Marie Padberg

Set-up of experiment 2. The tool giver was placed in enclosure 3 (middle), whereas the tool recipient was placed in enclosure 4 (right). The illustration depicts the configuration in which the social and nonsocial apparatuses for both individuals were baited with high-value rewards.

Far too long in the making.. but finally out in #AnimalBehaviour @asab.org:
Orang-utans and chimpanzees #cooperate strategically based on the partner’s incentives.
doi.org/10.1016/j.an...
w/ @elisafelsche.bsky.social , Josep Call & @federicorossano.bsky.social

Apes Share Human Ability to Imagine YouTube video by Johns Hopkins University

Imagination in bonobos!

I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org

We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative

youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

Language learning as ontogenetic adaptation Language learning is a multi-threaded, multi-mechanism process. It is multi-threaded in that it emerges as a byproduct of addressing multiple goals while engaging in social interactions. It is multi-m...

New Paper out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!

Language learning as ontogenetic adaptation

Marisa Casillas and I argue that language learning:

👪 is a by-product of social interaction
↘️ integrates a wealth of information sources
🌐 adapts to the cultural context

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Overcoming the dyadic default in research on child development Abstract. Researchers conducting experimental work on sociocognitive development in childhood typically study one-on-one interactions. This approach aligns

Our new paper on overcoming the ‘dyadic default’ is out now in Child Development Perspectives!
@patkanngiesser.bsky.social

academic.oup.com/cdpers/advan...

The social learning and development of intra- and inter-ethnic sharing norms in the Congo Basin Compared to other species, the extent of human cooperation is unparalleled. Such cooperation is coordinated between community members via social norms. Developmental research has demonstrated that ver...

🚨 New Paper Alert!

We investigated the developmental trajectories of intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic social norm acquisition among BaYaka and Bandongo in northern Rep. Congo, a community where inter-ethnic cooperation is common. We found that...

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Excited to share this work done with @alex-primate.bsky.social and Daniel Haun @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social (the first publication from my PhD!), where we found that chimpanzees sustained a collective resource for longer in groups of four compared to dyads rdcu.be/e0qPR

I am happy to announce that our project on risk and social learning is now in press at Psychological Review. Several new additions and revisions thanks to detailed feedback from colleagues and anonymous reviewers. osf.io/preprints/so...
@psmaldino.bsky.social @babeheim.bsky.social

2025-Bridging Minds - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

We are excited for the interdisciplinary workshop at the University of Ghana starting next week! Supported by the Bridging Minds Program @maxplanck.de, organized by researchers from MPI-EVA, including @hannahrausch.bsky.social and @mariepadberg.bsky.social. More info:
www.eva.mpg.de/events/2025-...

I was so lucky to be part of the perspective taking symposium of this year’s Behaviour conference in Kolkata. I presented my last paper showing that great apes, especially infants, are influenced by the false beliefs of a human bystander. Great questions, great talks, great conference!

Mental representation of the locations and identities of multiple hidden agents or objects by a bonobo | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Humans are adept at navigating the social world in part because we flexibly map the locations and identities of agents around us. While field studies suggest primates can track individual conspecifics...

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind?

In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners

royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

Our results aim to inform current debates about early belief simulation (Baillargeon et al., 2018), its developmental trajectory (Grosse-Wiesmann & Southgate, 2024) and its evolution in human and nonhuman great apes.

This developmental pattern resembles closely the one found in humans. We conclude that the susceptibility to altercentric influences is not a uniquely human feature but is deeply rooted in great ape cognition.

While we found that even adult apes were influenced in their search behaviour by the false belief of a bystander, replicating the findings by Lurz et al., (2022), we show that infant apes were influenced the strongest.

Great apes show altercentric influences when confronted with conflicting beliefs Humans' beliefs are automatically impacted by others' beliefs. This so-called altercentric influence indicates that we rely on automated mental simula…

When it rains, it pours. Happy to share my latest first-author publication in Animal Behaviour investigating the ontogenetic development of altercentric influences in great apes www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

These patterns highlight how both cultural context and information source shape strategy updating, with important implications for understanding learning and adaptation across cultural development. Congratulations to everyone involved—especially to the 1st author Wilson Vieira for this hard work!

Culture and age matter. We observed developmental differences: flexibility decreased with age in BaYaka children, but the opposite pattern emerged among German children. Overall, German kids were more flexible than their Congolese peers.

Social learning can suppress flexibility. When children learned solutions by watching others, they were more likely to stick with old strategies—even when better options emerged.

Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies

Thrilled to share our latest open-access study published in Scientific Reports! We examined how social versus asocial learning influences children’s ability to override previously learned strategies across three cultural settings—BaYaka, Bandongo, and Germany: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An evolutionary perspective on altercentrism Putting oneself, mentally, in someone else’s shoes is traditionally considered a late-developing, cognitively demanding skill thought to critically un…

Human cognition is often altercentric, and human infants seem to have an altercentric bias. Is this cognitive stance uniquely human or might it be shared with other species? There are arguments both ways and we explore them in this paper.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The self-reference memory bias is preceded by an other-reference bias in infancy - Nature Communications A classic feature of human memory is that we remember information better when it refers to ourselves. Here, the authors show that before the emergence of self-concept, infants instead remember informa...

Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Combating two crises in psychological research through international collaboration Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig launches German-Namibian research project

New student exchange program @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social fosters collaboration between young researchers from Germany & #Namibia. By exploring how #culture shapes #child development, the program enhances research in #psychology & provides unique training opportunities. 🌍 www.mpg.de/24711207/051...

Chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little ...

New paper just dropped🎉 With novel "Curiosity Boxes", we find that chimps & children are very curious about social interactions, & some even give up a reward to gain info! Fun collaboration with @alisongopnik.bsky.social, @janengelmann.bsky.social & others royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

🎊Fully funded PhD position on cooperative sustainability🌳

Are you curious about
🧒 developmental,
🌍 cross-cultural
🦧 species comparative
research on cooperative sustainability?

All info here or dm me with questions!
career2.successfactors.eu/sfcareer/job...
Please share! 🙏

Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) mentally represent collaboration?: Action-learning and communication in a partnered task Non-human primates engage in complex collective behaviours, but existing research does not paint a clear picture of what individuals cognitively represent when they act together. This study investigat...

New paper alert 👇 We present a new two-action sequential coordination task designed to investigate co-representation non-human primates. In collaboration with @drelizabethwarren.bsky.social and Josep Call and out now, fully #openaccess in PLoS One! (1/4)
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Our new paper is out!

We found #orangutans develop #nest-building skills through observational #sociallearning, #selectiveattention
to“know-how” and transmission of“know-what” information.
🦧🦧🦧🦧
#academicsky
#primates
#science
#biologicalscience
#warwickpsych

🦧🦧🦧🦧
link.springer.com/content/pdf/...

🚨 New chapter alert 🚨 What can variation in great ape communication—across individuals, dyads, populations, species—tell us about language origins and communicative flexibility? 🦧🤷‍♂️ My latest piece w/ Carel van Schaik is out now in the OH of Approaches to Language Evolution.
doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...

New preprint w/ @christophvoelter.bsky.social et al.

Individual differences in great ape cognition across time and domains: stability, structure, and predictability

48 apes 🦍, 10 tasks 🧠, 10 sessions📊, 1.5 y📅
✅ Stable individual traits
❌ No g-factor
🤝 Social ≠ non-social

🔗: osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper alert!

Bonobos are often cited as the 'most empathic ape' yet a comparison to their chimp cousins has never been done. So we directly compared their consolation tendencies

We found big overlaps between the two species plus considerable within-species variation

open-access link below!

I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology.

We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions.

4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!

tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4