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| Origins of Mind |
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Members of the group co-founded the Scottish Primate Research Group in 1987, and this has now grown to include 15 faculty and 36 researchers at 4 Scottish universities, with an annual two-day conference, making Scotland pre-eminent in the UK for primatological research. 
Research sites 
A £1.6m grant from Strategic Research Development Grant (Scottish Funding Council) enabled a research centre (Living Links) to be built at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland's Edinburgh zoological gardens, foregrounding SPRG research on non-human primates in order to increase public understanding of science. Within the Living Links Research Centre the general public are able to watch observational and non-invasive experimental research on monkey groups while in progress, as well as find out about past discoveries and watch the monkeys themselves. The Origins of Mind group manages the scientific work of the Budongo Conservation Field Station (core funding by RZSS), a long-term project in the Budongo forest, Uganda. Although now diversified to include many aspects of forest ecology, the original core of chimpanzee field research remains a key focus. You can follow the daily work of the researchers via the Budongo blog. 
Collaborations Within St Andrews, the Origins of Mind group has a longstanding collaboration with cognate researchers in the School of Biology, with fortnightly evening meetings, and the Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution now formalises this already-productive arrangement. Research topics We integrate evidence from comparative animal cognition (including both signs of common descent in closely related species, such as great apes, and convergent evolution of cognition in distant relatives, such as pigs, elephants and birds) with that from child development, to approach a full understanding of the origins of cognition. Core topics for members of the group include: 
 Group members 
studies the evolution of cognitive and social behaviour, particularly the origins of distinctively human characteristics. Current projects focus on the acquisition of manual skills in great ape feeding, and the intelligence and cognition of the domestic pig. Previous work has included the ecology of baboon social structures, analysis of deception in primates, and the relation between brain size and intelligence. 
conducts research on the development of prelinguistic communication and early theories of mind in human infants and in great apes and monkeys. He also researches the abnormal development of these abilities in children with autism. 
has several avenues of research currently underway all stemming from an interest in relationships between behaviour and the correlated neural processing, specifically the processing of spatial information; adaptive specialisation of memory; effects of behavioural experience on the development of the avian hippocampus, particularly in migrant songbirds; field tests of spatial memory and context-dependent choice in hummingbirds. 
aims to address the evolutionary origins of conceptual thought and causal knowledge by combining developmental and comparative studies of physical problem-solving. Currently she is collaborating with Dr Josep Call to study causal knowledge for objects and events in apes and developing children, and together with Professor Nicky Clayton and Dr Nathan Emery at the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University she studies the convergent evolution of flexible problem-solving in corvids and apes. 
conducts research on the evolution and development of mind and behaviour. Recent and current studies have focussed on theory of mind (mindreading), imitation, social learning, culture, cooperation and related aspects of social cognition in both captive and wild non-human primates as well as normal and autistic children. 
current projects include, cognitive processes underlying monkey communication, alarm calling behaviour in white-handed gibbons, vocal communication in chimpanzees and bonobos, food localisation skills of free-ranging mangabeys, and attention getting and gaze following in captive chimpanzees. Associate members 
is interested in how hormones influence behaviour and the development of the brain, with particular emphasis on sex differences in exploration and novelty-seeking in adolescent rodents. Other interests include behavioural development in primates and evolutionary perspectives on behaviour. 
is interested in recognising facial attributes and understanding actions of others, the nature of cues in the face to attractiveness and health, attraction to voice and to pheromones, cross modal integration in understanding actions. 
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Our aim is to understand how evolutionary history and the process of development combine to produce the
cognitive systems of a range of animal species, including especially the extraordinary
human intellect. 
We bring together a range of backgrounds (psychology, ethology, zoology, speech science, etc.) and our research
spans an exceptional variety of subjects, from monkeys' knowledge of climate to children's understanding of agency,
from elephant social knowledge to the precursors of culture. But in every case our ultimate target is to understand
how cognition arises and operates. 
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