Corinna Most

Corinna Most is a graduate student in anthropology at UC San Diego.  Corinna’s focus is on the origins, evolution, and development of social cognition, and her approach is broadly interdisciplinary. She applies theories and methods not only from within the field of Anthropology, but also from others such as developmental psychology, cognitive sciences, and education studies. The goal of her research is to identify factors that affect the development of social skills in infant baboons, animals that are closely related to us and live in large and socially complex groups. Moreover, baboons are often used as socio-ecological models for the early hominins that first shifted to more open environments. The results of my research will thus have implications for comparative developmental research not only in the modern members of our species, but also in our ancestors. This research will provide greater insight into how our social nature, one of the defining traits of our species and indeed our order, has developed both phylogenetically and ontogenetically.