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Research GELIFES TRÊS

Workshop Social Cognition

26-27 October 2009, Red Lecture Hall, Biological Centre Haren, the Netherlands

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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

wsCoalition.jpg
Coalition formation ©A. Bissonnette

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.

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Perspective taking ©E. v.d. Vaart

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

This workshop is financially supported by the NWO - Cognition Programme Joint Forces
This workshop is financially supported by the NWO - Cognition Programme Joint Forces
Last modified:03 December 2015 12.46 p.m.