Award Abstract # 1659085
REU Site: Comparative and Developmental Origins of Social Cognition

NSF Org: SMA
SBE Off Of Multidisciplinary Activities
Recipient: YALE UNIV
Initial Amendment Date: March 9, 2017
Latest Amendment Date: March 7, 2022
Award Number: 1659085
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Josie Welkom Miranda
jwmirand@nsf.gov
 (703)292-7376
SMA
 SBE Off Of Multidisciplinary Activities
SBE
 Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
Start Date: April 1, 2017
End Date: March 31, 2023 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $428,364.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $428,364.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2017 = $281,334.00
FY 2018 = $35,463.00

FY 2019 = $111,567.00
History of Investigator:
  • Laurie Santos (Principal Investigator)
    laurie.santos@yale.edu
  • Yarrow Dunham (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Yale University
150 MUNSON ST
NEW HAVEN
CT  US  06511-3572
(203)785-4689
Sponsor Congressional District: 03
Primary Place of Performance: Yale University
2 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven
CT  US  06511-6804
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
03
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): FL6GV84CKN57
Parent UEI: FL6GV84CKN57
NSF Program(s): RSCH EXPER FOR UNDERGRAD SITES
Primary Program Source: 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01001920DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 9250
Program Element Code(s): 1139
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.075

ABSTRACT

This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the SBE Directorate. The REU program has both scientific and societal benefits integrating research and education. The broad goal of the Comparative and Developmental Origins of Social Cognition REU Site is to provide students from under-represented backgrounds with joint training in comparative and developmental psychology research. Students will gain experience investigating the origins of human social cognition from two different but related perspectives: developmental studies testing human children?s social understanding and comparative studies examining social cognition in domesticated dogs. REU students will have a rare opportunity to participate in all aspects of the research process: research design, subject recruitment, stimulus generation, data collection, data entry, coding, and statistical analysis. In addition, students will have the opportunity to interact as colleagues: participating in weekly lab meetings, reading current literature, contributing to theoretical discussions regarding the comparative and developmental origins of social cognition, and attending a professional development series focusing on topics such as applying to graduate school, getting the most out of your undergraduate career, etc. Students will meet weekly with a graduate student mentor, and the PI and co-PI will attend bi-monthly social events.

A primary objective of this REU site is to include students who have fewer research opportunities, including those attending non-Research I universities and students from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students. In this way, this REU proposal aims to increase the odds that its undergraduates will be competitive in applying to graduate school in psychology or a related field. In addition, this REU site will be one of the few locations in the world where students can to learn study one topic (social cognition) from many perspectives including a comparative approach, a developmental approach and an adult social psychological approach.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Noyes, Alexander and Dunham, Yarrow and Keil, Frank C. "Subjectivity and social constitution: Contrasting conceptions of institutions, artifacts, and animals." Developmental Psychology , v.59 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001499 Citation Details
Yang, Xin and Dunham, Yarrow "Emerging complexity in children's conceptualization of the wealthy and the poor" Developmental Science , v.25 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13225 Citation Details
Yang, Xin and Naas, Ragnhild and Dunham, Yarrow "Testing the limits of structural thinking about gender" Developmental Science , v.25 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13169 Citation Details
Jordan, Ashley and Dunham, Yarrow "Are category labels primary? Children use similarities to reason about social groups" Developmental Science , v.24 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13013 Citation Details
Silver, Zachary A. and Furlong, Ellen E. and Johnston, Angie M. and Santos, Laurie R. "Training differences predict dogs' (Canis lupus familiaris) preferences for prosocial others" Animal Cognition , v.24 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01417-9 Citation Details
Noyes, Alexander and Keil, Frank C. and Dunham, Yarrow "Institutional actors: Children?s emerging beliefs about the causal structure of social roles." Developmental Psychology , v.56 , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000847 Citation Details
Johnston, Angie M. and Huang, Yiyun and Santos, Laurie R. "Dogs do not demonstrate a human-like bias to defer to communicative cues" Learning & Behavior , v.46 , 2018 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-018-0341-2 Citation Details
Qin, Meiying and Huang, Yiyun and Stumph, Ellen and Santos, Laurie and Scassellati, Brian "Dog Sit! Domestic Dogs (Canis familiaris) Follow a Robot's Sit Commands" ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction , 2020 https://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3380734 Citation Details
Yang, Xin and Yang, Fan and Guo, Cai and Dunham, Yarrow "Which group matters more: The relative strength of minimal vs. gender and race group memberships in children's intergroup thinking" Acta Psychologica , v.229 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2022.103685 Citation Details

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The goal of our project was to develop a “Research Experiences for Undergraduates” site at Yale University to provide historically underrepresented undergraduate students with joint training in comparative and developmental psychology research. Over the duration of our grant, we gave thirty-six talented undergraduate students the opportunity to investigate the origins of human social cognition from two different but related perspectives: developmental studies testing human children’s social understanding and comparative studies examining social cognition in domesticated dogs.

Our 10-week internship hosted three cohorts of twelve students each who worked jointly in the Comparative Cognition and Social Cognitive Development Labs at Yale University. Our research interns succeeded in gaining training in all aspects of the research process: research design, data collection, data entry, coding, and statistical analysis. Students had the opportunity to participate in weekly lab meetings, read current literature, contribute to theoretical discussions regarding the origins of social cognition, and attend a professional development series that included topics such as applying to graduate school and getting the most out of your undergraduate career. Students met weekly with a graduate student mentor and received continuous feedback from their graduate student mentors and the PI and co-PI. At the conclusion of their internship, students presented on the research they contributed to at a poster session with other summer interns from the developmental psychology area, providing them with an opportunity to gain experience presenting scientific work and to network with graduate students and faculty in the field.

A major achievement of our REU site was that we were able to provide research opportunities for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Across the thirty-six students who participated in our REU program, 18 identified as first-generation college students, 15 were from underrepresented minority groups, and 27 attended non-Research I universities. Many of these students have gone on to attend competitive graduate schools in psychology and related fields. In addition to this direct impact on students with traditionally fewer research opportunities, our REU program also had a considerable intellectual impact on the field. Our students’ research during this award has given rise to several important scientific discoveries about the origins of social cognition. Some highlights of these discoveries include: (1) the finding that older children tend to be more impartial during resource allocation than younger children, who tend to find it morally right to give more resources to people related to them, (2) the discovery that individual differences such as training history may play a key role in dogs’ ability to socially evaluate different human agents, (3) the finding that parents’ political attitudes predict their children’s moral judgments and evaluations of immigrants, and (4) the revelation that dogs appear to make evaluations of prosociality based on outcome and not intention. As a result, our REU program went above and beyond our goal of providing increased mentorship and research opportunities to historically underrepresented students by also advancing the scientific origins of social cognition in a number of domains.


Last Modified: 05/30/2023
Modified by: Laurie R Santos

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