Meet our Principal Investigator
Sarah Pope-Caldwell
Dr. Pope-Caldwell is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University, specializing in cognitive flexibility. Her work spans research sites in the Republic of the Congo, Germany, and Atlanta. Dr. Pope-Caldwell blends cross-cultural and developmental psychology, neuroscience, and primatology to understand how both human and nonhuman primates navigate problem-solving challenges across varying contexts
Research Coordinators
Ardain Dzabatou
is the Congo site Research Coordinator and a student at Marien Ngouabi University. His research interests include understanding how eco-cultural environments impact children's knowledge of local animals and how traditional foraging skillsets can be preserved and shared with future generations.
Ludwig Paeth
is the research coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Originally from the field of communication research, he is particularly interested in topics related to communication, co-operation and decision-making of humans in groups.
Celeste Walton
is the Georgia State University Research Coordinator in Atlanta, GA and a current Master’s student. She is a TA for the animal biology lab and works with various avian species at Zoo Atlanta studying hormone levels and behavior as a response to different environments.
Sahith Reddy Thummala is a graduate student in Computer Science at Georgia State University with expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, and backend development. With a strong foundation in software development and problem-solving, he is passionate about leveraging technology for impactful, real-world applications.
Research Assistants
Farez Parmar is an undergraduate student at Georgia State University pursuing animal psychology. He has an interest in learning about how animals interact with their environment and other animals in it. He is exited to work alongside the team and hopes to learn a lot from this opportunity.
Alex Navas is an undergraduate student from Honduras with Psychology as his major. He is currently in his senior year, and although still not sure in what area, he wishes to continue on to graduate school to pursue research as his primary focus.
Close Collaborators
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Wilson Vieira
Wilson is a PhD candidate in the Department for Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. His focus is in cross-cultural psychology. Specifically, his research aims to understand variation in cognitive flexibility in humans. More specifically, his research looks at how environmental contexts and sources of information influence the way humans decide to forego known, working strategies for unknown, alternative ones.
WebsiteCollaborative Projects:
1) The Influence of Eco-cultural contexts in shaping the development of Risk-Preferences and Explorative Tendencies
2) The Impact of Eco-Cultural Environment and Information Source on the Ontogeny of Elective Flexibility -
Sheina Lew-Levy
Sheina is an Associate Professor at Durham University. Combining research methods from anthropology and psychology, Dr. Lew-Levy conducts research in hunter-gatherer societies to understand the cultural diversity in, and evolution of, social learning in childhood. Her primary research uses behavioural observations to understand social learning. She has also collected biological samples, social network data, and conducted experiments for collaborative cross-cultural projects.
WebsiteCollaborative Projects:
Age-based imitation bias throughout development, during daily interactions, and across cultures -
Daniel Haun
Daniel is the director of the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a Professor for Comparative Cultural Psychology at Leipzig University. Daniel ultimately wants to understand how human cognition compares to that of other animals. He believes that understanding differences across animal species requires studying cognitive diversity within those species. That's why his group studies non-human great apes across different communities and humans in diverse cultural and ecological settings across 6 continents.
Website
Collaborative Projects:
Likouala Community Congo Research Site
NiftyShifty : The development of flexible decision-making and related executive functioning across cultures
Congo Research Team
The ADAPT lab works in collaboration with the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute to conduct research in the Republic of the Congo. Meet the integral members of our Congo Research team!
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Ardain Dzabatou
Ardain is the Congo site Research Coordinator and a student at Marien Ngouabi University. His research interests include understanding how eco-cultural environments impact children's knowledge of local animals and how traditional foraging skillsets can be preserved and shared with future generations.
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Paul Mekouno
Paul is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting interviews and research games with Bandongo and BaYaka participants.
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Bienvenue Mbongo
Bienvenue is an ADAPT lab Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting research games with BaYaka participants.
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Diop Dzabatou
Diop is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in collecting observational video data and conducting research games with Bandongo participants.
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Destin Ndzanguendet
Destin is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting research games with Bandongo participants.