Biological and Experimental Psychology

Biological and Experimental Psychology

Research in this area focuses on the ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (genetic, developmental and neurobiological) mechanisms responsible for cognition and behaviour.  A central consideration for this group concerns cognitive evolution and the biological basis of human social behaviour.  We also place a strong emphasis on the experimental approach to research problems in these fields of psychology.  Recent topics in which world-class work has been conducted includes physical reasoning and social cognition in Corvids, colour perception in bumblebees, the transmission of cultural information in humans using evolutionary models, the biological origins of human sexual orientation, sex differences in cognition, the use of zebra fish as a model behavioural assay of addiction, visual attention and search in humans and non-human animals, the role of Cannabinoid signalling in several neural processes, social evolution in mole rats, gene-brain interaction in mammalian reproductive behaviour, the utility of Drosophila models of circadian rhythms, face processing and imitation, and the philosophy of mind.

Faculty

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Selected publications in this research area

Anderson, AJ, and McOwan, PW (2003). Humans deceived by predatory stealth strategy camouflaging motion.  Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B: Biological Sciences, 270, s18-20.

Bird, CD and Emery, NJ (2010). Rooks perceive support relations similar to six month old babies. Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B: Biological Sciences, 277, 147-151.

Bird, CD and Emery, NJ (2009). Insightful problem solving and creative tool modification by captive nontool-using rooks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 106, 10370-10375.

Briefer E, Vannoni E, McElligott AG (2010) Quality prevails over identity in the sexually selected vocalisations of an ageing mammal. BMC Biology 8, 35

Chittka, L., Mesoudi, A. (in press) Insect swarm intelligence. Science

Chittka L and Niven J (2009). Are bigger brains better? Current Biology 19, R995-R1008.

Chittka L, Skorupski, P and Raine, NE (2009). Speed-accuracy tradeoffs in animal decision making. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, 400-407.

Chittka L and Osorio D (2007) Cognitive Dimensions of Predator Responses to Imperfect Mimicry. PLoS Biology 5: 2754-2758

Collins B, Mazzoni EO, Stanewsky R, and Blau, J (2006). Drosophila CRYPTOCHROME is a circadian transcriptional repressor. Current Biology 16, 441-449.

Dally, JM, Emery, NJ, and Clayton, NS (2006). Food-caching Western scrub jays keep track of who was watching them. Science, 312, 1662-1665.

Danchin, E., Charmantier, A., Champagne, F.A., Mesoudi, A., Pujol, B., Blanchet, S. (in press). Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution. Nature Reviews Genetics.

Dyer, AG, Whitney, HM, Arnold, SEJ, Glover BJ, and Chittka L (2006) Bees associate warmth with flower colour. Nature 442, 525-525

Eilola, T. M., & Havelka, J. (in press). Behavioural and physiological responses to the emotional and taboo Stroop tasks in native and non-native speakers of English. International Journal of Bilingualism.

Emery, NJ, and Clayton, NS (2009). Comparative social cognition.  Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 87-113.

Emery, NJ, and Clayton, NS (2004). The mentality of crows: the convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes. Science, 306, 1903-1907.

Faulkes, CJ, and Bennett, NC (2001). Family values: group dynamics and social control of reproduction in African mole rats. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 16, 184-190.

Ings, TC and Chittka, L (2008). Speed accuracy tradeoffs and false alarms in bee responses to cryptic predators. Current Biology, 18, 1520-1524.

Jensen, K, Call, J and Tomasello, M. (2007). Chimpanzees Are Rational Maximizers in an Ultimatum Game. Science 318, 107-109.

Mesoudi, A and Lycett, SJ (2009). Random copying, frequency-dependent copying and culture change. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30 (1), 41-48.

Mesoudi, A, Whiten, A, and Laland, KN (2006) Towards a unified science of cultural evolution. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29 (4), 329-383.

Muller, H and Chittka, L (2008) Animal personalities: the advantage of diversity. Current Biology, 20 (18), pR961-R963.

O'Neill, M, Brown, VJ (2007) Amphetamine and the adenosine A(2A) antagonist KW-6002 enhance the effects of conditional temporal probability of a stimulus in rats. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121, 535-542.

O'Neill, M, Brown, VJ (2007) The effect of striatal dopamine depletion and the adenosine A2A antagonist KW-6002 on reversal learning in rats. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 88, 75-81.

Osman, M (2008). Evidence for positive transfer and negative transfer/Anti-learning of problem solving skills. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 97-115.

Osman, M (2010). Controlling Uncertainty: A Review of Human Behavior in Complex Dynamic Environments. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 65-86.

Peschel, N, Veleri, S, and Stanewsky, R (2006). Veela defines a molecular link between Cryptochrome and Timeless in the light input pathway to Drosophila’s circadian clock. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 103, 17313-17318.

Proulx, M. J., Stoerig, P., Ludowig, E., & Knoll, I. (2008). Seeing “where” through the ears: Effects of learning-by-doing and long-term sensory deprivation on localization based on image-to-sound substitution. PLoS ONE 3, e1840.

Proulx, MJ (2007). Turning on the spotlight: Do attention and luminance contrast affect neuronal responses in the same way? The Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 13043-13044.

Proulx, MJ (2007). Bottom-up guidance in visual search for conjunctions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 33, 48-56.

Rahman, Q and Koerting, J (2008). Sexual orientation-related differences in allocentric spatial memory tasks. Hippocampus, 18, 55-63.

Rahman, Q (2005). The neurodevelopment of human sexual orientation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 29, 1057-1066.

Sichilima A., Faulkes C.G. & Bennett N.C., (2008) Field evidence for aseasonality of reproduction and colony size in the Afrotropical giant mole-rat Fukomys mechowii (Rodentia: Bathyergidae). African Zoology 43, 144-149

Skorupski, P, and Chittka, L (2010). Differences in Photoreceptor Processing Speed for Chromatic and Achromatic Vision in the Bumblebee, Bombus terrestris. Journal of Neuroscience 30, 3896-3903.

Skorupski, P, and Chittka, L (2006). Animal cognition: an insect’s sense of time?  Current Biology, 16, R851-853.

Vannoni, E, and McElligott, AG (2008). Low frequency groans indicate larger and more dominant fallow deer (Dama dama) males. PLOS One, 3, e3113.