Aaron Blaisdell: UCLA Psychology and Brain Research InstituteI report a series of experiments showing that rats appear to make causal inferences in a basic task that taps into core features of causal reasoning. (1) They derived predictions of the outcomes of interventions after passive observational learning of different kinds of causal models. After learning through […]
Steve Gangestad: University of New Mexico PsychologyBroad, ambitious conceptualizations of the evolution of human sexuality (and accompanying unique social, developmental, and intellectual adaptations) offered by anthropologists and biologists over the last half century have been, almost universally, rooted in a foundational assumption: That women evolutionarily “lost†estrus—a distinct fertile-phase sexuality—and instead evolved “continuous†sexuality across […]
John Mitani: University of Michigan Anthropology
Jelmer Eerkens: UC Davis AnthropologyLaboratory experiments and ethnographic studies show that many aspects of human culture, particularly information, can change quickly in the course of transmission. The archaeological record indicates much more conservative rates of change, at least for material culture. Is there common theoretical ground between the micro- and macro- scales? This paper considers […]
Becky Frank: UCLA AnthropologyThe goal of this project was to examine the dynamics of exchange among female baboons and test predictions derived from a biological market model of grooming. Evolutionary theory predicts that cooperation among nonkin will be limited to reciprocating partners who monitor the balance of trade within their relationships in order to prevent […]
Carel van Schaik: Anthropological Institute & Museum, University of ZurichNaturalistic data on nonhuman primates show that the degree of despotism among males in primate groups is predicted by the degree to which mating access to females can be monopolized. Degree of despotism should affect other aspects of male behavioral strategies, such as how long top-dominants’ […]
Sam Bowles: Santa Fe InstituteAltruism -- benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself -- and parochialism – hostility toward individuals not of one’s own ethnic, racial or other group -- are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two – which we term parochial altruism -- is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because […]
Carol Padden & Mark Aronoff: UCSD, Stonybrook UWe report here on work we have carried out with colleagues Wendy Sandler and Irit Meir on an emerging sign language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL). ABSL developed de novo in a small closed community of Bedouins which is now in its third generation of signers. In this […]
Gary Marcus: NYU PsychologyIn fields ranging from reasoning to linguistics, the idea of humans as perfect, rational, optimal creatures is making a comeback – but should it be? Hamlet’s musings that the mind was “noble in reason ...infinite in faculty†have their counterparts in recent scholarly claims that the mind consists of an “accumulation of […]
Susan Perry: UCLA AnthropologyWhite-faced capuchin monkeys are best known for their innovation and traditions in the domain of social communication; however, social learning appears to play a role in the acquisition of their foraging techniques as well. In this talk, I explore several lines of evidence indicating social influence in food processing techniques. Several foods […]
