Vanessa Wilson

We discuss possible interpretations of these findings, from attentional difficulties with the task, to the possibility that fast mapping evolved in humans since the split from a common ape ancestor.

Using eye tracking, we find no evidence of fast mapping - the ability to rapidly associate a sound with an object, and a key component of language acquisition - in gorillas and orangutans, in contrast to humans.

New paper out on hominid fast mapping, led by Dahliane Labertoniere, with Carla Pascual-Guardia, Katrin Skoruppa & @zuberbuehler.bsky.social: tinyurl.com/3kkzkjnk

The effect of animacy on the agent preference: Self-paced reading evidence from Basque - Memory & Cognition Language processing shows a tendency to prefer agents over other roles. For instance, when initial unmarked noun phrases (NPs) are ambiguous between agent and patient roles, there is a preference to i...

Our new paper on animacy effects in Basque comprehension is out! It's been fun shepherding this paper for the last couple years.  Congratulations to all the authors, but especially Aitor Ergurtzegi on publishing the last paper of his PhD! link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Pregnant ladies, we need you! Please take ten minutes to fill out our short survey on maternal wellbeing.

Image of a PhD position advert entitled "PhD studentship in Brain, Brawn, and Bugs: cognitive and physical factors of insect dexterity" with images of a praying mantis and a bumblebee foraging.

🚨Fully-funded PhD studentship on insect behaviour, cognition & muscles with me & @viveknityananda.bsky.social at @newcastleuni.bsky.social 🐝🍀🎓🙌Application deadline April 30, start date in September. Drop me an email if you have questions! www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate...

🚨Come work with us in charming Tübingen and become a member of our growing Freigeist group! We offer a 2-year postdoc position on the communicative plasticity in wild and captive bonobos, fully funded by @volkswagenstiftung.bsky.social. Applications open until March 15th. bit.ly/4gVa5Je

We are hiring! We have an open position for a new lab coordinator in #primate #cognition and #behavior in the Cognitive Evolution Group at University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Find out more at: sites.lsa.umich.edu/cognitive-ev...

Enquête sur le Bien-être Équin pour les Acteurs du Secteur Équin Merci de prendre le temps de répondre à cette enquête ! Votre participation nous aidera à mieux comprendre votre expérience avec les chevaux et votre point de vue sur un outil que nous souhaiterions d...

A French version is also available: forms.gle/REAPyosimSgn...

Stakeholder Equine Choice Survey Thank you for taking the time to complete this survey! Your input will help us understand your experience with horses and your perspective on a proposed welfare tool that provides horses with social c...

We're looking for equine stakeholders (horse owners, breeders, stable managers, vets etc) to fill in this short survey, to help us assess feasibility of a possible horse welfare tool. Please share! shorturl.at/PIG2s

7th annual meeting of the Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture (SCSC). Registration and abstract submission now opened!

📢 Join the 7th annual meeting of the Society for the Cognitive Science of Culture ( #SCSC ) on the 28-29th of April at the University of #Zurich! Registration and abstract submission are now open until the 28th of February.

More information:
culturalcogsci.org/AnnualMeetin...

Re-sharing this: it would be great to get some more participants before data collection closes!

🌟JOB ALERT🌟
We're hiring lecturers/senior lecturers @bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Themes: ‘Evolution of life’, ‘Anthropogenic change’, ‘Reversing the biodiversity crisis’ & ‘Sustainable food production’
That very much includes #AnimalBehaviour

Deadline: 24th Jan 2025

bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de...

I hope you measured his face 😆

A student of mine is studying maternal wellbeing in people with and without pets. We're recruiting women who are either pregnant or up to nine months postpartum. Please share! app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/hull/petow...

Insightful and depressing statistics from Tatsuya Amano on the negative impact of being a non-native English speaker on publication output.

Our work on ape event cognition and the evolution of language is featured in The Conversation theconversation.com/how-primate-...

Initial agency detection in scenes depicting inanimate patients is clearly quicker than in social interactions. It makes sense, since an animate person has a much higher chance of being an agent than an inanimate object.

Great apes visually track subject-object relationships like humans do - NCCR Evolving Language When observing someone interact with something, humans and apes alternate attention between the two subjects. Great apes  track events with their eyes in the same way that humans do, according to a st...

📰🐒According to a study by Vanessa Wilson @vd0ubleu.bsky.social and team, humans and apes alternate attention between the two subjects when observing someone interact with something. Learn more in the article from PLOS Biology, in DE, FR and EN on our website.

evolvinglanguage.ch/great-apes-t...

To add: I wouldn't exactly caution against the use of static stimuli to study event apprehension. I think it's jsut important to note that different approaches require different respones from participants, and this produces different results.

Thanks Denis! Actions involving food were varied - some involved eating, others involved nut cracking or carrying food - so I don't think there's a consistent difference in goal-directed behaviour amongst those scenes that could differentiate them from non-food scenes.

In our new paper 📝 @plos.bsky.social PLOS Biology, we use #eyetracking to study how great apes understand who-does-what-to-whom — surprisingly similar to human adults! Thus suggests that the event cognition basis for language was present in our common ancestor. ➡️ journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Humans and great apes visually track event roles in similar ways Are only humans capable of tracking agent/patient roles during events, a cognitive foundation of syntax? This study shows that great apes, like human adults but unlike infants, differentiate agents fr...

#PaperAlert: Is there a pre-linguistic basis for event role attribution? @vd0ubleu.bsky.social from the @nccrlanguage.bsky.social and colleagues from the @kweltentdeckende.bsky.social lab just published a study in PLOS Biology on this question: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

With @sebastiansauppe.bsky.social, @err-ring.bsky.social, @moritzdaum.bsky.social, @candrewsvl.bsky.social, @balthasarbickel.bsky.social, @zuberbuehler.bsky.social, @nccrlanguage.bsky.social, @cogcompneuch.bsky.social

It took five years of hard work and interdisciplinary collaboration to get this study out. Thanks to all collaborators, contributors, funding bodies and especially the Basel Zoo staff and apes, for making this study possible.

We conclude that, having found similar gaze patterns in humans and nonhuman apes to scenes that elicit causal inference in humans, event role attribution appears to be a cognitive precursor to language that we share with a common primate ancestor.

We only found evidence for a strong agent bias in scenes depicting food. This contrast to previous findings is likely a result of using dynamic rather than static stimuli, where gaze tracks the action unfolding over time.

Infants did not mirror adults in their ability to track event roles, suggesting this is an ability which needs time and experience to emerge.

We found that like human adults, apes showed attentional switching between agents and patients, although also attended more to background information.

Building on cross-linguistic evidence for an agent-bias when viewing static event scenes and describing events, we examined the gaze of human adults, 6 month old infants, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans to real-world dynamic event scenes.