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 […]
Michelle Brown: University of California, Santa BarbaraGroup?level competition has important effects on individual fitness and is thought to be a crucial force in the evolution of complex social systems. However, such conflicts represent a collective action problem: if all group members share the spoils of battle but only a few incur the costs of fighting, […]
David Lawson: University of California, Santa BarbaraRecent years have witnessed a widening commitment to achieving gender equality at a global scale, with corresponding, and often controversial, shifts in international and domestic policy. In developing world regions, this includes efforts to abolish long-held cultural institutions that are ostensibly harmful to women. Yet such efforts are largely […]
Andrew Whalen: University of EdinburghSocial learning and asocial learning are sometimes seen as two conflicting ways in which individuals make decisions and learn about the world around them. Increasingly research has found that instead of being two conflicting learning processes, individuals, including children, will combine social and asocial sources of information to make decisions. One […]
Barney Schlinger: UCLAManakins are a clade of extraordinary neotropical birds. In many species, the brightly–colored males are polygynous, performing no parental care duties, but they gather into leks for courtship. Over the past 20 years, my lab has performed detailed behavioral studies of golden-collared manakins (Manacus vitellinus) of Panamanian rainforests. These males clear display courts […]
