| Post: | Senior Lecturer in Psychology |
| Location: | Pevensey 2 4B03 |
| Email: | davidl@sussex.ac.uk |
| Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 8526 |
| UK: | (01273) 678526 |
| International: | +44 1273 678526 |
Biography
Sussex University: Psychology Home Page
Education:
1990 BSc Anthropology (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa), University of California at Riverside
1993 MA Anthropology, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
2001 PhD Psychology, University of Georgia
Academic Posts Held:
1998-1999 Part-time Lecturer, University of Georgia
2000-2002 Junior Lecturer, University of Sussex
2002-2005 Lecturer, University of Sussex
2005-Present Senior Lecturer, University of Sussex
Research
I'm a biopsychologist with primary interests in nonverbal communication by apes and humans and behavioural indices of anxiety. I have primarily studied visual and vocal communication in apes (since 1994) and humans (since 2000), with a special emphasis on joint attention, or the negotiation of shared attentional focus. This ability to follow into another's attentional focus, or to re-direct the attention of another, takes months to develop in our own species, and I have been exploring the socio-ecological influences on joint attention in apes and humans. This work on non-verbal reference has led my colleagues and I to posit a Referential Problem Space, in which pointing and other mechanisms for joint attention emerge when organisms capable of means-ends reasoning are reliant upon others to act on the world for them--a situation that characterises both human infants and captive apes.
Much of my research into chimpanzee communication stems from a disturbing realisation, in 1994, that I had been trained to a high standard of performance by a chimpanzee named Clint.
Current research topics include:
1. How chimpanzees manipulate the attention of their social partners, with Dr. Bill Hopkins and Dr. Jared Taglialatela, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and Ms. Autumn Hostetter, University of Wisconsin. (1994 to present).
2. How human babies and their parents share attention, with Dr. Brenda Todd, City University. (2000-present).
3. How self-directed behaviours (such as scratching) by chimpanzees and humans change in response to manipulations of task difficulty or anxiety, with Dr. Filippo Aureli, Liverpool Johns Moore University, and Dr. Bill Hopkins, Yerkes National Primate Research Center. (1996-present).
4. Age-related changes in mirror self-recognition in human children, with Dr. Kim Bard, University of Portsmouth, and Dr. Brenda Todd, City University (2004-present).
5. Social cognitive development in human infants, with Dr. Timothy Racine, University of Manitoba, Canada (2006-present).
6. Kinaesthetic-tactile detection of agency in a minimalist communication system, a project on which I serve as a consultant to Dr. Ezequiel Di Paolo, Dr. Hanneke De Jaegher, and Dr. Rachel Wood, and their colleagues at the Informatics Department at the University of Sussex. (2007-present).
Teaching
Course Convenor for:
Contemporary Issues in Psychology (Year 1 Option)
Gestural Communication in Apes and Human Infants (Year 3 Option)
I also lecture on:
Developmental Psychology (Year 2 Core Course)
Research Methods in Psychology (Year 2 Core Course)
Cognition and Development (Master's Core Course)
Infant Development at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School
Publications
SINCE 2001
Leavens, D. A., Bard, K. A., & Hopkins, W. D. (In press). BIZARRE chimpanzees do not represent "the chimpanzee." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. [Commentary on Henrich et al. target article]
Racine, T. P., Wereha, T. J., & Leavens, D. A. (In press). To what extent nonhuman primates are intersubjective and why. In A. Foolen, U. Luedtke, J. Zlatev, & T. P. Racine (Eds.), Moving ourselves, moving others: The role of (e)motion in intersubjectivity, consciousness and language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Hopkins, W. D., Taglialatela, J. P., Leavens, D. A., Russell, J. L., & Schapiro, S. (In press.). Behavioral and brain asymmetries in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). In E. Lonsdorf, S. Ross, & T. Matsuzawa (Eds.), The mind of the chimpanzee. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Leavens, D. A., Russell, J. L., & Hopkins, W. D. (2010). Multimodal communication by captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Animal Cognition, 13, 33-40.
Leavens, D. A. (2009). Animal communication: Laughter is the shortest distance between two apes. Current Biology, 19, R511-R513. [Invited dispatch on Davila Ross, Owren, & Zimmermann]
Leavens, D. A., & Racine, T. P. (2009). Joint attention in apes and humans: Are humans unique? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16, 240-267.
Leavens, D. A., Racine, T. P., & Hopkins, W. D. (2009). The ontogeny and phylogeny of non-verbal deixis. In R. Botha & C. Knight (Eds.), The prehistory of language (pp. 142-165). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bard, K. A., & Leavens, D. A. (2009). Socio-emotional factors in the development of joint attention in human and ape infants. In L. Roska-Hardy & E.M. Neumann-Held (Eds.), Learning from animals? Examining the nature of human uniqueness (pp. 89-104). London: Psychology Press.
Leavens, D. A. (2008). Invited commentary on Arbib, M., Liebal, K., & Pika, S., Primate vocalization, gesture, and the evolution of human language. Current Anthropology, 49, 1065-1066.
Thomas, E., Murphy, M., Pitt, R., Rivers, A., & Leavens, D. A. (2008). Understanding of visual attention by adult humans (Homo sapiens): A partial replication of Povinelli, Bierschwale, and Cech (1999). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 122, 428-436.
Leavens, D. A. (2008). Of handedness, homology and hopeful monsters: Book review of W. D. Hopkins (Ed.), The evolution of hemispheric specialization in primates, London: Academic press, 2007. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 13, 561-568.
Leavens, D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Bard, K. A. (2008). The heterochronic origins of explicit reference. In J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha, E. Itkonen (Eds.), The shared mind: Perspectives on intersubjectivity (pp. 187-214). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Racine, T. P., Leavens, D. A., Susswein, N., & Wereha, T. (2008). Pointing as intersubjectivity in human and nonhuman primates. In F. Morganti, A. Carassa & G. Riva (Eds.), Enacting intersubjectivity: A cognitive and social perspective to the study of interactions (pp. 65-79). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Leavens, D. A. (2007). Animal cognition: Multimodal tactics of orangutan communication. Current Biology, 17, R762-R764. [Invited dispatch on Cartmill & Byrne]
Hopkins, W. D., Taglialatela, J., & Leavens, D. A. (2007). Chimpanzees differentially produce novel vocalizations to capture the attention of a human. Animal Behaviour, 73, 281-286.
Hopkins, W. D., Russell, J., Freeman, H., Reynolds, E. A. M., Griffis, C., & Leavens, D. A. (2006). Lateralized scratching in chimpanzees: Evidence of a functional asymmetry during arousal. Emotion, 6, 553-559.
Leavens, D. A. (2006). It takes time and experience to learn how to interpret gaze in mentalistic terms. Infant and Child Development, 9, 187-190. [Invited commentary on Doherty target article]
Bard, K. A., Todd, B. K., Bernier, C., Love, J., & Leavens, D. A. (2006). Self-awareness in human and chimpanzee infants: What is measured and what is meant by the mirror-and-the-mark test? Infancy, 9, 191-219.
Leavens, D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Bard, K. A. (2005). Understanding the point of chimpanzee pointing: Epigenesis and ecological validity. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14, 185-189. [.pdf]
Leavens, D. A., & Hopkins, W. D. (2005). Multimodal concomitants of manual gesture in chimpanzees: Effects of food size and distance. Gesture, 5, 73-88. (Reprinted in K. Liebal, C. Muller, & S. Pika (Eds.) (2007). Gestural communication in nonhuman and human primates (pp. 67-80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.)
Leavens, D. A., Russell, J. L., & Hopkins, W. D. (2005). Intentionality as measured in the persistence and elaboration of communication by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Child Development, 76, 291-306. [.pdf]
Bard, K. A., Leavens, D. A., Custance, D., Vancatova, M., Keller, H., Benga, O., & Sousa, C. (2004). Emotion cognition: Comparative perspectives on the social cognition of emotion. Cognitie, Creier, Comportament (Cognition, Brain, Behavior), 8, 351-362.
Leavens, D. A. (2004b). Manual deixis in apes and humans. Interaction Studies, 5, 387-408. (Reprinted in Abry, A. Vilain, & J.-L. Schwartz (Eds.), (2009), Vocalize to Localize (pp. 67-86). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.)
Leavens, D. A. (2004a). Book revew of S. Kita (Ed.), Pointing: Where language, culture and cognition meet, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. Cognitive Systems Research, 5, 157-165. [.pdf]
Leavens, D. A., Aureli, F., & Hopkins, W. D. (2004). Behavioral evidence for the cutaneous expression of emotion in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Behaviour, 141, 979-997. [.pdf]
Leavens, D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Thomas, R. K. (2004). Referential communication by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 118, 48-57. [.pdf]
Leavens, D. A., Hostetter, A. B., Wesley, M. J., & Hopkins, W. D. (2004). Tactical use of unimodal and bimodal communication by chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes. Animal Behaviour, 67, 467-476. [.pdf]
Leavens, D. A. (2003). Integration of visual and vocal communication: Evidence for Miocene origins. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 26, 232-233. [Commentary on Corballis target article]
Leavens, D. A. (2002). On the public nature of communication. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 25, 630-631. [Commentary on Shanker & King target article]
Leavens, D. A., Aureli, F., Hopkins, W. D., & Hyatt, C. W. (2001). The effects of cognitive challenge on self-directed behaviors by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). American Journal of Primatology, 55, 1-14. [.pdf]
PRIOR TO 2001
Leavens, D. A., & Hopkins, W. D. (1999). The whole-hand point: The structure and function of pointing from a comparative perspective. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 113, 417-425. [.pdf]
Leavens , D. A., & Hopkins, W. D. (1998). Intentional communication by chimpanzees: A cross-sectional study of the use of referential gestures. Developmental Psychology , 34 , 813-822. [.pdf]
Leavens , D. A. (1998). Having a concept "see" does not imply attribution of knowledge: Some general considerations in measuring "theory of mind". Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 21 , 123-124. [Commentary on Heyes target article]
Hopkins , W. D., & Leavens , D. A. (1998). Hand use and gestural communication in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ). Journal of Comparative Psychology , 112 , 95-99. [.pdf]
Hyatt, C. W., & Leavens , D. A. (1997b). An inexpensive liquid dispenser. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers , 29 , 448-449.
Hyatt, C. W., & Leavens , D. A. (1997a). An inexpensive reinforcement dispenser. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments and Computers , 29 , 446-447.
Leavens , D. A., Hopkins, W. D., & Bard, K. A. (1996). Indexical and referential pointing in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ). Journal of Comparative Psychology , 110 , 346-353. [.pdf]