Jeff Winking: Texas A&MFathering traditionally played a central role in the evolutionary stories of human marriage. Paternal investment proved a convincing lynchpin linking together numerous hallmark aspects of the human adaptive strategy: the capacity for long-term romantic bonds, altricial infancy, extended juvenile dependence, etc. However, recent theoretical work suggests that the importance of paternal investment […]

Chris Kuzawa: Northwestern UniversityHumans are unusual in having a childhood stage characterized by a prolonged period of exceptionally slow growth. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain why humans have evolved this life history stage. In this talk, Chris Kuzawa will discuss his recent collaborative work that quantifies the costs of human brain development and […]

Robbie Wilson: University of QueenslandAnimals routinely compete for access to limited resources, including food, territories or mates. Because combat is energetically costly and increases the risk of injury or death, individuals should avoid fighting unless they have a reasonable chance of winning. Specialised structures such as teeth, claws or horns can be used to show […]

Rose Scott: UC MercedA large part of our daily lives involves interpreting other people’s behavior in terms of their underlying mental states. In particular, the capacity to recognize that others may hold and act on false beliefs plays a vital role in social interactions. The question of when and how false-belief understanding develops is currently […]

Ed Vul: UC San DiegoHuman behavior is robust, adaptable, and, human behavior often deviates from the utility maximizing "rational" agent. This is usually attributed to people relying on an assortment of cheap heuristics to make efficient, but frequently biased, decisions. While the heuristics and biases research program has highlighted the many deviations of human behavior […]

Jerry Siegel: UCLAHow did humans sleep before the modern era? Because the tools to measure sleep under natural conditions were developed long after the invention of the electric devices suspected of delaying and reducing sleep, we investigated sleep in three preindustrial societies. We find that all three show similar sleep organization, suggesting that they express […]

Athena Vouloumanos: New York UniversityLike many animals, human infants have biases for the vocalizations of their own species, preferring speech to many non-speech sounds just hours after birth. How do these early proclivities develop and how do they contribute to human communicative development? In her talk, Athena Vouloumanos will draw from behavioral and neural data […]

Anne Warlaumont: University of California, MercedHumans use a wide variety of types of vocal signals to communicate with other humans. Some of these sounds, such as crying, shrieking, and laughing, are thought to be closely related to those of our primate relatives. Others, especially babbling, speaking, and singing, appear to rely to a great extent […]

Jessica Lynch Alfaro: UCLANeotropical primates represent one of the most successful mammalian radiations in the Neotropics, and all living platyrrhine monkeys in Central and South America stem from a single common ancestor from about 22 Ma. Neotropical primates exhibit extreme morphological and behavioral diversity, from the tiny pygmy marmoset to the ape-like muriqui, and they […]

Gandhi Yetish: University of New MexicoShort sleep duration is associated with numerous, sometimes severe, negative health outcomes, and yet many people report regularly sleeping insufficiently. Part of the challenge in improving poor health practice lies in the fact that a consensus definition of “good” sleep remains lacking. In the scope of my dissertation research, I […]