Science, literature and performing arts with Nicola Clayton and Clive Wilkins

Prof Nicola Clayton will give a unique series of talks at the ENS on May 3rd and 4th, along with artist Clive Wilkins.

Nicola Clayton is professor of comparative cognition and a University Teaching Officer in the Department of Psychology at Cambridge University. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010.
Her research focuses on the study of how animals and children think. This work has led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, particularly birds, and has resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two distantly related groups, apes and crows. She has also pioneered new procedures for the experimental study of memory and imagination in animals, investigating the relationship between human memory and consciousness, and how and when these abilities develop in young children.
In addition to being a scientist, Nicola is an avid dancer, specializing in tango and salsa, and has been named Scientist in Residence at the Rambert Dance Company, collaborating with Mark Baldwin, the Artistic Director. Her most recent collaboration, with artist Clive Wilkins, arose out of their mutual interest in imagination, and its consequences for consciousness, identity and memory. They also regularly dance tango together.
Her most recent collaboration with artist Clive Wilkins arose out of their mutual interest in imagination, and its consequences for consciousness, identity and memory. They also regularly dance tango together.
Clive Wilkins is Artist-in-Residence in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is a writer, painter, dancer and magician. His paintings have been frequently seen in London Mayfair art galleries. His latest novel, "The Moustachio Quartet", explores imagination and questions aspects of consciousness and reality amidst the miasma of being.
Nicola and Clive are currently exploring the links between their specific disciplines. They are co-founders of "The Captured Thought", an arts and science collaboration that explores mental time travel and the subjective experience of thinking. They will be presenting a unique series of talks to communicate their research and findings.

May 3rd, 2016, 11:30 am, room Prestige 1, 29 rue d'Ulm
Nicola Clayton
Ways of Thinking From Crows To Children And Back Again

Abstract :
This article reviews some of the recent work on the remarkable cognitive capacities of food-caching corvids. The focus will be on their ability to think about other minds and other times, and tool-using tests of physical problem solving. Research on developmental cognition suggests that young children do not pass similar tests until they are at least four years of age in the case of the social cognition experiments, and eight years of age in the case of the tasks that tap into physical cognition. This developmental trajectory seems surprising. Intuitively, one might have thought that the social and planning tasks required more complex forms of cognitive process, namely Mental Time Travel and Theory of Mind. Perhaps the fact that children pass these tasks earlier than the physical problem-solving tasks is a reflection of cultural influences. Future research will hope to identify these cognitive milestones by starting to develop tasks that might go some way towards understanding the mechanisms underlying these abilities in both children and corvids, to explore similarities and differences in their ways of thinking.

Reference :
Clayton, N. S. (2014). EPS Mid Career Award Lecture. Ways of Thinking: From Crows to Children and Back Again. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 68, 209-241.


May 3rd, 2016, 3:00 pm, Amphitheatre Jaurès, 29 rue d'Ulm
Nicola Clayton et Clive Wilkins
The creative navigator's compass. Memory and perception and how we know where we are

Abstract :
If we could tell you where you were going and how you could get there, would you want to know?

Imagine a crystal ball that could anticipate the future: would you want to gaze into it, and if you did, what do you think you would see? Would you see yourself looking into it to know your personal future, the futures of your loved ones, or the society of which you are a part, or would you be looking for an overview of the great schema of things? Is it the case that any of these are fundamentally different in the way that they affect our perception of the world? In making an assessment of any future we may perceive, it’s all too easy to make the assumption that what we imagine and remember are accurate reflections of reality. Many of our greatest deceptions evolve out of such a faulty supposition.

In essence, the chances are that if we were able to look into the crystal ball we would be unlikely to make any sense of it anyway because our experiences are subjective. This has two consequences. The first is that they can shimmer and change, and be altered by our current point of view. The second is that these alternative realities are constrained by the fact that we don’t see all that can be seen, our memories are not an accurate repository of what happened in the past, and our thoughts of the future are often equally inaccurate and ill conceived because of these constraints on perception and memory.

Nicky and Clive, a scientist and artist respectively, explore the complex relationships between memory, perception and human experience. Join them for a fascinating interactive presentation that incorporates science, literature, and the performing arts.


May 4th, 2016, 3:00pm, room Langevin, 29 rue d'Ulm
Nicola Clayton et Clive Wilkins
Mental Time Travel and the Moustachio quartet

Abstract :
Mental time travel allows us to re-visit our memories and imagine future scenarios, and this is why memories are not only about the past—they are also prospective. These episodic memories are not a fixed store of what happened, however; they are reassessed each time they are revisited and depend on the sequence in which events unfold. In this lecture we shall explore the complex relationships between memory and human experience, including through a series of novels ‘The Moustachio Quartet’ that can be read in any order. To do so we shall integrate evidences from science and the arts to explore the subjective nature of mental time travel, arguing that these capacities evolved primarily for prospection as opposed to retrospection. Furthermore, we shall question the notion that mental time travel is a uniquely human construct, and argue that some of the best evidence for the independent evolution of mental time travel comes from our distantly related avian cousins, the corvids, that cache food for the future and rely on long-lasting and highly accurate memories of what, where and when they stored their stashes of food.

GRANTS