Montserrat Soler: University of California, Santa BarbaraIn the last ten years, there has been a surge of work dedicated to the study of religion from the point of view of evolutionary studies and cognitive science. These accounts of religion are divided into two main areas: one views religious concepts as by-products of other cognitive capacities, […]
Barry Hewlett: Washington State University, VancouverCultural anthropologists Margaret Mead, David Lancy, and Barbara Rogoff indicate that teaching does not exist or is rare in small-scale cultures. By contrast, recent research by cognitive neuroscientists Gyorgy Gergely and Gergely Csibra indicate that one type of teaching, called natural pedagogy, is a human universal, part of human nature, […]
Lynn Fairbanks: UCLAThere has been considerable interest in gestational and neonatal influences on developmental trajectories in humans and other mammals in recent years. This presentation reviews results from the Vervet Research Colony demonstrating effects of maternal condition, diet and weight loss on maternal and infant behavior. To understand the impact of variation in maternal investment […]
