Aurélien Frick

Why are these results important? Knowing that visitor presence has limited effects can (a) encourage cognitive research in zoo settings and (b) benefit science (and conservation) education when research settings allow visitors to watch apes taking part in studies.

We also found that the presence of their conspecifics did not modulate chimpanzees’ performance.

In short, we found that the presence and activity of zoo visitors did not influence chimpanzees’ working memory.

Chimpanzees’ working memory is not affected by the presence and activity of zoo visitors - Animal Cognition Animal Cognition - Cognitive research in non-human primates is increasingly conducted in zoos, where zoo visitors are likely to be present and observe the testing sessions. Previous zoo research...

Our paper (with @emmasmcewen.bsky.social and Amanda Seed) on the effects of visitor presence on chimpanzees’ working memory is out.

This research was supported by a @leverhulme.ac.uk Early Career Fellowship and could not have been done without the help of @edinburghzoo.bsky.social staff!

🚨 Funded PhD on ageing, social cognition & self/other differentiation! 🚨

🧠 Supervised by myself (University of St Andrews) & Prof. Louise Phillips (University of Aberdeen), the project includes EEG & eye-tracking training.

🌍 Open to UK + international students!

📅 Deadline: 15th Dec 2025

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” 🧵

7/7 This study suggests a strong link between self-directed control and proactive control, which are two major developmental transitions in children’s executive function.

6/7 Interestingly, visual support affected these neural markers differently across age groups, revealing developmental differences in how children and adults prepare proactively.

5/7 Both children and adults showed higher frontolateral delta/theta power → proactive task selection AND Lower central mu power → motor preparation
on switch vs. repeat trials.

4/7 Children performed a voluntary task-switching task, with or without visual support for previous actions.

3/7 Specifically, we asked: do children engage self-directed control proactively like adults? And if so, are there age differences in the neural markers of task selection and motor preparation?

2/7 In this study, we examined the link between self-directedness (how executive function is engaged with decreasing external scaffolding) and proactiveness (how executive function is engaged in advance of cognitive demands).

1/7 Short takeaway: 5–6-year-old children engage self-directed control proactively like adults, as evidenced by oscillatory markers, although the effect differs from adults when visual support is provided.

But before: Big thanks to all the children who were so well-behaved with EEG caps on their heads! 🧠💖

Neural Oscillatory Markers of Voluntary Task Switching: Proactive Engagement of Self‐Directed Control in Children and Adults Cognitive control shows two main developmental trends: greater self-directedness (i.e., children need less external scaffolding) and greater proactiveness (i.e., children increasingly anticipate and...

Very happy to share the final paper from my PhD, which examines the EEG markers of self-directed and proactive executive function in children and adults!

Open access link is here, with a short thread below 👇
w/ Nic Chevalier | Out in #DevelopmentalScience

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Roasting in the sun to (closely or not) watch chimpanzee's politics at play.

Another day at work with Liberius, Paul, Qafzeh, Velu, Louis, and all the others not in this picture but not far away.

Low socioeconomic status is an under‐recognised source of challenges in academia The iconic ‘class sketch’ from the 1960s satirical series ‘The Frost Report’ illustrates the longstanding and deep cultural importance of social class in the UK. In this perspective, a diverse author...

PERSPECTIVE: As UK working class academics, Arbuckle et al. discuss the under-recognised challenges resulting from low #socioeconomic status backgrounds in #academia - #OpenAccess zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #EDI #DEI

Senior Research Associate (RA2312) in University of East Anglia | UEA View details and apply for this Senior Research Associate (RA2312) vacancy in University of East Anglia. School of Psychology Faculty of Social Sciences Senior Research Associate Ref: RA...

Please share; My lab at @psychologyuea.bsky.social @uniofeastanglia.bsky.social is recruiting a post-doc for a cognitive neuroscience memory project. It is a 3-year post, with a proposed start date of 8th September. Application deadline is 15th of June.

vacancies.uea.ac.uk/vacancies/15...

Children perform cognitive tasks ‘faster when on their own’ Researchers find children perform better when adults are not present, raising ‘exciting’ questions for future studies

Very pleased to see our research featuring in @tesmagazine.bsky.social!

In one sentence, we found that this presence slowed response latencies, particularly on proactive control trials, especially for younger children.

The effects of an unfamiliar experimenter on proactive and reactive control in children Scientific Reports - The effects of an unfamiliar experimenter on proactive and reactive control in children

Happy to share that our study looking at the effect of the presence (vs absence) of an unfamiliar experimenter on children's executive function with @clembelletier.bsky.social, Valérie Camos and Stella Christie's lab 🇫🇷🇨🇭🇨🇳🇬🇧

rdcu.be/eakDs

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You can now apply for our 3 year postdoc looking at the role of culture and group size in social coordination and collaboration in the UK, Uganda and Republic of Korea!

Any questions please don’t hesitate to drop me a dm or email (sophie.milward@port.ac.uk)

mss.port.ac.uk/ce0732li_web...

A screenshot from the virtual environment foraging game. The scene shows green grass with a grey stone wall in the background, two trees, a rock, and six pieces of virtual fruit (apples, grapes, and bananas)

🌳 I’m excited to announce that we have published our paper outlining our protocol for training primates to forage in virtual environments! Out now #openaccess

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