19552 GW Mag 26_Final_singles - Flipbook - Page 34
At the Children’s Museum, student researchers (from left) Layla Moussavi, Stella Simpson
and Eliane Spalding guide young learners through a series of tasks.
core, he studies what makes humans unique, framing our
development in relation to other living primates and
animals that have evolved alongside us.
“We are extremely versatile in what and how much we
learn from others,” he said. “We mimic sounds and gestures,
we invent new tools and create imaginary worlds. No other
animal is quite like us.”
Learning Machines
Back at the Children’s Museum, Eliane Spalding, an
undergraduate student researcher in Subiaul’s Social
Cognition Lab, cheered on Anaya as she built a toy tower.
Spalding showed Anaya two separate components of the
tower: a base made of stacked cubes and a top of connected
flat squares. “She never saw one whole tower,” said Spalding,
a biological anthropology and political science major. “But
she combined them on her own.”
Through similar tasks—like punching patterns on a
tablet and recognizing subtle shifts in nonsensical word
combinations—Anaya demonstrated how young minds absorb
and organize information from the world around them.
“Kids are extremely curious. They’re learning machines,”
Subiaul said. “Children show us, in fast-forward, how a mind
gets built—a window into how human intelligence evolved.”
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For Stella Simpson, a cognitive neuroscience major and
research assistant, the project bridges theory and practice in
the most basic way. Drawing on both her fieldwork and her
babysitting jobs, she’s seen how quickly children develop.
“It’s fascinating to connect what I learn in the lab to what I
see in real life,” said Simpson, who credits Subiaul with
fostering her interest in child development. “I never
considered how complex social learning is before being
in his lab. Plus the kids are cute—so what’s not to like?”
The Dog Pound
Meanwhile, at the GW Canine Cognition Collaborative—
created thanks to a partnership between Subiaul, the Animal
Welfare League of Arlington and local pet owners—Walter
followed PhD student Anya Parks-Russell’s pointing cues to
find cheesy prizes hidden under plastic cups. This social
learning shell game tests how dogs spontaneously respond
to human directions—while also offering insights into the
evolution of our own communication.
“Dogs are an interesting model of the effects of the
environment on cognition,” Subiaul said, noting that our
canine companions lived alongside early humans for as
many as 30,000 years. “Their whole evolution has been
shaped by us.”
