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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211004T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211004T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T133814
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SUMMARY:James Holland Jones -- Cultural Evolutionary Dynamics Under Structural Uncertainty and the Consequences for Coupled Diffusion Processes
DESCRIPTION:Cultural Evolutionary Dynamics Under Structural Uncertainty and the Consequences for Coupled Diffusion Processes\nJames Holland Jones\nEarth Systems Science\, Stanford University\nThe COVID-19 Pandemic has laid bare the social vulnerabilities that make epidemics larger\, more deadly\, and more difficult to control\, both within the US and internationally. Differential vulnerability by social attributes (e.g.\, race\, socioeconomic status\, gender) leaves the overall population at greater risk for severe outbreaks than would be the case in less unequal populations. While health researchers have noted the societal vulnerability brought about by structural inequality for years\, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed other surprising sources of structural vulnerability that exacerbate transmission and complicate control. In particular\, socio-political polarization has proven to be a pernicious problem for epidemic control. I will present results from a simple model that show how two social processes\, homophily and out-group aversion\, in a polarized population\, can produce complex transmission dynamics that qualitatively resemble the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. I will then present a cultural-evolutionary framework for understanding why such polarization arises in the context of a pandemic. At the outset of a pandemic of a novel pathogen\, people are suffused with uncertainty about the nature of the threat\, its origin\, the severity of disease\, the effectiveness of control\, timelines\, etc. We hypothesize that uncertainty is a key variable underlying increased socio-political polarization on the one hand\, and the response to crises such as pandemics on the other. Uncertainty is a fundamental feature not just of epidemics but of any existential crisis facing humanity more generally. Understanding how people respond to uncertainty\, and crucially\, what the aggregate effects of these responses are is therefore a critical need for research into existential threats. Conventional wisdom tells us that people employ social heuristics when faced with uncertainty. This is important since aggregation itself becomes a major source of structural uncertainty\, as the behavior of ensembles of decision-makers is characterized by substantial nonlinearity\, feedback\, and often surprising threshold effects. I will present new work on modeling decision-making under uncertainty and the aggregate effects for “coupled-contagion” processes of social learning and pathogen diffusion.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/james-holland-jones-cultural-evolutionary-dynamics-under-structural-uncertainty-and-the-consequences-for-coupled-diffusion-processes/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211011T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211011T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T133814
CREATED:20211004T152117Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180355Z
UID:6313-1633953600-1633959000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Damian Caillaud - Behavioral ecology: an important tool to protect threatened gorilla populations
DESCRIPTION:Behavioral ecology: an important tool to protect threatened gorilla populations. \nDamian Caillaud\, UC Davis \nConservation measures are often based on survey data and demographic projections\, rather than behavior ecology studies. However\, animal behavior research often provides key information explaining why some populations are threatened with extinction. For example\, aspects of the ranging behavior and social structure of mountain gorillas strongly reduce population growth\, even in the absence of feeding competition. In other studies\, we found that home range persistence hinders the recovery of low-density gorilla populations. Lastly\, the impact of infectious disease on gorilla populations cannot be explained without taking into account gorilla social organization and social behavior. We hope these examples (and others) contribute to make behavioral ecology a more systematic conservation tool.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/damian-caillaud-behavioral-ecology-an-important-tool-to-protect-threatened-gorilla-populations/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211018T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211018T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T133814
CREATED:20211003T163349Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180333Z
UID:6297-1634558400-1634563800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Idan Blank - The relationship between language and executive functions
DESCRIPTION:Idan Blank \nUCLA Department of Psychology \nTwo cognitive capacities that “make us human” are our ability to communicate via language and our executive functions (working memory\, cognitive control\, inhibition\, etc.)\, both unparalleled in the animal kingdom. Language comprehension is mainly carried out by specialized mechanisms that are language-specific and are not engaged in other high-level cognitive functions; in contrast\, executive functions constitute a general resource that is shared across diverse cognitive domains. Are these two capacities related to one another? On the one hand\, much research has found that comprehension\, in addition to its reliance on domain-specific mechanisms\, is critically supported by executive functions. On the other hand\, those studies are overwhelmingly based on cleverly designed artificial tasks\, which effectively turn language into an “IQ test” and do not mimic real-world comprehension “in the wild”. In this talk\, I will describe studies that instead employ naturalistic paradigms in fMRI to test how executive functions contribute to comprehension. Through a combination of data-driven analyses\, psycholinguistic constructs\, and brain-behavior correlations\, the findings challenge two decades of research about the role of executive resources in comprehension.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/idan-blank-the-relationship-between-language-and-executive-functions/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211025T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20211025T133000
DTSTAMP:20260504T133814
CREATED:20211003T163502Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220102T180310Z
UID:6301-1635163200-1635168600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Sarah Hill - Cytokines as a mediator of condition-dependent behavioral strategies
DESCRIPTION:Sarah E. Hill \nDepartment of Psychology\, Texas Christian University \nA growing body of research finds that the activities of the immune system – in addition to protecting the body from infection and injury – also influence how we think\, feel\, and behave. Although research on the relationship between the immune system and psychological and behavioral outcomes has most commonly focused on the experiences of those who are acutely ill (i.e.\, sickness behavior)\, theory and research in the evolutionary sciences suggests that the immune system may also play a key role in modulating condition-dependent behavioral strategies. In this presentation\, I will go over recent research that suggests that inflammation – a key component of the immune response to pathogens and stressors – may play an important modulatory role in shaping emotions\, motivation\, cognition\, and behavior\, even among those without symptoms of acute illness. I close by discussing potential opportunities for integrating psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) into evolutionary approaches to human behavior.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/sarah-hill-cytokines-as-a-mediator-of-condition-dependent-behavioral-strategies/
CATEGORIES:2021,Past Presentation,Presentation
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