[BERG] BERG meeting this week: Eva Reindl discusses executive functions

Dear BERGers, This is a quick reminder that this Wednesday (18 May), Dr Eva Reindl (Durham University) will be giving a seminar about her research entitled "The structure of executive functions in preschool children and chimpanzees". Please see the abstract, and the link to the meeting, below. Abstract Humans are cognitively unique - but what are the abilities that underpin this uniqueness? One prominent explanation focuses on socio-cognitive abilities such as imitation, teaching, theory of mind, and prosociality. Another, complementary, suggestion is that modern humans differ in more domain-general cognitive mechanisms, namely Executive Functions. In this talk I will present a recent publication from our lab (Völter et al., 2022) in which we studied and compared the structure of Executive Functions (specifically: working memory, inhibitory control, attention shifting) in 55 chimpanzees and 185 preschool children using a test battery of nine non-verbal, novel tasks. Research on human adults has demonstrated the elusive nature of executive functioning, with different labs identifying a different number and structure of latent factors underlying performance. Research on human children has tentatively pointed to a single common factor underlying performance in executive functions tasks. Our work adds to this perspective, finding some support for a 1-factor model explaining performance across tasks in both children and chimpanzees. I will discuss potential explanations for these results and briefly point to some ongoing further analyses of these data. About Eva: Eva is a postdoctoral research associate working with Prof Rachel Kendal, Prof Robert Barton (Durham University) and Dr Amanda Seed (University of St Andrews) on a project founded by the John Templeton Society investigating Sequence cognition in primates. She is broadly interested in learning which cognitive and social factors differentiate humans from other great apes. She is interested in sequence cognition, executive functions, social learning, cumulative culture, and tool use, among other topics. Eva completed her PhD in Psychology at the University of Birmingham in 2017, working with Dr Claudio Tennie, Prof Sarah Beck, and Prof Ian Apperly on a project investigating the developmental origins of cumulative culture. After that, she held a teaching position at the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. In 2018, Eva moved to St Andrews to work as a postdoctoral researcher with Dr Amanda Seed on a project investigating the structure of executive functions in chimpanzees and human children. In 2021, Eva was a lecturer at Birmingham City University, before starting her current job at Durham University in 2022. Link to the meeting: https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmee… ________________________________ The University achieved an overall 5 stars in the QS World University Rankings 2020 UK Sports University of the Year 2020 (Times Higher Good University Guide) The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.