Humans and our closest living phylogenetic cousins, bonobos and chimpanzees,

have extraordinary cognitive capacities for understanding their social worlds.

How have we evolved to process and respond to our social environments with such intricate and calculated techniques? 

 

My research explores how bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans have evolved the abilities to process, comprehend, and respond to our abundant social environments. I am also fascinated by how great apes develop the cognitive abilities to form, maintain, and deepen our social bonds. I explore the evolutionary pressures and developmental trajectories that shape social attention and curiosity, long-term memory, language comprehension, and emotion understanding in humans and other great apes.

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I use non-invasive novel technologies like eye-tracking and motion-tracking as well as behavioral methods to study bonobos and chimpanzees living in zoos and sanctuaries around the world and children living in different cultures and countries.