Dear Students!

Our next speaker will be Eugene Buder, and he will be talking about “Structures possibly associated with uniquely human speech capabilities”!

The article you need to read is Fitch (2010) - from the book: The Evolution of Language - the chapter about Speech that we sent out! Don't panic because of the 129 pages - most of it is actually references since Eugene included ALL the references of the book!

He also recommends  the article about increased human breath control we sent out (MacLarnon & Hewitt), but it is not obligatory!

Looking forward to our last official speaker of the seminar!!

cheers

Uli

Dear Students!

We are very excited to announce our next speaker, Susan Blackmore, who will give us her view on the hypothesis of "memetics" and all it's consequences!

I'm looking forward to very vivid discussions!

Here's the link to the paper you need to read:


<http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/cas01.html>

cheers

Julia

Dear Students!

Our next speaker will be Algis Kuliukas who will talk about the Waterside Hypothesis (former Aquatic Ape Hypothesis). 

 

This is the paper you need to read:

 

Algis V. Kuliukas: A Wading Component in the Origin of Hominin Bipedalism

If you are interested in other arguments besides Bipedalism, I can send you an e-book which is quite resent (2012) and covers most of the arguments!

cheers

Julia

Dear Students!

Our next speaker will be Ed Green from UC Santa Cruz and he will be talking about recent human evolution "as revealed by Neanderthals" !

The paper you need to read for this seminar is called "A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome" by R.E. Green (and a hundred thousand others) from 2010!

Looking forward!

Julia

Dear Students!!

Welcome back from spring break - I hope you all had a good time and are refreshed for our next round of seminars!

This week we have Shaun Gallagher as a speaker, whose selected reading is in fact by Vittorio Gallese: Bodily selves in relation: embodied simulation as second person perspective on intersubjectivity. 

We sent the paper already before the spring break!

Please do not forget to post your comments by 9am  on Wednesday - they are part of your class participation!!!

cheers

Julia

Dear Students!

Here is the reading assignment for our next seminar on the 4th of March! Our speaker will be Tom Schoenemann and he will be talking about the evolution of brain and language:

P. Thomas Schoenemann (2012) Evolution of brain and language

Don't forget that your blog comments are due by 9am on the  day of the seminar!!!

cheers

Julia

Dear Students!

We are very sorry that most of you missed Bob McMurray - he was outstanding!! Fortunately Andrew managed to record his talk and you can listen to it on YouTube: http://youtu.be/uVymv5CESds

Here are the reading assignments for our next seminar on the 25th of February! Our speaker will be Asif Ghazanfar from Princeton.

Takahashi et al (2013) Coupled Oscillator Dynamics of Vocal Turn-Taking in Monkeys

Borjon & Ghazanfar (2014) Convergent evolution of vocal cooperation without convergent evolution of brain size.

Please don't forget that your blog comments are due at 9am on the day of the seminar!!!

We are looking forward to another round of interesting discussions!

cheers

Julia

Dear Students!

In the next seminar on the 18th of February we will have a fun and extremely knowledgeable speaker on the topic of behavioral Evo-Devo - Bob McMurray!

Please read the following paper for his seminar:

Pigeons acquire multiple categories in parallel via associative learning: A parallel to human word learning?(2014)
Edward A. Wasserman a,b, Daniel I. Brooks c, Bob McMurray

Don't forget, your blog entries are due by 9am on Wednesday before the seminar!!!

Have fun!

Julia

Dear Students!

Our next speaker this week will be D. Kimbrough Oller and you will need to read the following paper for this seminar:

"Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language"
D. Kimbrough Oller, Eugene H. Budera,b, Heather L. Ramsdelld, Anne S. Warlaumonte, Lesya Chornaf,and Roger Bakemang

We are looking forward to lively discussions!

cheers

Your Cog Sci Team!

Dear Students!

On the 4th of February we will have our first public lecture on the topic of "Plasticity and enculturation in animal cognition and language learning".

This is our reading list for the seminar:


1) Origins of language in a comparative perspective (Griebel & Oller, In LaFreniere & Weisfeld, 2014)
(obligatory!)

2) On Quantitative Comparative Research in Communication and Language Evolution
(D. Kimbrough Oller & Ulrike Griebel 2014, Biolog. Theory) (not obligatory)

Please post your comments by 9am on the 4th of February!!

Have fun!

cheers

Julia

DEAR STUDENTS!

WELCOME TO THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SEMINAR ABOUT THE EVOLUTION AND DEVELOPMENT OF BRAIN, CULTURE, AND LANGUAGE!!

We are looking forward to a semester of very interesting reading materials, exciting talks, hot discussions, and deep thoughts, and we expect to have tons of fun on the way!

On this site we will post weekly information about new reading materials which you will get by mail to the e-mail address you supplied, but also from a designated folder on the UM drive.

We also expect you to post comments, questions, criticisms, kudos, or other wise thoughts about the reading materials on this blog and encourage you to respond to or comment on each others posts. Posts need to be in by Wednesday morning at 9am!!

This will help us to focus class discussions on areas of interest, or misunderstandings, and we will try to provide you with further information on these topics!


Your CogSciTeam

Kim, Stan, and Julia (Ulrike Griebel)