Elisa Felsche

Postdoc at MPI EVA
PhD from @univofstandrews
Comparative Psychologist

[Sarah Pope-Caldwell @SezDoesScience]

🎉I'm recruiting! GSU's ADAPT Lab is looking for TWO PhD students for Fall 2025 to study how culture and environment shape flexible thinking.

Position1️⃣:Cross-cultural focus (USA & Rep. Congo)🗺️
Position2️⃣ :Nonhuman Primate focus 🐒

https://t.co/BlzgPQolHI #PhD #Psychology

[Alex Sanchez-Amaro @Alex_Primate]

Happy to share our latest work with Luke Maurits and Daniel Haun in Scientific Reports. https://t.co/4BhnJ6raXQ We explored whether chimps engaged in competitive altruism in a triadic UG where two proposers could send offers to a responder who could only accept one offer

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

We would like to thank @EdinburghZoo, @rzsslivinglinks, @OlPejeta, @ROMtoronto, @OntScienceCtr, @ERC_Research, @NSERC_CRSNG, and all participating families for making this project possible!

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

New 📰 out now in Cognition @CognitionJourn

We asked if preschool children, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys can consider abstract patterns to guide their foraging behaviour in a sampling task.

https://t.co/0R8jLnquJL

w/ @cvoelter @EstherHerrmann2 @banhpad @AmandaMSeed
🧵

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

The children’s behaviour was best described by the predictions of a probabilistic hierarchical Bayesian model capable of forming overhypotheses (Kemp et al., 2007), especially when considering switching costs. For the other species, a more limited model best described the data.

[MPI-EVA Leipzig @MPI_EVA_Leipzig]

Great news!!! Psychologist @ThieleMaleen was awarded a Minerva Fast Track position. 🥳😊🥳 Her new research group @MPI_EVA_Leipzig will investigate the strategies and mechanisms of human social learning in the first years of life. @maxplanckpress More: https://t.co/iibszbAoJX

[Prof. Amanda Seed @AmandaMSeed]

Are you interested in doing a PhD in St Andrews @st_psy, but wish you could spend half the time in Australia? Do you want to study monkey memory, but worry that anything they can do, bees can do better? This might be the #PhDposition for you! https://t.co/A86La0kuYN

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

@SarahLJacobson1 The kids liked pressing the machine's button, so might not have acted efficiently. Using machines, you could not see the number of remaining items, while for cups (& foraging) you knew how much is left. But not sure what caused the differences, would be interesting to explore!

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

Are abstract reasoning abilities unique to us (> age 5) or does abstract information also influence the sampling and foraging behavior of preschoolers, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys?
w/@cvoelter,@EstherHerrmann2, Daphna Buchsbaum @cocodevlab & @AmandaMSeed
#AnimBehav2023 1/6

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

@Raccoonologist Handsome Rufo of course! I hope you also had a great time with the monkeys and that they at least sometimes behaved 😉

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

@Raccoonologist Good question! I think their environment is sufficiently complex (incl. group living) for abstract reasoning to have an advantage over "simpler" forms, but if it is needed is unclear. Before making strong conclusions I would like to see more diverse experimental testing paradigms

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

@StotraChakraba2 It surely is a powerful tool to make a range of predictions in new situations based on past experiences (like predicting which item could be sampled next from a container). But not sure about any literature regarding abstractions enabling foresight per se

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

To sum up: Children & chimpanzees consider abstract patterns to guide efficient foraging; evidence for capuchins is less conclusive
Ecologically meaningful & diverse paradigms + computational models = valuable pathways for studying animals' abstract reasoning #AnimBehav2023 6/6

[Elisa Felsche @ElisaFelsche]

The switching rate difference in children & chimpanzees sign. correlated with the predictions of a hierarchical Bayesian model capable of forming overhypotheses (Kemp et al., 2007; r = .93 & .63), but in absolute terms, they switched much later than predicted #AnimBehav2023 5/6