Latest Past Events

Christopher Schmitt – The genomics of obesogenic growth during development and adult-onset obesity in captive vervet monkeys: Preliminary results and potential for studies in the wild

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 […]

Fei Xu – Towards a rational constructivist approach to cognitive development

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 […]

Peter Todd – Domain-specific mechanisms for decisions about food

Peter Todd: Indiana University Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences The need to find nourishing foods is a selective pressure that may have shaped many human cognitive processes, from perception to memory. In this talk, I present some of our efforts to uncover such domain-specific influences. Hurlbert and Ling (2007) suggested that an ancestral sexual […]