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Jen Cook’s Lab is based at the School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK.

Our work covers a range of topics that fall under the umbrella term “social cognition” including emotional expression, emotion recognition, face perception, biological motion processing, social learning and decision making, imitation and theory of mind. On the whole we are interested in the cognitive abilities that enable humans to have rich and cumulative culture and we are intrigued about whether other species share some of these abilities, and if so, what inhibits cultural evolution in these species.

Methods-wise we typically use in-house developed computer-based tasks but we also combine this with motion-tracking and use psychopharmacology, genetics and (some) neuroimaging to make inferences about neural, genetic and neurochemical mechanisms. We also have a strong active collaboration with a lab that study the genetics of honey bee social behaviour and thus I have a keen interest in cross-species studies.

If you would like to find out more about what we do check the about page, or read some of our papers.

If you are interested in doing a research project with us, please contact us.

For info about what we’ve been up to recently and new job openings in our lab please check the news tab