Dr. Mesa-Castillo has been conducting research on schizophrenia for more than 33 years in Cuba, the United States, Spain, Brazil, Venezuela, and Ethiopia. He will provide an overview of his research, which provided the first direct evidence of virus infection in the central nervous system in schizophrenia [Journal of Microbiology Review, 1995] and also advanced the application of electro-microscopy to the study of serious mental illness. Dr. Mesa-Castillo's presentation will address the role...

Scientists have identified a series of milestones in the evolution of the human food quest that they anticipate had far-reaching impacts on biological, behavioral and cultural evolution: the inclusion of substantial portions of meat, the broad-spectrum revolution and the transition to food production. The foraging shift to dense and predictable resources is another key milestone that had consequential impacts on the later part of human evolution. The theory of economic defendability predicts...

A fundamental and frequently overlooked aspect of animal learning is its reliance on compatibility between the learning rules used and the attentional and motivational mechanisms directing them to process the relevant data (called here data-acquisition mechanisms). We propose that this coordinated action, which may first appear fragile and error prone, is in fact extremely powerful, and critical for understanding cognitive evolution. Using basic examples from imprinting and associative...

The brain did not evolve specialized circuits for reading. Rather, the process of learning to read induces changes in the underlying structure and function of the brain that support this fundamental academic skill. In other words, education scaffolds the development of the brain's reading circuitry. In this talk, I will first outline the neurobiological underpinnings of literacy and give an overview of how the brain converts symbols on a page to sound and meaning. Then I will present new data...

A central and consequential feature of technological competence in the digital age is the ability to learn new technologies as they emerge--what I call "digital adaptability." Macro-level research suggests differences in digital adaptability are related to various forms of inequality. However, research has not yet been able to link macro-level trends to micro-level processes, made difficult without a direct measure of adaptability. My research addresses this gap by defining and measuring...

This talk examines evolutionary, developmental psychology and social-cultural anthropology debates regarding how children learn from others. Cognitive psychologists and evolutionary biologists indicate that teaching, accurate imitation, and language are distinct features of human cognition that enable high fidelity transmission of cultural variants and cumulative culture. The talk examines whether or not one type of teaching, called natural pedagogy, and one type of accurate imitation, called...

Our ability to teach and learn from each other is a foundational aspect of human nature. It has underpinned the remarkable evolutionary success of our species and remains critical to the fortunes and prospects of modern societies. This CMBC Symposium brings together perspectives from ethnography, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and the sociology of education for a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation of what we have learned about the many ways in which we...

One of the most challenging aspects of learning is theory-change -- abandoning an old explanatory framework for a new one.  When is theory change possible, and when do intuitive theories persist alongside those that are taught in school? How do children's intuitive theories distort the lessons from school?  And what are the (implicit) mechanisms that work to foster or suppress children's intuitive theories? I examine these questions by focusing on two conceptual biases (essentialism and...

This collaborative discussion focuses on the complex question: How and why do parents interact differently with sons and daughters? We approach these questions with the assumption that gender differences in parenting are expressed and performed in everyday interactions between parents and children and shape how children come to understand what it means to be "male" or "female" in their culture. Dr. Fivush will share insights from her research on the social construction of gender in family...

Are non-clinical populations high on the autistic spectrum less likely to "get" religion? Building on the first talk, I ask whether autism increases the odds of disbelief, as has been predicted by some cognitive theories of religious belief. Probing further, I ask whether this link is statistically explained by the selective deficits in theory of mind associated with the autistic spectrum. Next I explore whether gender differences in autism and theory of mind offer a novel, if partial,...

Recent attempts to use findings in neuroscience to inform our understanding of religious experience have focused on explaining the origins of religious activity and belief as potential byproducts of neural structures that evolved for, and were exapted from, other biological functions. Brain mechanisms implicated in attributing agency, detecting intentions, social reward, pro-social adaptation, and other aspects of social cognition have variously been proposed as potential pathways leading to...

For a given person to believe in a deity or deities, she must (a) be able to form intuitive mental representations of supernatural agents; (b) be motivated to commit to supernatural agents (and related rituals) as real and relevant sources of meaning and control; and (c) have received specific cultural inputs that, of all the supernatural agents or forces one could possibly think of, one or more specific deities should be believed in and committed to. In this talk, I present these...

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) illuminates similar features of experience that arise in religious settings and that are associated with some mental disorders. We endorse explanatory pluralism, the view that cross-scientific investigations are enriched by integrating theory, methods, and evidence from multiple analytical levels, and ecumenical naturalism, which holds that: (1) examining features of experiences in different mental disorders and similar features of religious...

The negative academic and health effects of ethnic/racial discrimination are robust and pervasive. Taking a biopsychosocial approach, the current study combines actigraphy with a daily diary design to explore sleep duration and quality as an explanatory link between discrimination and outcomes. In a sample of 189 ethnic/racially diverse 9th grade adolescents, the study first assessed the daily impact of discrimination on next-day academic engagement and mood. Second, the study explored...

As a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and anthropologist, I will review and discuss the discourse on laughter. Traditionally, this discourse seems to summon to mind three principal characteristics of laughter: its specifically human nature, its structural relationship to the joy and pleasure procured by what is laughable, making laughter an indicator of “good health,” and its automatic, reflexive aspect. Unfortunately, it seems to obscure two fundamental aspects of laughter: its historicity and...

Language Documentation is a reborn, refashioned, and reenergized subfield of linguistics motivated by the urgent task of creating a record of the world’s fast disappearing languages. In addition to producing resources for communities interested in language and culture preservation, maintenance, and revitalization, language documentation continues to produce data that challenge and improve linguistic theory. A case in point is a pattern of participant marking, i.e. ways that speakers...

Scientists have made substantial progress in understanding the evolution of mammalian sleep, yet the evolution of human sleep has been largely ignored in comparative studies. This omission is surprising given the extraordinary mental capacity and behavioral flexibility of humans, and the importance of sleep for human cognitive performance. I will discuss new phylogenetic methods that enable rigorous investigation of sleep along a single evolutionary lineage, and will apply these methods to...

This talk discusses the wide-ranging potential of immersive virtual reality (IVR) as a research tool in the behavioral sciences. The speaker will discuss her research using IVR to study mundane judgments of the built environment, her emergency evacuation IVR work conducted with engineers and disaster experts, and her social-health work studying HIV risk behavior in highly interactive dating scenarios with virtual dating partners.

Why do today's religions look and function the way they do? Presenting research primarily on religion’s effects on prosocial behavior and prejudice toward outgroups, I will argue that the form and function of modern religions can be understood as the legacy of a millennia-long process of cultural evolution. Our recent research has begun to empirically test perennially debated questions about whether religions make people act more ethically, what functions religions have served, and why some...

A chief stumbling block for a science of consciousness has always been that there are so few ways to measure consciousness. Recent developments in clinical neuroscience suggest a promising new start on this problem, and raise new empirical issues. The progress may also carry some surprising philosophical implications for realists about consciousness.

Alena Esposito and Donald Tuten discuss different aspects of research on bilingualism. Dr. Esposito focuses on recent cognitive and neuroscientific research on bilingualism, while Dr. Tuten focuses on fundamental questions in social and cultural approaches to research on bilingualism. Both presenters touch on and consider the implications of these approaches on education and educational approaches to research on bilingualism.

In June 2016, a small group of world-leading neuroscientists, ethicists, social scientists and clinical researchers came together with two goals: to initiate a global research consortium in neuroscience ethics; and to come up with a research agenda for that consortium. Were the goals met? Yes and no. In this talk I identify some of the key clashes, the strange alliances, and the isolation tactics that collectively enabled the consortium to establish an identity and a mission, at a cost. I...

In my lab, we recently discovered a new type of cognitive bias brought on by the presence of a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state for a currently inaccessible word. When in a TOT state, participants think it more likely that a currently unretrievable word was presented in a darker, clearer font upon last seeing it, a larger font upon last seeing it, that it is of higher frequency in the language, and that it starts with a more common first letter in the language. This pattern suggests that TOT...

Why does race serve as the most polarizing feature of American politics? Presumably, Americans have a stake in proclaiming America’s greatness, particularly touting pride in democratic governance, protecting civil rights and liberties, and making progress in areas that serve as ugly scars in its history. Yet research suggests the effects of racial bias now surpass the typical partisan and ideological predispositions that drive political decision making and judgments. This phenomenon is...

Humans routinely confront situations that require coordination between individuals, from mundane activities such as planning where to go for dinner to incredibly complicated activities, such as multi-national agreements. How did this ability arise, and what prevents success in those situations in which it breaks down? To understand how this capability evolved across the primates, my lab uses the methodology of experimental economics. This is an ideal mechanism for the comparative approach as...