Jacinta Beehner:

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 […]

Peter Sozou: London School of EconomicsDiscounting occurs when an immediate benefit is systematically valued more highly than a delayed benefit. This talk is concerned with understanding both the causes and effects of discounting from an evolutionary point of view, as reflected in physiological and behavioural strategies of organisms. I'll start by looking at the evolutionary […]

Jared Diamond: UCLA Dept. of GeographySome societies have suffered environmental collapses in the past (Easter Island, Angkor Wat, Anasazi, Classic Maya…), while others have remained intact for thousands of years (Japan, Northwest Europe, Java, Tikopia…). Some countries are close to collapse today, while others are not. What makes some societies more fragile than others? Authors […]

Carl Bergstrom: University of Washington Dept. of BiologyOver the past 3.5 billion years, biological organisms have evolved to acquire, process, store, and transmit information. How have organisms evolved to handle the same problems with which we are confronted in this so-called Information Age: problems of information storage and processing, problems of transmission and reliability, problems […]

Peter Gray : Charles Drew UniversityTwo hallmarks of human male reproductive strategies are the formation of long-term bonds with a mate and the provision of paternal care. These activities may, in part, be exclusive to male-male competition and mate-seeking, the main components of mating effort. From a complementary, mechanistic perspective, the steroid hormone testosterone (T) […]

Tim German: UCSB PsychologyThe human ability to make tools and use them to solve problems may not be zoologically unique, but it is certainly extraordinary. Yet little is known about the conceptual machinery that makes humans so competent at making and using tools. Do adults and children have concepts specialized for understanding human-made artifacts? If […]

Ann Senghas: Barnard College of Columbia University, Dept. of PsychologyThe recent emergence of a new sign language among deaf children and adolescents in Nicaragua provides an opportunity to study how linguistic features of a language arise and spread. New features that arise must be successfully transmitted from one generation to the next to survive as […]

Trent Smith: UCLA International InstituteThe economic theory of "rational addiction" posits that drug addiction can usefully be viewed as the outcome of an informed decision undertaken on the part of the consumer. I employ a complementary approach to developing a behavioral theory of addiction by identifying circumstances under which addiction-like behavior is the solution to […]

Michael Rose: UC Irvine Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary BiologyHuman behavior is unlike that of all other known animal behavior in its high degree of flexibility and versatility. A problem that is given less attention than it deserves is that flexible behavior is difficult to explain in Darwinian terms. "Free will" poses a challenge to […]