Emily M. Sanford
emilymsanford.bsky.social
Emily M. Sanford
@emilymsanford.bsky.social
Cognitive Scientist
Postdoc at UC Berkeley
Studying the evolution & development of quantitative reasoning
“It is a profound gift to know that when a chimpanzee stares into a person’s eyes, they too could be reflecting on their beliefs about humans.” - Brian Hare (photo by Innocent Ampeire) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
Across experiments, our computational modeling analyses demonstrated that the best explanation for the chimps’ behavior was rational reasoning.
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
My favorite result: chimps metacognitively re-evaluated old evidence. We showed them food in the box, then we showed them that there was a sticker that looked like food in the box. Astonishingly, chimps re-evaluated their previous construal of the evidence, revising their belief away from that box!
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
In our study, chimps had to guess where food was hidden. They got strong evidence for one box and weak evidence for the other. Consistent with rationality, the chimps revised their choice more often when weak evidence came first, overwhelmingly choosing the option supported by stronger evidence!
October 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
February 12, 2025 at 11:35 PM
NSF "guidance" on the federal funding freeze...
January 28, 2025 at 11:11 PM