Mercedes Pascual, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Unviersity of Michigan

Lera Boroditsky USCD, Department of Cognitive Science “How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think” “How do the languages we speak shape the ways we think? Do speakers of different languages think differently? Does learning new languages change the way you think? Do bilinguals think differently when speaking different languages? Does language shape our thinking only […]

Laurie SantosYale, Department of Psychology “The Evolution of Irrationality: Insights from Non-Human Primates.”“I will explore the evolutionary roots of some of our species' irrational decisions. I will start by reviewing some classic biases in the field of judgment and decision-making and will then turn to the question of how these biases came about in the first […]

Donald Hoffman, Cognitive Science, UC Irvine

Professor and Chair Tim Groeling's "State of Department" Talk

Jacob FosterUCLA, Department of Sociology  “The Unknown Known: Science, Social Learning, and Cultural Evolution” “Science is an incredibly successful instance of social learning. Its practices produce and subtly organize the attention, effort, and creativity of millions of scientists, leading to rapid and cumulative cultural evolution. In this talk, I outline the striking convergence between this view of […]

Jacob Foster, Sociology, UCLA

Application ProcedureThe Communication Studies Application will be available on June 1, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. and will close on June 30, 2015 at 4:00 p.m.The Admissions Committee will arrange to receive your UCLA transcripts from the Registrar through the end of Summer Session A 2015.  General Information Students not admitted at the sophomore or junior level may reapply the […]

Aurelio FigueredoUniversity of Arizona, Department of Psychology “A Sequential Canonical Cascade Model of Social and Cognitive Biogeography” “A sequential canonical cascade model, detailing the hypothesized biogeography of human life history (LH) and intelligence (IQ), derives elevated levels of IQ through a series of causal steps, starting with the evolution of slower LH strategies based on both the […]

Dr. Kirk E. LohmuellerDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyUCLAWhy do deleterious mutations persist in populations?Many mutations that arise in protein coding regions of genes are deleterious, resulting in a decrease in reproductive fitness. While such mutations are often eliminated from the population by natural selection, sometimes they can remain. In this talk I will examine […]