Workshop Social Cognition
Social cognition in animals: Is it as smart as it looks?
Organizers: Prof. dr. Charlotte K. Hemelrijk, Prof. dr. Rineke Verbrugge, Elske van der Vaart, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez
Over the past decade, experimental research has produced many examples of animal behavior that seem to require complex social cognition. Yet, how complex this cognition really is remains hotly debated. In this workshop, we aim to stimulate productive discussion on this topic by bringing together empirical scientists with theoretical modelers, and by focusing on two very specific research paradigms.
The first of these is coalition formation, which concerns how animals decide when to join each other in fights; the second is visual perspective taking, which concerns whether animals understand what others can and cannot see. Both of these topics have been extensively studied in primates and birds, both have invoked explanations of varying cognitive complexity, and both are the subject of theoretical models.
Program Coalition Formation (Monday 26th October)
| Time | Speaker | Lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 9.00 - 10.00 | Registration & coffee | |
| 10.00 - 10.10 | Charlotte Hemelrijk (Groningen) | Opening remarks |
| 10.10 - 10.50 | Joan Silk (UCLA) | How do monkeys choose allies and exchange partners? (abstract) |
| 10.50 - 11.20 | Coffee & tea | |
| 11.20 - 11.40 | Bonaventura Majolo (Lincoln) | Relationship quality and coalition in the Japanese macaque (abstract) |
| 11.40 - 12.20 | Nicola Koyama (Liverpool) | Coalition formation and exchange in chimpanzees and in Japanese macaques (abstract) |
| 12.20 - 12.40 | Julia Ostner (Göttingen) | Coalition formation in male Assamese macaques (abstract) |
| 12.40 - 13.40 | Lunch break | |
| 13.40 - 14.00 | Orlaith Fraser (Vienna) | Coalition formation in ravens (abstract) |
| 14.00 - 14.40 | Carel van Schaik (Zürich) | Modeling within-group male-male coalitions in primates (abstract) |
| 14.40 - 15.00 | Annie Bissonnette (Zürich) | Simple heuristics for coalition formation in Barbary macaque males (abstract) |
| 15.00 - 15.30 | Coffee & tea | |
| 15.30 - 15.50 | Ellen Evers (Utrecht) | A model of attention and spatial effects in primate social cognition (abstract) |
| 15.50 - 16.30 | Ivan Puga-Gonzalez (Groningen) | Emergence of coalitions in a model (abstract) |
| 16.30 - 17.30 | Drinks |
Program Perspective Taking (Tuesday 27th October)
| Time | Speaker | Lecture |
|---|---|---|
| 9.00 - 10.00 | Registration & coffee | |
| 10.00 - 10.10 | Rineke Verbrugge (Groningen) | Opening remarks |
| 10.10 - 10.50 | Kurt Kotrschal (Vienna) | Lessons from the cognitive ontogeny of ravens (abstract) |
| 10.50 - 11.20 | Coffee & tea | |
| 11.20 - 12.00 | Nicola Clayton (Cambridge) | Comparative social cognition: lessons from corvids and children (abstract) |
| 12.00 - 12.40 | Juliane Kaminski (Leipzig) | The evolutionary roots of human social cognition (abstract) |
| 12.40 - 13.40 | Lunch break | |
| 13.40 - 14.20 | Judith Burkart (Zürich) | Perspective taking in marmosets: with or without Theory of Mind? (abstract) |
| 14.20 - 15.00 | Jennifer Vonk (Southern Mississippi) | Whose perspective is being taken? A critical look at experiments on perspective-taking in non-humans (abstract) |
| 15.00 - 15.30 | Coffee & tea | |
| 15.30 - 15.50 | Bernard Thierry (Strasbourg) | Withholding information in semifree-ranging Tonkean macaques: a reappraisal of conclusions (abstract) |
| 15.50 - 16.30 | Elske van der Vaart (Groningen) | Visual perspective taking in corvids – A computational mode (abstract) |
| 16.30 - 16.40 | Charlotte Hemelrijk (Groningen) | Closing remarks |
| 16.40 - 17.40 | Drinks |
| Last modified: | 03 December 2015 12.46 p.m. |