Prestige Kids:
Teenagers are clearly sensitive to popularity: a new kid at school quickly figures out who everyone else is looking at and preferentially imitates them. Emerging from Joe Henrich's theories on the evolution of "Prestige" (Henrich & Gil-White, 2001), I'm working with Sue Birch on testing the susceptibility of young kids (currently 3-4 year olds) to "prestige cues". Do young kids preferentially imitate an adult who they saw other adults looking at? Are they explicitly aware that they're doing this? How does this translate across learning domains? How strong is this bias and how long does it last? Does it opperate retrospectively?

Transmission Chains:
I've recently completed a replication and extensions of Alex Mesoudi's exciting transmission chain result - that people seem to have a memory bias for social information. I found that this effect seems to be invariant across at least North Americans and East Asians, but that it only seems to apply to recall of extended coherent narratives, not independent unrelated statements

Sensitive Windows:
I'm working with Ben Cheung and Steve Heine on attempting to detect a sensitive window for the acquisition of culture. Do we learn implicit cultural traits faster within a certain age range? Are there some we can't learn after a certain age? By comparing imigrants of different ages and individuals of similar ages who remained in their heritage culture on a number of explicit and implicit psychological measures, we hope to answer these questions.

Content Biases in Learning about Animals:

Main Research Question: Can we observe measurable content biases in learning about animals such that fitness relevant information encoded and recalled preferentially over information about animal diets and habitats.

Methods: This study was conducted with both adults and children in Fiji. Participants were presented with images and information about 20 novel species of animals not found in Fiji. They were then asked to recall what they could about each animal shortly after being presented with the information, and again a week and a half later.

Preliminary Results: Participants were significantly more likely to mistakenly identify a safe animal dangerous than vice versa, which is in-line with what we would predict based on fitness costs. Children exhibited content biases for preferentially encoding and remembering danger and poison information over habitat and diet information.

Collaborators: Clark Barrett , UCLA


Fijian Fish Taboos and Inference:

Main Research Question: Previous work in Fiji has indicated that Fijian taboos for pregnant and lactating women accurately identify species that are likely contain ciguatera, a bio-accumulated toxin found in reef dwelling marine species. We were interested in exploring if these taboos could allow individuals to make accurate assessments of bio-accumulators from North American ecosystems, indicating a folk understanding of bio-accumulation.

Methods: This study was conducted with adults in Fiji. Participants were presented with a variety of information and images, depending on their experimental condition, related to North American aquatic species. First, we wanted to see if there were consensus among participants as to what species might be taboo if they were caught in Fiji, that matches which fish are potential bio-accumulators. By varying this information by condition, we were able to probe what information was being used by participants to identify potentially toxic species.

Preliminary Results: Analysis is currently on-going.