Research Topics
| Marc D HauserSummaryAffiliation: Harvard University Country: USA Publications
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Publications
Natural history. Beyond the chimpanzee genome: the threat of extinctionMarc D Hauser
Departments of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Science 309:1498-9. 2005
The liver and the moral organMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 1:214-20. 2006..I sketch the details of these predictions and point to relevant data that speak to the validity of thinking of our moral intuitions as grounded in a moral organ...- Our chimpanzee mindMarc Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Nature 437:60-3. 2005.... - Rhesus monkeys correctly read the goal-relevant gestures of a human agentMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Biol Sci 274:1913-8. 2007..Though domestication and human enculturation may play a significant role in tuning up the capacity to infer intentions from communicative gestures, these factors are not necessary... - Wild rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences about possible and impossible physical transformations in the absence of experienceMarc Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103:7181-5. 2006..These results show that in the absence of training or direct prior experience, rhesus monkeys generate causal inferences from single, novel events, using their knowledge of the physical world to guide such expectations... 
What experimental experience affects dogs' comprehension of human communicative actions?Marc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Behav Processes 86:7-20. 2011..We discuss these results in light of the role of experience in recognizing communicative gestures, as well as the significance of coding criteria for studies of canine competence...- The tuning of human neonates' preference for speechAthena Vouloumanos
Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA
Child Dev 81:517-27. 2010..Neonates' initial biases minimally include speech and monkey vocalizations. These listening preferences are sharpened over 3 months, yielding a species-specific preference for speech, paralleling findings on infant face perception... - The perception of rational, goal-directed action in nonhuman primatesJustin N Wood
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Science 317:1402-5. 2007..These findings rule out simple associative accounts of action perception and show that our capacity to infer rational, goal-directed action likely arose at least as far back as the New World monkeys, some 40 million years ago... - Action comprehension in non-human primates: motor simulation or inferential reasoning?Justin N Wood
University of Southern California, Department of Psychology, 3620 South McClintock Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA
Trends Cogn Sci 12:461-5. 2008..Motor theories are, thus, insufficient to account for primate action comprehension in the absence of inferential mechanisms... - Probing the limits of tool competence: experiments with two non-tool-using species (Cercopithecus aethiops and Saguinus oedipus)Laurie R Santos
Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT, USA
Anim Cogn 9:94-109. 2006..These results provide further evidence that tool-use may derive from domain-general, rather than domain-specific cognitive capacities that evolved for tool use per se... - Free-ranging rhesus monkeys spontaneously individuate and enumerate small numbers of non-solid portionsJustin N Wood
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Cognition 106:207-21. 2008..We discuss our results with respect to theories of visual processing, as well as to the role that the human language faculty may have played in both the evolution and development of quantification... - Rhesus monkeys' understanding of actions and goalsJustin N Wood
Harvard University, Department of Psychology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Soc Neurosci 3:60-8. 2008..Monkeys' pattern of success and failure supports the hypothesis that motor areas play a functionally significant role in event parsing and action understanding... - General intelligence in another primate: individual differences across cognitive task performance in a New World monkey (Saguinus oedipus)Konika Banerjee
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
PLoS ONE 4:e5883. 2009..To this end, we administered a large battery of tasks, representing a broad range of cognitive domains, to a population of captive cotton-top tamarin monkeys (Saguinus oedipus)... - Word segmentation with universal prosodic cuesAnsgar D Endress
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Cogn Psychol 61:177-99. 2010..These cues may enable infants to start acquiring words in any language even before they are fine-tuned to the sound structure of their native language... - The ecology and evolution of patience in two New World monkeysJeffrey R Stevens
Department of Psychology and Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Biol Lett 1:223-6. 2005..Foraging ecology, therefore, may provide a selective pressure for the evolution of self-control... - When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) and common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)Jeffrey R Stevens
Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
Anim Cogn 10:429-37. 2007.... - Tracking silence: adjusting vocal production to avoid acoustic interferenceS E Roian Egnor
Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
J Comp Physiol A Neuroethol Sens Neural Behav Physiol 193:477-83. 2007..Taken together, these results show that in the presence of a predictable, intermittent environmental noise, cotton-top tamarins are able to modify the duration, timing, and amplitude of their calls to avoid acoustic interference... - The influence of type and token frequency on the acquisition of affixation patterns: implications for language processingAnsgar D Endress
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 37:77-95. 2011..We discuss these findings in the context of general learning mechanisms and the role they may play in language acquisition... - Five-month-old infants' identification of the sources of vocalizationsAthena Vouloumanos
Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106:18867-72. 2009..We discuss these findings in terms of how infants may achieve such competence, as well as its specificity and relevance to acquiring language... - Perturbation of auditory feedback causes systematic perturbation in vocal structure in adult cotton-top tamarinsS E Roian Egnor
Harvard University, William James Hall, 10th Floor, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
J Exp Biol 209:3652-63. 2006.... - Nonhuman primates prefer slow tempos but dislike music overallJosh McDermott
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Perceptual Science Group, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Cognition 104:654-68. 2007..Thus despite the possibility of homologous mechanisms for tempo perception in human and nonhuman primates, there appear to be motivational ties to music that are uniquely human... - The uniquely human capacity to throw evolved from a non-throwing primate: an evolutionary dissociation between action and perceptionJustin N Wood
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Biol Lett 3:360-4. 2007.... - A fruit in the hand or two in the bush? Divergent risk preferences in chimpanzees and bonobosSarah R Heilbronner
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Biol Lett 4:246-9. 2008..These results provide a relatively rare example of risk-prone behaviour in the context of gains and show how ecological pressures can sculpt economic decision making... - Spontaneous motor entrainment to music in multiple vocal mimicking speciesAdena Schachner
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Curr Biol 19:831-6. 2009..We conclude that entrainment is not unique to humans and that the distribution of entrainment across species supports the hypothesis that entrainment evolved as a by-product of selection for vocal mimicry... - Using mathematical models of language experimentallyTimothy J O'Donnell
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University, William James Hall 1052, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Trends Cogn Sci 9:284-9. 2005..We suggest that this problem can be mitigated by tapping equally rich, but more formal mathematical approaches to language... - Means-means-end tool choice in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus): finding the limits on primates' knowledge of toolsLaurie R Santos
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Anim Cogn 8:236-46. 2005..Subjects readily transferred to new connections. Our results therefore provide the first evidence to date that tamarins can learn to solve problems involving two tools, but that they do so only with sufficient training... - Representing tools: how two non-human primate species distinguish between the functionally relevant and irrelevant features of a toolLaurie R Santos
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Anim Cogn 6:269-81. 2003..We propose that some non-human primates begin with a predisposition to attend to a tool's shape and, with sufficient experience, develop a more sophisticated understanding of the features that are functionally relevant to tools... - Spontaneous representations of small numbers of objects by rhesus macaques: examinations of content and formatMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Cogn Psychol 47:367-401. 2003.... - Will travel for food: spatial discounting in two new world monkeysJeffrey R Stevens
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Curr Biol 15:1855-60. 2005..These results show that discounting functions are context specific, shaped by a history of ecological pressures... - The apes' edge: positional learning in chimpanzees and humansAnsgar D Endress
Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Anim Cogn 13:483-95. 2010..As many grammatical regularities exhibit properties of this mechanism, it may be recruited by language and constrain the form that certain grammatical regularities take... - Interruptibility of long call production in tamarins: implications for vocal controlCory T Miller
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
J Exp Biol 206:2629-39. 2003..Overall, these results provide evidence that tamarins can modify their vocal output based on external events, but the degree of vocal control is significantly less than in oscine songbirds... - Evidence of an evolutionary precursor to human language affixation in a non-human primateAnsgar D Endress
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Biol Lett 5:749-51. 2009..These results suggest that some of the computational mechanisms subserving affixation in a diversity of languages are shared with other animals, relying on basic perceptual or memory primitives that evolved for non-linguistic functions... - A paradox in the evolution of primate vocal learningS E Roian Egnor
Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Trends Neurosci 27:649-54. 2004..We argue that this new evidence makes non-human primate vocal behavior an attractive model system for neurobiological analysis... - Evolutionary foundations of number: spontaneous representation of numerical magnitudes by cotton-top tamarinsMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Biol Sci 270:1441-6. 2003..These results provide strong support for the hypothesis that representations of large, approximate numerosity are evolutionarily ancient and spontaneously available to non-human animals... - The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve?Marc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Science 298:1569-79. 2002.... - Vervet monkeys and humans show brain asymmetries for processing conspecific vocalizations, but with opposite patterns of lateralityRicardo Gil-da-Costa
Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Biol Sci 273:2313-8. 2006..This finding raises significant questions for how ontogenetic and evolutionary forces have impacted on primate brain evolution... - Rule learning by cotton-top tamarinsMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Cognition 86:B15-22. 2002.... - Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) spontaneously compute addition operations over large numbersJonathan I Flombaum
Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520 8205, USA
Cognition 97:315-25. 2005.... - Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgmentsLiane Young
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 107:6753-8. 2010..Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially in the case of attempted harms... - The role of emotion in moral psychologyBryce Huebner
Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA
Trends Cogn Sci 13:1-6. 2009..We suggest instead, that the source of moral judgments lies in our causal-intentional psychology; emotion often follows from these judgments, serving a primary role in motivating morally relevant action... - The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgmentLiane Young
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104:8235-40. 2007..The results not only suggest a general role for belief attribution during moral judgment, but also add detail to our understanding of the interaction between these processes at both the neural and behavioral levels... - Do responses of galliform birds vary adaptively with predator size?Alberto Palleroni
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA
Anim Cogn 8:200-10. 2005..We discuss these results in light of current issues concerning the cognitive mechanisms underlying alarm calling behavior in animals... - The role of speech rhythm in language discrimination: further tests with a non-human primateRuth Tincoff
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, 9th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Dev Sci 8:26-35. 2005..These results provide further evidence that language discrimination in tamarins is facilitated by rhythmic differences between languages, and suggest that, in humans, this mechanism is unlikely to have evolved specifically for language... - The representations underlying infants' choice of more: object files versus analog magnitudesLisa Feigenson
New York University, USA
Psychol Sci 13:150-6. 2002..The infants 'pattern of success and failure supports the hypothesis that they relied on object-file representations, comparing mental models via total volume or surface area rather than via one-to-one correspondence between objectfiles... - The role of conscious reasoning and intuition in moral judgment: testing three principles of harmFiery Cushman
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, USA
Psychol Sci 17:1082-9. 2006.... - Predation: Prey plumage adaptation against falcon attackAlberto Palleroni
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Nature 434:973-4. 2005..This plumage colour is an independently heritable trait that is likely to be an antipredator adaptation against high-speed attacks in open air space... - Give unto others: genetically unrelated cotton-top tamarin monkeys preferentially give food to those who altruistically give food backMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology, and Programme in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Biol Sci 270:2363-70. 2003..Tamarins therefore have the psychological capacity for reciprocally mediated altruism... - Noise-induced vocal modulation in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)S E Roian Egnor
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02476, USA
Am J Primatol 68:1183-90. 2006..Together with prior results, this study shows that tamarins have greater vocal control in the context of auditory feedback perturbation than previously suspected... - Object individuation using property/kind information in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)Laurie R Santos
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Cognition 83:241-64. 2002.... - Spontaneous number discrimination of multi-format auditory stimuli in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus)Marc D Hauser
Department of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Cognition 86:B23-32. 2002.... - Syntax-induced pattern deafnessAnsgar D Endress
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106:21001-6. 2009..As a result, subjects fail to perceive the simpler pattern of repetitions--a form of syntax-induced pattern deafness that is reminiscent of how other perceptual systems force specific interpretations upon sensory input... - Knowing about knowing: dissociations between perception and action systems over evolution and during developmentMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Ann N Y Acad Sci 1001:79-103. 2003..The disconnect between perception and action leads, in some cases, to perseverative errors. These errors, in turn, provide the signature of a highly encapsulated, modular system... - Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperationJeffrey R Stevens
Department of Psychology and Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Trends Cogn Sci 8:60-5. 2004..In particular, we contend that cognitive limitations such as temporal discounting, numerical discrimination and memory make reciprocity difficult for animals... - The evolution of the music faculty: a comparative perspectiveMarc D Hauser
Department of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Nat Neurosci 6:663-8. 2003..Finally, we suggest several directions for future work, following the lead of comparative studies on the language faculty... - Mayan morality: an exploration of permissible harmsLinda Abarbanell
Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
Cognition 115:207-24. 2010..We discuss these results in light of issues concerning the role of biological constraints and cultural variation in moral decision-making, as well as the limitations of such experimental, cross-cultural research... - The relationship between problem solving and inhibitory control: cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) performance on a reversed contingency taskJerald D Kralik
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, USA
J Comp Psychol 116:39-50. 2002..These results are compared with those obtained from studies of other primate species, highlighting the importance of comparative studies of problem solving that use comparable methods... - Evolving the capacity to understand actions, intentions, and goalsMarc Hauser
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Annu Rev Psychol 61:303-24, C1. 2010..They provide support, however, for a teleological theory, rooted in an inferential process that extracts information about action means, potential goals, and the environmental constraints that limit rational action... - Rapid acquisition of an alarm response by a neotropical primate to a newly introduced avian predatorRicardo Gil-da-Costa
Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Proc Biol Sci 270:605-10. 2003.... - What's fair? The unconscious calculus of our moral facultyMarc Hauser
Department of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Biological Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Novartis Found Symp 278:41-50; discussion 50-5, 89-96, 216-21. 2007..Acquiring a particular moral system entails setting the parameters. On this model, emotions such as empathy are consequences (as opposed to causes) of unconscious but principled moral evaluations... - Damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex impairs judgment of harmful intentLiane Young
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Neuron 65:845-51. 2010..These results highlight the critical role of the VMPC in processing harmful intent for moral judgment... - Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primateJosh McDermott
Perceptual Science Group, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT NE20 444, Cambridge, MA, USA
Cognition 94:B11-21. 2004..We conclude that tamarins' preferences differ qualitatively from those of humans. The preferences that support our capacity for music may, therefore, be unique among the primates, and could be music-specific adaptations... - Experience-dependent plasticity for auditory processing in a raptorAlberto Palleroni
Department of Psychology and Program in Neurosciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Science 299:1195. 2003 - Probing the evolutionary origins of music perceptionJosh McDermott
Perceptual Science Group, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NE20 444, 3 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, 02139
Ann N Y Acad Sci 1060:6-16. 2005..To establish whether such preferences are innate in humans, one important avenue for future research will be the collection of data from different cultures. This may be facilitated by studies conducted over the internet... - The neurophysiology of functionally meaningful categories: macaque ventrolateral prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in spontaneous categorization of species-specific vocalizationsGordon W Gifford
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
J Cogn Neurosci 17:1471-82. 2005.... - Toward an evolutionary perspective on conceptual representation: species-specific calls activate visual and affective processing systems in the macaqueRicardo Gil-da-Costa
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Mental Health, and Positron Emission Tomography Department, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101:17516-21. 2004..These findings shed light on the evolutionary precursors of conceptual representation in humans, suggesting that monkeys and humans have a common neural substrate for representing object concepts... - Discrimination of functionally referential calls by laboratory-housed rhesus macaques: implications for neuroethological studiesGordon W Gifford
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA
Brain Behav Evol 61:213-24. 2003..As such, species-typical vocalizations are an appropriate and necessary class of stimuli in experiments that explore the neural correlates of auditory cognition in rhesus monkeys from a neuroethological perspective... - Learning at a distance II. Statistical learning of non-adjacent dependencies in a non-human primateElissa L Newport
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Meliora Hall, River Campus, Rochester, NY 14627, USA
Cogn Psychol 49:85-117. 2004..Such studies with tamarins open interesting questions about the perceptual and computational capacities of human learners that may be essential for language acquisition, and how they may differ from those of non-human primates... - The evolutionary origins of human patience: temporal preferences in chimpanzees, bonobos, and human adultsAlexandra G Rosati
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig D 04103, Germany
Curr Biol 17:1663-8. 2007..Moreover, the different levels of patience that humans exhibit might be driven by fundamental differences in the mechanisms representing biological versus abstract rewards... - Spontaneous processing of abstract categorical information in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortexYale E Cohen
Dartmouth College, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Hanover NH 03755, USA
Biol Lett 2:261-5. 2006..These results indicate that the vPFC plays a significant role in spontaneously processing abstract categorical information... - Computational constraints on syntactic processing in a nonhuman primateW Tecumseh Fitch
School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AJ, Scotland
Science 303:377-80. 2004..Monkeys tested with the same methods, syllables, and sequence lengths were unable to master a grammar at this higher, "phrase structure grammar" level... - Human cerebral response to animal affective vocalizationsPascal Belin
Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Proc Biol Sci 275:473-81. 2008.... - The evolution of the language faculty: clarifications and implicationsW Tecumseh Fitch
University of St Andrews, School of Psychology, St Andrews, KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK
Cognition 97:179-210; discussion 211-25. 2005.... - Is morality natural?Marc D Hauser
Newsweek 152:65. 2008 - Dupoux and Jacob's moral instincts: throwing out the baby, the bathwater and the bathtubSusan Dwyer
Trends Cogn Sci 12:1-2; author reply 2-3. 2008
Research Grants
- Mechanisms of vocal communicationMarc D Hauser; Fiscal Year: 2005..Results from this project will set the stage for future research on the underlying neurobiological circuitry and the extent to which it is homologous with humans. ..