Marc David Hauser - US grants

9357976 HAUSER This award provides support to Dr. Marc Hauser under the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Awards program. The objective of this program is to recognize outstanding young faculty in science and engineering, to enhance the academic career of recent PhD recipients by providing flexible support for research and educational activities, and to foster contact and cooperation between academia, industry, and institutions that support research and education. Dr. Hauser has already made significant research contributions to the field of biological anthropology, and he has the potential to become a leader in academic research and education. This award will allow the investigator to continue his research on the evolution of cognitive ability. By integrating theoretical and methodological insights from cognitive neuroscience with evolutionary biology, he will examine both the neural constraints on behavior and the adaptive significance of a species' cognitive machinery. He will use observational and experimental techniques on both captive and wild nonhuman primates focusing on the role of hemispheric specialization in the categorization of visual and auditory signals. Results will shed light on the evolution of cognition in human and nonhuman primates. Dr. Hauser's research promises to make an important contribution to knowledge at a time when scientists are just beginning to examine the primate origins of social intelligence and the evolution of language. ***

psychology; hearing; Primates; Mammalia; behavioral /social science research tag;

Language is what distinguishes adult human beings from both human infants and other primates. The development of language in the species and in the child are two of nature's most profound mysteries. The aim of this collaborative project is to shed light on these mysteries by assessing similarities between natural language and spontaneous non-linguistic knowledge in both human infants and other primates (macaques and cotton-top tamarins). The project also aims to determine how the non-linguistic knowledge differs from language, for this will tell us what special features of language must be accounted for in analyses of the evolution and acquisition of natural languages. The focus of the research is one restricted arena of conceptual and linguistic knowledge: natural number. Three aspects of nonlinguistic representation of number will be studied: (1) the nature of infant and non-human primate representations of integers; (2) the representations of quantifiers such as `an,` `another,` and `more`; and (3) the criteria for individuating objects and assessing numerical identity (sameness in number). The proposed studies have several specific goals. First, given that human infants, macaques, and tamarins pass simple tests of `addition` and `subtraction,` a series of experiments will be carried out to uncover the nature of the underlying representations. Second, the upper numerical limit of the addition/subtraction ability will be determined, for all three subject populations. Third, experiments will be conducted to probe whether all three populations are tracking number of objects in the addition/subtraction studies or total mass/volume. Fourth, studies will be carried out to assess whether nonhuman primates and human infants spontaneously represent which of two numerical quantities is larger, and whether this ability is subject to the same upper limit as the addition/subtraction ability. Finally, the relationship between the acquisition of language and the conceptual representations associated with basic object kinds (e.g., cup, apple) will be explored in all three species. The findings will shed light on fundamental problems of development and evolution. Specifically, the project will provide an explicit account of how humans spontaneously develop numerical competence from birth to the first year of life, and will also generate an evolutionary explanation for why numerical competence evolved, and when during primate phylogeny it originated.

Our research seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying the perception and production of vocal signals in cotton-top tamarins, as well as the conceptual representations that guide their behavior. We use non-invasive experiments and observation to explore these tropics. In particular, we have used techniques from the fields of ethology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive development to address the following questions 1) How do tamarins classify their vocalizations? Is classification determined on the basis of acoustics or on the basis of meaning? 2) Can tamarins lie about the presence of a predator or food? 3) Can tamarins carry out mathematical computations? 4) Do tamarins understand the functional properties of a tool?

Unique to mammals and elaborated in Primates (most notably humans), neocortex is the predominant brain locus for sensory data processing, conscious motor control, cognition and volitional communication. Its basic constituent is the cortical column. Classical studies reported the number of neurons in a cortical column (`radial neuron number`) to be remarkably constant across most species and neocortical regions, with Primate primary visual cortex containing double the number of radial neurons found elsewhere. However, recent evidence suggests reduction in radial neuron number in marine mammals, as well as variation in radial neuron number in different cortical areas of monkeys, cats, and rats. This investigation aims (1) to provide `unbiased stereological` measurements of radial neuron number, neuron size, and cortical thickness across a diverse sample (15 orders) of mammals, (2) to assess contributions of phylogeny, ecology, and life history to the observed variation, and (3) to quantify primary-visual and primary-motor cortex in Primates so as to compare radial neuron number across species with that in different regions of the same brains. Neocortical development is directly observable only in species lacking the variance in radial neuron number characteristic of mammals as a class. Broader data on radial neuron number will thus provide a more naturalistic context for interpreting normal developmental and pathological events in `laboratory models,` with mechanisms implicated in neurological health and disease presumably recruited during brain evolution to achieve specific adaptive ends.

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) typically behave aggressively towards
members of other groups; such aggression occasionally includes lethal
attacks. Among mammals, such coordinated lethal aggression has been
reported for a limited number of other species, including humans and
several social carnivores. Most hypotheses attempting to explain this
limited distribution have focused on benefits gained from resource
competition, whereas the lethal raiding hypothesis focuses on the costs of
aggression, which are predicted to be low for species with social bonds
and variable party size. It has proven difficult to choose among these
hypotheses, largely because the events of interest occur rarely and are
difficult to observe systematically. This study will be the first to test
these hypotheses using field experiments in addition to naturalistic
observations. Playback experiments and behavioral observations will be
conducted in Kibale National Park, Uganda. In each experiment, the long
distance call of an unfamiliar male will be played from a concealed
speaker, and the subjects' responses recorded. Playbacks will be conducted
to parties of varying size and composition at the core and periphery of
the community's range. Behavioral sampling will test whether chimpanzees
modify grouping and vocal behavior in border areas. Because any
outnumbered individuals would risk attack, the lethal raiding hypothesis
predicts that near borders, chimpanzees will travel in larger parties when
possible, and when in small parties will avoid giving long distance calls.
Resource competition models do not predict a consistent increase in party
size or call suppression at borders, because risk of attack depends on
abundance and distribution of resources, which vary considerably over
time. Data also will be collected on ranging behavior, including the
frequency of border visits and patrols, and the rate of encounters and
vocal exchanges between groups. As the first experimental study of
intergroup aggression in chimpanzees, this study will provide an important
contribution to understanding the evolution of a behavior pattern which
profoundly affects the lives of several species, including our own.

EIA-0132707 -Harvard University-Marc D. Hauser-Primate-Inspired Specialized Learning in an Agent Architecture: Safe and Robust Adaptive Action Selection

The intended multi-year research project would build a library of computational modules or idioms for representing learning and action-selection in non-human primates. We will particularly focus on modeling why well-learned new behavior does not always over-ride more established behavior patterns, and under what circumstances it can come to be exploited. This modeling could be key to designing fail-safe mechanisms in highly adaptive intelligent systems.

In this exploratory project, we would adapt an existing agent architecture to model the specialized learning in Cotton-Top Tamarins, focussing on several completed experiments already documented in our laboratory. Conducting this research under an SGER will give us an estimate of the scale of the software project, the level of interaction we can expect between the modeling and our ongoing research, and the educational potential for this system. This will help us determine the level of staffing and funding requested in the full proposal.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our greatest understanding of underlying mechanisms in animal communication has come from studies of highly specialized systems including electric fish, songbirds, bats, and humans. Noticeably absent from this list are the non-human primates. This proposal seeks funding to explore the mechanisms of vocal production and perception in cotton-top tamarin monkeys, focusing explicitly on the role of auditory feedback in the generation of species-typical signals, as well as the necessary and sufficient features for perceptual classification. We test five hypotheses focusing on the "combination long call" (CLC), a highly specialized signal designed to maintain contact and attract mates; we use four different methods to evaluate these hypotheses: vocal modification in response to changes in environmental acoustics, habituation discrimination, antiphonal calling, and phonotaxis. HI: Vocal production in tamarins is immune to interference, such that when they initiate a CLC, it continues to completion in the face of potentially competing acoustic or visual stimuli. If a competing stimulus causes interruption, production will terminate in between syllables as opposed to within a syllable. H2: Tamarins can use auditory feedback to modulate voice amplitude in response to ongoing increases ambient noise levels, but fail to exhibit such plasticity when changes arise during call production; infants show less plasticity than adults, thereby indicating the role of experience in vocal development. H3: The capacity for individual recognition in tamarins relies on only one syllable type within the CLC (i.e., the whistle), and specifically, a minimum number of whistles as opposed to total energy or syllable rate. H4: Based on comparative acoustic analyses of several other tamarin species, we hypothesize that cotton-top tamarins will show selective sensitivity to the order, duration, and fundamental frequency of syllable types within the CLC, preferentially approaching calls that fall within the natural range of variation for these parameters. H5: Studies reveal that recognition of the CLC is based on a suite of relevant acoustic features. If such features are either entirely absent or significantly perturbed, then processing time will increase, resulting in a longer latency to antiphonally call back to the signal. Results from this project will set the stage for future research on the underlying neurobiological circuitry and the extent to which it is homologous with humans.

Callithricidae; perception; ethology; animal colony; behavioral /social science research tag;

A multidisciplinary research team will study various aspects of the nature of moral judgments and the causal factors for the capacity for cross-cultural variation and change. The project measures the nature of moral decisions across different time periods (evolutionary, developmental, and cultural) and among different test populations (nonhuman animals, normal and neurobiologically impaired human infants and adults, and different cultures). It uses different methods for each type of study including experiments of primates, large-scale internet studies, and neuropsychological investigation of patients. The investigators will to study two psychological factors: (1) The idea that intending to harm another as a means to the greater good is less permissible than harming merely as a foreseen side effect (the intention principle) and (2) The idea that acts that cause harm to others will be perceived as morally worse than omissions of an act that causes equivalent harm (the omission principle). Studies of these principles will be conducted with nonhuman primates and human infants to test the hypothesis that some of the core cognitive building blocks that are necessary for these principles (e.g., perceiving intentions and goals) are in place but only take on moral significance in our own species, and only later in child development. The investigators will test the hypothesis that these principles are universal but with cross-cultural variation in their specific content (e.g., who can be harmed) by using both large-scale internet-based studies as well as studies of hunter-gather and subsistence-based societies. They will test the hypothesis that governments can impose explicit laws that alter how people behave yet these explicit norms do not penetrate people's intuitive moral judgments. The investigators also will examine how neural insult systematically changes the nature of particular moral judgments among patient populations (i.e., autistics, individuals with damage to the frontal lobes and amygdala).

The project is expected to enhance basic understanding of how humans evolved the capacity to deliver moral judgments, how such judgments change over development and across cultures, and how the capacity breaks down following selective neural insult. Results from this project are likely to be useful in the arenas of justice, public policy, education, and clinical treatment, showcasing the biological and psychological mechanisms that humans bring to the moral table, and how they respond to policy that may be at odds with their intuitive moral sense. The project also will provide education and training opportunities for graduate students, including students from minority groups and developing nations.