Research focus

General Interests: 

• Developmental and ontogenetic origins of behaviour

• The effect of life history traits, rearing, development and learning on chimpanzee, capuchin and macaque cognition

• Human and non-human primate innovation and culture

• Early hominin material culture and behaviour

Previous research: 

My PhD work focused on the individual and social learning of both human and non-human primate material culture with the aim to relate it to the origins of human culture and innovation. I experimentally tested captive and semi-wild chimpanzees, captive macaques, and wild capuchins to examine the cognitive mechanisms behind the acquisition of various behaviours in the physical domain. I also carried out studies with human children on their ability to copy behaviours from human and non-conspecific demonstrators. During my PhD working with Claudio Tennie, we developed a new methodology to examine the role of both individual and social learning in the acquisition of behavioural forms, alongside a mathematical approach (via a binomial cumulative distribution formula) to calculate the sample sizes required to draw conclusions from experimental studies of this type (see Bandini & Tennie, 2018). My work is inherently interdisciplinary, spanning the fields of: archaeology, primatology, anthropology, primate archaeogology, biolog and developmental psychology.