Mahr & Csibra (M&C) fail to make the important distinction between why a trait originally evolved, why it was maintained over time, and what its current utility is. Here we point out that episodic memory may have originally evolved as a by-product of a general metarepresentational capacity, and that it may have current functions beyond the communicative domain.

中文翻译：

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对自适应功能的误解

Mahr & Csibra (M&C) 未能在特征最初进化的原因、为什么随着时间的推移保持不变以及它当前的效用之间做出重要区分。在这里，我们指出情景记忆最初可能是作为一般元表征能力的副产品而进化的，并且它可能具有超越交际领域的当前功能。