Congratulations to Liz Haseltine who was awarded Second Place in the oral presentation category at the Georgia State University Graduate Research Conference. She presented her research on children’s cognitive offloading. Way to go Liz!
It is with profound sadness that that the LRC mourns the loss of former Director Dr. David Washburn on January 24, 2025. David spent more than 30 years at Georgia State in a variety of academic positions, and he contributed in many ways to the research and teaching missions of the university. He retired from GSU in 2019 as professor of psychology, having served as chair of the Department of Psychology for five years and as director of the LRC for 18 years. The day after retiring from GSU, he accepted an appointment as professor of psychology at Covenant College, where he taught and conducted research until his death.
David’s research was federally funded for more than 30 consecutive years, including as PI of numerous program projects from the National Institutes of Health that supported the research mission of the LRC. He generated over 200 publications, and he wrote two books. He mentored dozens of outstanding graduate students and hundreds of talented undergraduates, while collaborating with some of the most brilliant and creative scholars in his field. Among his many accomplishments, David worked with and trained our original nonhuman primates to use computers to provide insights into their cognitive abilities. This was a revolutionary advancement in the 1980s, allowing monkeys and apes to generate tremendous amounts of data as they worked on “computer games” that assessed everything from their basic perceptual experiences to their self-reflective metacognitive abilities. His research extended beyond nonhuman primates, and he was one of the world’s experts on the executive attention of humans. In addition, he engaged in research that took a pedagogical focus to better understand ways to improve teaching and learning in students.
David received many recognitions in his career. He was an American Psychological Association (APA) Fellow of Division 2 (Teaching of Psychology), Division 3 (Experimental Psychology), Division 6 (Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology), and Division 26 (History of Psychology). He also was a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and of the Psychonomic Society. He was elected an Honorary Member for Life of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SSPP). He was elected and served as president for Division 3 and Division 6 of the APA, president of the SSPP, and president of the Southeastern Psychological Association. He received Georgia State University’s Exceptional Faculty Service Award and the Clifford T. Morgan Distinguished Service Award from Division 6 of the APA. He was nominated – along with Duane Rumbaugh, emeritus professor of psychology and LRC founding director – by Yale University Press for the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology. These awards and recognitions speak to his excellence and international reputation as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and communicator of science.
David made every group he was a part of more collegial and more fun. When needed, he was our leader and creator of fun and unusual events designed to evoke laughter and photos never to be shared. These included paintball, bumper car wiffle ball, pie eating contests, and all manner of intramural sports. He always supported the wellbeing of his students and colleagues in any way he could. He will be greatly missed but never forgotten.
Dr. Brielle James celebrating her commencement at GSU! A very fun night!
Andres Sanchez, Joey McKeon and Liz Haseltine all presented posters at the Psychonomics Meeting in 2024 in New York City, and Mike Beran gave a talk about monkeys and multiplication.
A new paper by Liz Haseltine and her colleagues was featured on Kudos – click here to see it.
Congratulations to Brielle James who successfully defended her dissertations. Way to go Dr. James!
The LRC is pleased to announce that Matt Babb is the newest Duane M. Rumbaugh Fellow!
Joey McKeon, Andres Sanchez and Liz Haseltine successfully completed their General Examinations and will now begin working on their dissertations.
Congratulations to Sierra Simmons for a successful defense of her Masters thesis. Sierra assessed the relation of personality in capuchins and their cooperative behavior in a computerized version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma task.
Joey McKeon and Liz Haseltine presented their research at the Comparative Cognition Conference in Albuquerque in April. Joey was awarded the Best Student Presentation Award for the conference for his paper based on his Masters thesis. Congrats to them both!
The Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference saw the LRC well-represented by our superstar undergrads! Posters were presented by Mari Sudhakar, Katarina Syed, and Dara Jonkoski. They all did a fantastic job!
Congratulations to Matt Babb for a successful defense of his Masters thesis looking at capuchin monkey social behavior, and specifically the effects of dominance rank, social relationships, and oxytocin and how those affected prosocial behavior.
Congratulations to Dr. Mayte Martinez Navarrete for successfully defending her dissertation!
Congratulations to Jhonatan Saldaña, who just passed his general exam. Way to go, Jhonatan!
Congratulations to Dr. Brooke Jackson, who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation. It was titled “Investigating exposure learning of family-resemblance categories.”
Congratulations to Liz Haseltine, who successfully defended her Masters thesis titled “For the sake of curiosity: Do monkeys choose to view counterfactual information when there is no benefit?”
Congratulations to Joey McKeon, who successfully defended his Masters thesis titled “Self-directed learning in nonhuman primates.”
Congratulations to Matt Babb, who just had his first first authored publication, on the effect of complexity on capuchins’ choices in a dichotomous choice task, accepted in Animal Behaviour!
Congratulations to Sierra Simmons, who just had her first first authored publication, on the frequency effect in humans and capuchins, accepted in the Journal of Comparative Psychology!
Congratulations to Grace Ford, who won the outstanding poster presentation in Immunology at the ABRCMS conference, based on the work she did in her summer program at University of Pennsylvania.
Congratulations to Stella Mayerhoff, who just passed her General Exam (pioneering the new format!). Great job, Stella!
A very successful Psychonomics Meeting in 2023 for LRC scientists. Graduate students Brooke Jackson, Andres Sanchez, Joey McKeon and Liz Haseltine all presented posters, and Mike Beran gave a talk about metacognition and offloading in children. Some photos below:
The LRC again sponsored the exciting and highly informative Southeastern Evolution and Human Behavior Conference, hosted at GSU’s Indian Creek Lodge. This year’s program had many exciting talks, posters, and lively discussion. We look forward to doing it again next year!
Congrats to undergraduate student Dara Jonkoski who completed the Brains & Behavior Summer Scholars Program at GSU where she engaged in STEM training and collected her own data on delay of gratification in capuchin monkeys. She presented that work at the Research Symposium in August.
Mike Beran has started his term as Chief Editor of the Journal of Comparative Psychology. Click here for a story highlighting this.
Undergraduates Grace Ford and Heaven Varner both won summer research positions. Heaven completed the the AMGEN scholars’ program at Cal Tech and Grace participated in the the University of Pennsylvania Summer Undergraduate Intern Program.
Congratulations to Stella Mayerhoff, who won GSU’s Three-minute thesis (3MT) competition, presenting her thesis on the Google effect!
Congratulations to Stella Mayerhoff, who successfully defended her Master’s thesis on the “Google effect” (otherwise known as cognitive offloading) in capuchin and rhesus monkeys.
Congratulations to Matt Babb, for winning the ASP Outstanding Student talk award for his talk on his research on the extended market in capuchin monkeys!
Congratulations to Dr. Olivia Reilly, who won an F32 (NIH postdoctoral fellow award) for her work at Harvard with Dr. Erin Hecht!!
The CEBUS lab saw 600 people at the Kittredge Magnet School science night! We brought the discoid cockroaches and let the students run Y mazes to see what snack (Cheerios or Froot Loops!) cockroaches prefer.
Congratulations to Dr. Maisy Englund, who graduated in May after completing her doctoral dissertation on the status quo bias in lemurs and monkeys. She has had an outstanding graduate career and has moved on to working at the Animal Welfare Institute.
LRC students enjoyed the Comparative Cognition Conference in April. Joey McKeon and Liz Haseltine presented their research at the meeting.
The LRC was well-represented at the SEPA conference in New Orleans. Excellent presentations by Joey McKeon and Kathleen Friedlein.
Liz Haseltine had the idea that we should all see just how far we could go in the LRC version of the Hots Ones. Here is the LRC group BEFORE starting. The After pics are not pretty, a lot of panting, chugging of milk (and sour cream, and yogurt, and who knows what else!).
Congratulations to Dr. Meg Sosnowski and Dr. Olivia Reilly for graduating with their PhDs!! The newly minted Dr. Sosnowski is moving to UC Davis, where she will do a postdoc with Dr. Karen Bales and the newly minted Dr. Reilly is moving to Harvard, where she will do a postdoc with Dr. Erin Hecht. We are incredibly proud of you both!!
Congratulations to Mayte Martínez-Navarette for winning the ASP Ruppenthal travel award to attend the annual meeting in Denver, CO!
Congratulations to Dr. Olivia Reilly, who successfully defended her dissertation on the interaction between hormones, social context, and attentional biases in capuchin monkeys. We had a fantastic in person defense at the lab to celebrate a post-COVID defense!
Meg Sosnowski had her master’s project exploring how endogenous cortisol correlates with performance under pressure on a working memory task in capuchin monkeys in Scientific Reports!
Mike Beran and Bennett Schwartz edited the volume Primate Cognitive Studies, highlighting recent research in primate cognition conducted in laboratories, zoos, sanctuaries, and the field. Numerous LRC faculty and past students and collaborators are included in the volume, sharing their work at the LRC and in other settings.