Word: labs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Spaulding, a biological anthropology concentrator, was fortunate to get into Hauser’s lab research class, Psychology 1152, which is limited to 12 spaces usually reserved for psychology concentrators. She spends her time in the lab testing how well Pinker, Newport, Hrdy and Wrangham—four tamarins named after scientists—can work with tools. She conducts means-means-end experiments to determine whether the tamarins can realize that by using one tool, they can move another tool which will bring them a sugar-coated marshmallow...
...When you work with these animals you really get a sense of what they are capable of doing,” says Laurie R. Santos ’97, one of Hauser’s graduate students, who worked in the lab as an undergraduate as well. Both Santos and Spaulding say that while working with the monkeys is often rewarding, it can also be frustrating. “They all have personalities,” Spaulding says. “You learn that this monkey is really nervous, and that one doesn’t want to come...
...There is no greater satisfaction then providing a test to animals and watching them succeed or fail, for even the latter tells us something profound about how they see the world,” says Hauser, who started the lab in 1992. During his time at Harvard he has conducted experiments in knowledge perception, acoustic recognition and concept formation, among other fields. He has published four books about primate behavior, taught at several universities in the United States and conducted field research in Uganda and in Puerto Rico, where he invites some of his students each year...
...studied tamarins to discover whether or not they know that other individuals have beliefs and desires. She found that they do not, in fact, have “a theory of mind,” which appears to be a uniquely human characteristic. Researchers in Hauser’s lab have studied several problems related to the question of what makes humans uniquely human, including ability to communicate and recognize numbers. Justin A. Junge ’03 assisted Jonathan I. Flombaum ’02, who wrote his thesis on the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize numbers...
Santos says undergraduates virtually have the same freedom to do research in the lab as grad students do. “Marc takes the undergraduates really seriously,” she says. “You get to act like a grad student when you are an undergrad...