Language is the most powerful social tool any species has evolved - we can use it to share any idea we can think of with the minds of those around us: from poetry, Shakespeare, and physics, to internet memes it underpins what defines us as a species. But despite centuries of thought and study we still have very little idea of how and why language evolved. As a field primatologist at the University of St Andrews, I have spent 15 years living and working with wild apes in the rainforests and mountains of Uganda.

When speech is heard in the presence of background sound, or when hearing is impaired, the sensory information at the ear is often too ambiguous to support speech recognition by itself. In such circumstances, knowledge-guided processes that help to interpret and repair the degraded signal are required. Such recruitment of cognitive processes is probably why listening in noise “feels” effortful, even when intelligibility is high. Such effort can be aversive, and the goal of making listening less effortful is increasingly recognized as important.

Discovering the universal features of human musicality is a prerequisite for explaining the biological and cultural evolution of music. What is universal about the psychological representation of music, and what varies? In this talk I will present analyses of the Natural History of Song Discography, which includes songs recorded in 86 mostly small-scale societies, and experiments using these songs. We find that acoustical forms of songs are predictive of their primary behavioral functions across cultures.

Behaviors and disorders related to problems in self-regulation, such as substance use disorders, childhood behavior problems, and adult antisocial behavior are collectively referred to as Externalizing. In this talk, I will describe research that pooled information on multiple forms of externalizing behavior in ~1.5 million people and identified more than 500 genetic loci associated with a general liability to Externalizing.

Se représenter l'espace et communiquer à propos des relations spatiales entre objets dans l'environnement de façon efficace sont des capacités nous permettant de comprendre le monde qui nous entoure, de s'orienter correctement, ou encore d'utiliser des objets. Cela implique notamment d'avoir des capacités opérantes en langage spatial, notamment par la sélection de termes spatiaux appropriés, typiquement les prépositions spatiales. 

Etude du comportement de sujets contrôles et de patients atteints de la maladie de Huntington dans une tâche de contrôle cognitif. 

Analyse des temps de réaction et taux d’erreur en utilisant des modèles de diffusion pour identifier les marqueurs cognitifs du stade de la maladie.

Analyse de mots produits par des sujets contrôles et des patients atteints de la maladie de Huntington. Mesure de l’intelligibilité et étude de correlation avec (1) le stade de la maladie et (2) l’atrophie cérébrale.

Adolescence, defined as 10-24 years, is a period of life often characterised by behaviours that can appear, prima facie, irrational such as dangerous risk-taking and impulsivity. However, these behaviours can be interpreted as adaptive and rational given that a key developmental goal of this period of life is to mature into an independent adult while navigating a social world that is unstable and changing.

Western history of thought abounds with claims that knowledge is valued and sought. Yet people often choose not to know. We call the conscious choice not to seek or use knowledge (or information) deliberate ignorance. Using examples from a wide range of domains, we demonstrate that deliberate ignorance has important functions. We systematize types of deliberate ignorance, describe their functions, discuss their normative desirability, and consider how they can be modeled. To date, psychologists have paid relatively little attention to the study of ignorance, let alone the deliberate kind.