Jen Pokorny
Graduate Student (admitted Fall 2003)
Living Links Center
Neuroscience and Animal Behavior Program
Department of Psychology, Emory University
Email: jpokorn@emory.edu
Curriculum Vitae
I joined the de Waal lab in 2003 as a graduate student at Emory University in the Neuroscience and Animal Behavior Program in the Psychology Department. In May of 2007 I obtained my Masters and am currently working toward completing my Ph.D.
Broadly, my interests are in social cognition and behavioral neuroscience in a comparative and evolutionary context. My graduate research involves studying social cognition in tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella), a New World monkey species native to South America. In the wild these monkeys live in complex social groups of approximately 8-15 individuals, consisting of 1 to 3 adult males and several unrelated adult females with their offspring. My research focuses on how individuals view themselves in relation to others, both inside the group and out, as well as what knowledge they have of the relationships between others. Along with this I am interested in how they obtain this information, whether it is evident visually in the faces of others or if personal interaction and observation of behavior is necessary.
Initial experiments focused on face recognition in capuchins, as faces are an important component of social communication in humans and other nonhuman primates. We found that capuchins were able to recognize and discriminate the faces of both familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics. Once subjects were able to discriminate conspecific faces, we began testing knowledge of social categories using these facial stimuli, starting with the concept of group-member, those in which the subject lived with. Subjects were in fact able to categorize faces based on group membership (in-group vs. out-group), suggesting that capuchins have knowledge of the social category of group-member. Follow-up studies will investigate how individuals view themselves within the category of group-member and if there are varying levels of familiarity (group-member, member from group frequently encountered, completely unknown). My dissertation work will focus on the social concepts of sex and kinship.