Fei Xu: UC Berkeley Department of Psychology, Infant Cognition and Language LabThe study of cognitive development has often been framed in terms of the nativist/empiricist debate. Here I present a new approach to cognitive development: rational constructivism. I will argue that learners take into account both prior knowledge and biases (learned or unlearned) as well […]
Christopher Schmitt: UCLA Center for Nuerobehavioral Genetics Obesity is increasingly prevalent worldwide, and has severe negative impacts on public health. Obesity arises from a complex interaction of genetic predisposition and environment that can accumulate throughout life. Although increasing evidence points to the importance of early development in the manifestations of adult disease, few studies have […]
Josh Tasoff: Claremont Graduate University School of Politics and EconomicsA significant fraction of all life in the biosphere exists in complex communities in which crossfeeding is essential. In the same way that firms and consumers exchange a vast array of goods in modern markets, organisms exchange essential resources to promote their growth. Here, we present […]
Jeffrey Schloss: Westmont College Department of Biology A prominent evolutionary account of “religious cognition” is that it emerged as a byproduct of agency detection mechanisms biased toward false positives, which were exapted as cultural innovations of moralizing gods helped stabilize cooperation by controlling defection in large-scale interactions. Although there is some empirical evidence for this […]
Sam Diaz-Munoz: UC Berkeley Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and Integrative Biology Tamarins (Saguinus sp) are small Neotropical monkeys that, with other callitrichines, exhibit the most extensive cooperative breeding system of any non-human primate. In this presentation, I will draw on recent studies of tamarins and other callitrichines to underscore the importance of cooperative […]
Kelly Gildersleeve: UCLA Department of Psychology, Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture For nearly all mammals, the high-fertility period of the ovulatory cycle is the only time when sex can lead to conception. In nonhuman species, this period is often marked by dramatic changes in females' social interactions. I'll present two meta-analyses and several lab […]
Stacy Rosenbaum: UCLA Department of Anthropology, Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture Social relationships between adult male mountain gorillas and the infants in their groups are quite remarkable, characterized by extreme tolerance, grooming, playing, and many hours of male “babysitting.” This is true even in the 40% of groups that contain multiple adult males, where […]
Greg Bryant: UCLA Department of Communication Studies, Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture Laughter is a universal vocal signal ubiquitous in human social interaction and homologous to play vocalizations across several primate species. In this talk I will describe two different lines of research on the production and perception of laughter. One series of experiments […]
Trent Smith: University of OtagoWhy have obesity rates risen sharply around the world since 1980? In biological perspective, humans and other animals are thought to have evolved the ability—and the propensity—to store energy as body fat in order to survive periods of starvation. While food may be more abundant than ever today, it is becoming […]
Joshua Greene: Harvard UniversityIn this talk I'll present some of the main themes in my book of the same title. First, there are two general kinds of moral problems: The original moral problem is the problem of cooperation, the “Tragedy of the Commons”—Me vs. Us. Distinctively modern moral problems are different. They involve what I […]
