Amanda Seed

Amanda Seed is a comparative and developmental psychologist studying the evolution of cognition, in particular causal reasoning, cognitive control and active learning in primates and children. She was recently awarded an ERC Starting Grant to explore the relationship between some of these different cognitive skills and how they interact to affect performance on problem-solving tasks. The motivation for this research is to shed light on the evolutionary changes in representational, mnemonic and executive processes that marked the origins of uniquely human thinking.

Amanda is a Professor at the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews where she is a member of the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, and the Scottish Primate Research Group. She is the Director of the ‘Living Links to Human Evolution’ Centre at Edinburgh Zoo, where capuchin and squirrel monkeys take part in cognitive experiments in full view of the visiting public, with accompanying displays for public engagement with science.