Environmental Structuring Of Individual Action In Social Mammals

我的研究一直是——也一直是——关注物理、生态和社会环境如何相互作用，给个人带来特定环境下的挑战。我的观点是，挑战的偶然性提供了人类和非人类灵长类动物认知的基础水平。这种认知的最佳特征是实时自适应行动的能力（在线认知），而不是思考最佳的进行方式。在某种程度上，它是一种“社会”认知，我感兴趣的是，作为一个社会群体的义务成员，个人对世界的反应是如何形成的。我在野外对非人类灵长类动物（狒狒，长尾猴）进行研究，以记录挑战的本质，以及不同个体的反应的可变性和环境特异性。我目前的研究重点是热环境对群居动物施加的压力，这些动物必须协调它们的活动。气候变化的迅速使我的研究在这方面特别突出，并导致在干旱地区这种变化对社会动物的影响建模的应用工作。我也在更广泛地研究空间的使用，以及作为一个社会群体的成员既提供行动机会又限制可以做什么的方式。

My research has been - and is - concerned with the ways in which the physical, ecological and social environments interact to present individuals with challenges that are contingent on particular contexts. It is my view that the contingent nature of the challenges provides the basal level of the cognition of human and non-human primates. Such cognition is best characterised by the ability to act adaptively in real-time (online cognition), rather than engage in thought about the best ways to proceed. To the extent to which it is a 'social' cognition, I am interested in the ways in which being an obligate member of a social group structures an individual's responses to the world. I conduct my research on non-human primates (baboon, vervet monkeys) in the wild in order to document the nature of the challenges as well as the variability, and context-specificity, of the responses of different individuals. I am currently concentrating on the pressures imposed on social animals, who must coordinate their activities, by the thermal environment. The rapidity of climate change gives this aspect of my research a particular salience and is leading to applied work in the modeling of the effects of this change for social animals in arid areas. I am also working more generally on the use of space and the ways in which being a member of a social group both affords opportunities for action as well as limits what can be done.