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| 79.1 - Fall 2005 | ||||||||||||
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> Fall 2005 > Undergrad profile
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Jennifer Barnes ES ’06
Probing the Mysteries of the Mind |
Printable Version |
By Nathaniel Roth
Renaissance woman Jennifer Barnes is both an accomplished scientist and a writer. (Credit: Jennifer Barnes)
To what extent do monkeys realize that other creatures have minds of their own? This question is one of the myriad that Jennifer Barnes is investigating in her cognitive science research. Jennifer arrived at Yale with a strong scientific background, particularly in physics. Although she had originally planned to study neuroscience in the biology department, Jennifer found her calling after taking a comparative cognition class in the second semester of her freshman year. Eager to become involved in laboratory work, she began designing and conducting primate cognition experiments as a sophomore in the laboratory of Laurie Santos, assistant professor of cognitive science and psychology.
Working with monkeys has provided Jennifer with ample opportunity for exotic travel. For the summer following her sophomore year, she received a Yale College Dean’s Research Fellowship to conduct research with the Lemur Conservation Foundation at the Myakka City Lemur Reserve in Florida. With a group of collaborators including Santos and fellow Yale student Neha Mahajan (ES ’06), Jennifer studied the extent to which a variety of lemur species can understand the use of tools and numbers. The group’s research revealed that lemurs can be taught to use tools in a laboratory setting even though they do not exhibit such behavior in the wild. The group was featured on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings earlier this year.
As a junior, Jennifer became interested in studying how rhesus monkeys develop a “theory of mind,” or the ability to recognize that other living things have independent intentions and thought processes. In one experiment, led by graduate student Webb Philips, Jennifer and others tested the ability of capuchin monkeys to differentiate between a person who is unwilling to give them food and a person who is unable to do so. When an experimenter repeatedly offered food only to snatch it away, the monkeys quickly lost interest or became agitated. On the other hand, if a different experimenter snatched the food away from the one offering the food, the monkeys were more willing to try again. Such research may prove applicable to the study of autistic children, who often have difficulty recognizing the will and intentions of others.
In another theory of mind study, Jennifer analyzed the ability of rhesus monkeys to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects. The work was prompted by the observation that human babies expect living and nonliving things to obey different laws of physics. To test this phenomenon in monkeys, Jennifer traveled to the rhesus monkey reserve on the island of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico, last summer. She and her collaborators set up “magic shows,” in which they showed the monkeys impossible situations and determined what surprised them. For example, researchers created the illusion that various objects teleported from one side of a stage to another. While the monkeys were puzzled if a piece of fruit performed such a maneuver, they were unfazed by the teleportation of a living creature.
This year, Jennifer is working with Santos and Mahajan on the study of capuchin metamemory. Rather than examining what monkeys know about the minds of others, her new study will determine how conscious they are of their own knowledge. Jennifer also plans to continue her work on tool use, hoping to determine whether capuchins “look at tools merely in terms of their functional properties, or whether they, like small children, view them in terms of the creator’s intent.”
Remarkably, despite all of these achievements, cognitive science is not Jennifer’s only passion. In addition to co-authoring two papers with Santos on her lemur research, she has also authored three young adult novels that will be published by Random House before 2007. Jennifer’s publicist describes her first novel, Golden, as Mean Girls meets Charmed—a book that focuses on the relationships within a group of girls while incorporating a magical twist.
“I kind of live a double life,” Jennifer explains. “All I’ve ever wanted to do since I was four years old was be a writer…but I really love my research so much.” Although she intends to pursue a doctoral degree in graduate school, Jennifer plans on taking a year off after graduation to write more novels and finish her research projects. What does Jennifer intend for her future? For now, a double life as cognitive scientist and novelist.
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Undergrad profile