Comparative cognition in animals

Cognitive development

Current topics in animal cognition include:

• Mental time travel (episodic-like memory and future planning) by food-caching Western Scrub-Jays.
• Social and physical cognition in corvids (members of the crow family, which includes jackdaws, rooks and jays), from studies of alliance formation and post-conflict behaviours in rooks, and food-sharing in jackdaws, to tests of what jays and rooks understand about tools and other tests of folk physics.

Current topics in development include:

• Development of prospective cognition in young children. This work is done in collaboration with Dr James Russell who also works in the Department of Psychology.
• Development of social and physical cognition in young children.