Good morning everyone
I'm very excited to be part of this list. As an introduction, I am Lisa Parr, working
on comparative social cognition in nonhuman primates, evaluating species differences as a
means for assessing human specializations. My take on social cognition has focused on how
monkeys and apes process identity and expression from faces. I have been at the Yerkes
National Primate Reserach Center in Atlanta, GA since 1992, when I joined the lab of Dr.
Frans de Waal as a research technician. I graduated from Emory with a PhD in Psychology in
2000. My thesis explored emotional behavior and expression in chimpanzees. For the last
several years, our work has been dedicated towards understanding similarities and
differences in the face processing of chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys. Our subjects perform
computerized tasks where they are required to match faces based on a number of dimensions.
We have studied inversion effects, composite effects, individual recognition, specific
changes in facial viewpoint, contrast reversal, thatcher illusions, expression and
identity categorization and most recently we have been working with Peter and his team to
identify the physical features that differentiate the faces of monkeys and apes differ
using PCA analysis and face composites.
It might be interesting to some on this list that we have developed two nonhuman primate
FACS systems, a ChimpFACS and a MaqFACS (rhesus macaques) in collaboration with
researchers in both the US and UK. These can be found on my website.
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~lparr/index.html
I'm looking forward to "meeting" and interacting with everyone.
sincerely
Lisa
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