesite Press (1974/2015).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., Statistics: A Gentle Introduction, 4th ed., SAGE (2020).
  • Coolidge, Frederick L., The Science of Dream Interpretation, Elsevier Science (2022).

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 "Frederick L. Coolidge, Ph.D.". University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. http://128.198.6.119/psych/fred_coolidge. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 "Frederick L. Coolidge". 2017. https://cogs.iitgn.ac.in/member/frederick-coolidge/. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Coolidge, Frederick L; Wynn, Thomas (2001). "Executive Functions of the Frontal Lobes and the Evolutionary Ascendancy of Homo sapiens". Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11 (3): 255–260. doi:10.1017/S0959774301000142. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Coolidge, Frederick L; Wynn, Thomas (2005). "Working Memory, Its Executive Functions, and the Emergence of Modern Thinking". Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15 (1): 5–26. doi:10.1017/S0959774305000016. http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CMPL/article/view/58479. 
  5. ↑ Coolidge, Frederick L; Wynn, Thomas (2008). "Why Not Cognition?". Current Anthropology 49 (5): 895–897. doi:10.1086/524386. 
  6. ↑ Balter, Michael (2010). "Does 'Working Memory' Still Work?". Science 328 (5975): 162. doi:10.1126/science.328.5975.162. PMID 20378789. https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.328.5975.162?casa_token=SWHvAVnL-J4AAAAA%3AppPXdeTrD_nSSTuYk4GCBMVpZRW0uwEUg6grUjgsTitt41fNgTMeTF9diiFQZupy6xSkzzDlEHDccA. Retrieved 20 February 2021. 
  7. ↑ Balter, Michael (2019). "Did Working Memory Spark Creative Culture?". http://naturedocumentaries.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/WorkingMemory_Balter.pdf. 
  8. ↑ Wurz, Sarah (2012). "The Transition to Modern Behavior". Nature Education Knowledge 3 (10): 15. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-transition-to-modern-behavior-86614339/. Retrieved 20 February 2021. 
  9. ↑ Tryon, Christian (2013). "Testing Models of Modern Human Origins with Archaeology and Anatomy". Nature Education Knowledge 4 (3): 4. https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/testing-models-of-modern-human-origins-with-96639156. Retrieved 20 February 2021. 
  10. ↑ Coolidge, Frederick L; Wynn, Thomas (2004). "The Expert Neandertal Mind". Journal of Human Evolution 46 (4): 467–487. doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2004.01.005. PMID 15066380. 
  11. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2012). How to Think like a Neandertal. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199329229. 
  12. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (2016). "The False Dichotomy: A Refutation of the Neandertal Indistinguishability Claim". Journal of Anthropological Sciences 94: 1–21. 
  13. ↑ Bower, Bruce (2004). "In the Neandertal Mind: Our Evolutionary Comrades Celebrated Vaunted Intellects before Meeting a Memorable Demise". Science News 166 (12): 183–184. doi:10.2307/4015497. https://doi.org/10.2307/4015497. Retrieved 20 February 2021. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2014). "Technical Cognition, Working Memory and Creativity". Pragmatics & Cognition 22 (1): 45–63. doi:10.1075/pc.22.1.03wyn. 
  15. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2010). "Working Memory: Beyond Symbolism and Language". Current Anthropology 51 (S1). doi:10.1086/650526. 
  16. ↑ "Thomas Wynn, Ph.D.". University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. https://anthropology.uccs.edu/thomas-wynn. 
  17. ↑ Tattersall, Ian (2000). "Once We Were Not Alone". Scientific American 282 (1): 56–62. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0100-56. Bibcode: 2000SciAm.282a..56T. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26058564. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Coolidge, Frederick L (2019). "The Enhanced Working Memory Model: Its Origin and Development". Squeezing Minds from Stones: Cognitive Archaeology and the Evolution of the Human Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 406–431. ISBN 9780190854614. 
  19. ↑ Coolidge, Frederick L; Thede, Linda L; Young, Susan E (2002). "The Heritability of Gender Identity Disorder in a Child and Adolescent Twin Sample". Behavior Genetics 34 (4): 251–257. doi:10.1023/A:1019724712983. PMID 12211624. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26058564. 
  20. ↑ Baddeley, Alan D (2012). "Working Memory: Theories, Models, and Controversies". Annual Review of Psychology 63: 1–29. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100422. PMID 21961947. 
  21. ↑ Baddeley, Alan D; Hitch, Graham J (1974). The Psychology of Learning and Motivation: Advances in Research and Theory, Vol. 8. New York: Academic Press. pp. 47–89. ISBN 9780080863597. 
  22. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2003). "The Role of Working Memory in the Evolution of Managed Foraging". Before Farming 2 (1): 1–16. doi:10.3828/bfarm.2003.2.1. 

External links

See also




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