Jan Engelmann

Come work with me on cognitive diversity, development & dynamics in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! Graduate student applications are due a week from today. cognitiveconstructionlab.com

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social.
We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures.

All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
Please share / apply!🙏

Intrigued by animal innovation and avian cognition? My PI Dr. Megan Lambert is advertising a new shiny PhD position studying innovation in kea parrots! Info attached 🤩🦜
For inquiries: Megan.Lambert@vetmeduni.ac.at

Are humans the only rational animals?

For thousands of years, we’ve thought so.

Our new paper, out today in Science, suggests otherwise!
We present evidence that chimpanzees possess several core capacities for rational thought.

Check out Emily's thread: bsky.app/profile/emil...

We also showed that chimpanzees respond appropriately to so-called “second-order evidence”—that is, evidence about evidence.

This indicates that chimpanzees explicitly represent what has been called the *evidential relation*: the causal connection between evidence and hypothesis. (6/8)

Our study also suggests that chimpanzees *explicitly* represented the evidence for their beliefs.

When we showed them evidence, and then showed them that *same* piece of evidence again later, they disregarded it. When they instead saw a *new* piece of evidence, they changed their minds. (5/8)

Chimpanzees responded to the counterevidence in line with the rational predictions of a mathematical model of rational belief revision.

That is: they revised their prior belief when the counterevidence was stronger than the initial evidence, but maintained their belief otherwise (4/8)

Chimpanzees participated in a foraging task. We first gave them evidence that food was in one location, and let them make a first choice. Then we presented them with *counterevidence*: evidence for the other location. (3/8)

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Dr. Jane made an indelible mark on our understanding of chimpanzees and other species, and also of humankind and the environments we all share.

She inspired curiosity, hope, and compassion in countless people, and paved the way for many others.

#ThankYouJane #RememberingJane

Photo: Marko Zlousic

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u...

A signaling theory of self-handicapping People use various strategies to bolster the perception of their competence. One strategy is self-handicapping, by which people deliberately impede th…

"A signaling theory of self-handicapping"

📢New from: @yangxiang.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Research Coordinator, Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab in Graduate School of Education, Stanford, California, United States The Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) seeks a full-time Research Coordinator (acting lab manager) to help launch and coordinate the Minds,.....

I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share:
phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Update: the deadline for the Biological Basis of Behavior has been extended to Sept 18th! ✨

aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05054

Please reach out to Linda Wilbrecht if you have any questions about the position.

Congratulations!!! Let's celebrate together in Berlin :)

Disanalogies between causal learning in animals vs. machines: Comment on “disentangled representations for causal cognition” by F. Torresan & M. Baltieri None.

My comment on Fillipo Torresan & @manuelbaltieri.bsky.social's "Disentangled representations for causal cognition" in Physics of Life Reviews:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I argue that there is little meaningful analogy between learning from "pixels" vs "experience," but I praise

This paper really is developmental science at its best. Empirically convincing and theoretically rich. Shows once again that we cannot assume that the adult state is the default state.

The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy - Nature Communications A classic feature of human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. Here, the authors show that before the emergence of self-concept, infants instead remember informa...

Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Before, they are altercentric and remember better things that are relevant for others; afterwards, they shift towards egocentrism, remembering better things that are relevant for themselves - as we also do as adults.

Being Too Helpful At Work Can Hurt Your Career—Here’s How To Say No Women are more likely to take on behind-the-scenes duties at work—extra tasks like onboarding or event planning—and it's hurting their careers. Here's how to say no.

In a study of professors, women got 378 new work requests over 4 weeks vs 118 for men. Women spent more time on service, advising & teaching; men on research. Orgs should track who is taking extra duties & ensure they are rewarded and distributed fairly. www.forbes.com/sites/kimels...

🚨We're hiring! The Mind & Morality Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to start this September. Excited about research on social cognitive development? Apply here: forms.gle/4rKXD2x1vmkD.... Learn more about us: sites.brown.edu/mindmorality....
⏳ We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis—apply early!

Disagreement drives metacognitive development Metacognition improves significantly over childhood, but the mechanisms underlying this development are poorly understood. We first review recent rese…

Check out our new TICS paper on disagreement and metacognition! We argue that disagreement drives metacognitive development by expanding children's consideration sets.
With Antonia Langenhoff, Bill Thompson @wdt.bsky.social and Mahesh Srinivasan
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Disagreement drives metacognitive development Metacognition improves significantly over childhood, but the mechanisms underlying this development are poorly understood. We first review recent research demonstrating that disagreement prompts competent responses by young children across several metacognitive domains (confidence monitoring, information search, and source monitoring). We then propose a mechanistic model of how disagreement facilitates metacognition. We localize one main source of children’s metacognitive limitations in their still-developing capacities to reason about alternative possibilities, which manifest in an overly narrow focus on one hypothesis. Disagreement increases the child’s likelihood of representing alternative hypotheses, thereby promoting improved metacognitive reasoning. The broader proposal is that, through repeated experiences of disagreement, children become better at representing alternative possibilities even when reasoning on their own, leading to metacognitive development.

Online Now: Disagreement drives metacognitive development

🎊Fully funded PhD position on cooperative sustainability🌳

Are you curious about
🧒 developmental,
🌍 cross-cultural
🦧 species comparative
research on cooperative sustainability?

All info here or dm me with questions!
career2.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...
Please share! 🙏

Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little ...

Chimpanzees are, just like humans, very curious about other's social relationships. In some cases, they even give up a material reward to watch social interactions. Check out this exciting new work by @laurasimonelewis.bsky.social
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little is known about the developmental and evolutionary roots ...

New paper from Laura Lewis and Jan Engelmann et al. (including me) with a clever new method. Chimps and kids will forgo reward to get a chance to look at social interactions
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Such an interesting perspective!

Children Use the Relative Confidence of People With Conflicting Perspectives to Form Their Own Beliefs We provide evidence that children sensibly integrate the judgments of different people who disagree according to their confidence. We asked children (ages 5–10 years, N = 92) to make judgments about ...

New paper! When do children trust others and when do they come up with their own ideas? Kids 8+ considered and weighed each person's confidence to decide whether to form new beliefs.
With @janengelmann.bsky.social and @celestekidd.bsky.social
Free here: dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc...

We cannot wait!