Welcome to the Comparative Cognition Laboratory!

The Comparative Cognition Laboratory explores the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Our studies focus on a number of different primate species and incorporate methodologies from cognitive development and cognitive neuroscience.

Our research examines the following broad questions: what domains of knowledge are unique to the human mind? Given that human infants and non-human primates both lack language, what similarities and differences do we see in the expression of non-linguistic domains of knowledge?

Our current work explores what primates understand about physical objects and their motions, how primates spontaneously reason about different kinds of things (foods, artifacts, and animals), and whether or not non-human primates possess precursors to a theory of mind.