RESEARCH INTERESTS
Cultural evolution
I study how our culture emerges, establishes and is transmitted. I study innovation and imitation from developmental, cross-cultural and comparative perspectives. I have a particular current focus on the development of tool innovation, and the individual and cognitive factors underpinning its expression.
I am the co-director of the Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre.
Research interests
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Innovation (particularly tool innovation) and creativity
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Imitation
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Cumulative cultural evolution
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Developmental research
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Cross-cultural research
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Comparative research (particularly chimpanzees)
I am interested in and happy to supervise MRes or PhD students in any of the following topics, or related ones (please get in touch if you’d like to discuss or chat):
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The development of tool innovation, including across cultures
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The development of creativity
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The individual and cognitive underpinnings of innovation and creativity
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The development of imitation and overimitation
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Individual and/or cognitive differences in imitation and innovation in children
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Comparative (particularly children and chimpanzees) perspectives on innovation
PUBLICATIONS
Published/in press manuscripts (please email me if you would like to access to any of them)
Rawlings, B. & Reader, S.M. (in press). What is innovation? A review of definitions, approaches and key questions in human and nonhuman innovation. The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution.
Wood, L.A., Vale, G.L., Flynn, E.G. & Rawlings, B. (2023). Cross-Species Comparisons of Human and Non-Human Culture: Approaches, Discoveries, Limitations, and Future Directions. The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198869252.013.30
Rawlings, B*., Davis, H.E*, Legare, C.H., et al. (2023). Quantifying quality: The impact of measures of school quality on children's academic achievement across diverse societies. Developmental Science. * Joint first authors. DOI:10.1111/desc.13434
Lew-Levy, S., van den Bos, W., Corriveau, K., Dutra, N., Flynn, E., O'Sullivan, O., Pope-Caldwell, S., Rawlings, B., Smolla, M., Xu, J., Wood, L. (2023). Peer learning and Cultural Evolution. Child Development Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12482
Rawlings, B. S., van Leeuwen, E. J. C., & Davila-Ross, M. (2023). Chimpanzee communities differ in their inter- and intrasexual social relationships. Learning & Behavior. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-023-00570-8
Clegg, J. M., Wen, N. J., & Rawlings, B. S. (2022). Culture is an optometrist: Cultural contexts adjust the prescription of social learning bifocals. Invited commentary. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. doi:10.1017/S0140525X22001376
Davis, S*., Rawlings, B*., Jennifer M. Clegg, Ikejimba, D., . Watson-Jones, R.E., Whiten, A. & Legare, C.H. (2022). Cognitive flexibility supports the development of cumulative cultural learning in children. Scientific Reports, 12, 14073: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-18231-7 *Joint first authors
Burger, O., Chen, L., Erut, A., Fong, F., Rawlings, B. & Legare, C.H. (2022). Developing Cross-Cultural Data Infrastructures (CCDIs) for research in cognitive and behavioral sciences. Review of Philosophy and Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-022-00635-z
Rawlings, B. (2022). After a decade of tool innovation, what comes next? Child Development Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12451
Dutra, N.B., Chen, L, Anum, A., Burger, O., Davis, H., Dzokoto, V., Fong, F.T.K., Ghelardi, S, Mendez, K., Messer, E.J., Newhouse, M., Nielsen, M., Ramos, K., Rawlings, B., Cardoso, R., Silveira, L.G., Tucker-Drob, E. & Legare, C.H. (2022). Examining relations between performance on non-verbal executive function and verbal self-regulation tasks in demographically-diverse populations. Developmental Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13228
Rawlings, B., Legare, C.H., Brosnan, S. & Vale, G.L. (2021). Leveling the playing field in cumulative cultural evolution: conceptual and methodological advances in nonhuman primate research. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 47(3), 252–273. https://doi.org/10.1037/xan0000303
Rawlings, B., Flynn, E. G. F. & Kendal, R. L. (2021). Personality predicts innovation and social learning in children; implications for cultural evolution. (Developmental Science ) https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13153.
Vale, G. L., McGuigan, N., Burdett, E., Lambeth, S. P., Lucas, A., Rawlings, B., Schapiro, S., Watson, S.K. , & Whiten, A. (2021). Why chimpanzees have diverse behavioral repertoires but lack more complex cultures; innovation and social information use in a cumulative task. Evolution and Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.11.003
Rawlings, B. & Legare, C.H. (2021). Toddlers, tools, and tech: The cognitive ontogenesis of innovation. Trends in Cognitive Science, Volume 25, 81-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.10.006
Rawlings, B., Flynn E.G. & Wood. L.A. (2021). We are all capable of cumulative cultural evolution, but we don't need to all the time. Commentary of Vaesen, K., & Houkes, W. (2021).'Is human culture cumulative?', Current Anthropology, 62 (2).
Rawlings, B., Flynn, E.G., Freeman, H., Reamer, L.A., Schapiro, S. & Kendal, R. L. (2020). Sex differences in longitudinal personality stability in chimpanzees. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2, e46. doi: 10.1017/ehs.2020.45
Rawlings, B., & Legare, C. (2020). The social side of innovation. Invited commentary, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 43, E175. doi:10.1017/S0140525X20000217
Rawlings, B., Dutra, N., Turner, C. & Flynn, E. (2020). Overimitation across development: the influence of individual and contextual factors. In Developmental Research: A Guide for Conducting Research Across the Life Span (Editors: Jones, N.A., Platt, M., Mize, K.D., & Hardin, J).
Vale, G, Flynn, E., Kendal J., Rawlings, B, Hopper L., Schapiro S., Lambeth S. & Kendal R.L. (2017). Testing differential use of payoff-biased social learning strategies in children and chimpanzees. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 284(1868): 20171751.
Rawlings, B., Flynn, E. & Kendal, R (2017). To copy or to innovate? The role of personality and social networks on children's learning strategies. Child Development Perspectives, 11(1): 39-44. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12206
Forrester, G. S., Rawlings, B., & Davila-Ross, M. (2016). An analysis of bimanual actions in natural feeding of semi-wild chimpanzees. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 159(1): 85-92.
Baddeley, A., Rawlings, B. & Hayes, A. (2014). Constrained prose recall and the assessment of long-term forgetting the case of aging and the Crimes Test. Memory 22(8): 1052-1059. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2013.865753.
Rawlings, B., Davila-Ross, M. & Boysen, S. (2014). Semi-wild chimpanzees open hard-shelled fruits differently across communities. Animal Cognition 17(4): 891-899. doi: 10.1007/s10071-013-0722-z.
Schel, A., Rawlings, B., Claidiere N, Wilke, C. Wathen, J. Richardson, J. Person, S., Herrelko E.S., Whiten, A. & Slocombe, K. (2012). Network Analysis of Social Changes in a Captive Chimpanzee Community Following the Successful Integration of Two Adult Groups. American Journal of Primatology, 75(3): 254. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22101
BACKGROUND
I did my undergraduate degree in Psychology (BSc) at the University of Plymouth, UK. I then did my masters degree (MSc) in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of York, UK.
From there, I worked as a research assistant at the Universities of Durham and Portsmouth (both UK), where I conducted research on social learning in semi-wild chimpanzees and wild capuchin monkeys, respectively.
I did my PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology at Durham University, in which I took a comparative approach to studying individual differences in the use of social learning and innovation in human children and chimpanzees.
In April 2018 I became a postdoctoral researcher at UT at Austin's EVOLearn Lab investigating cross-cultural differences in in social learning, innovation and teaching and the cognitive underpinnings of cumulative culture.
In 2021 I joined the Department of Psychology, Durham University as an Assistant Professor in Developmental Science.
RESEARCH GROUPS
Durham Cultural Evolution Research Centre (DCERC) serves as a focal point for cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution research at Durham University. DCERC has a cross-disciplinary membership, including the fields of anthropology, archaeology, biological sciences, business, education, mathematics and psychology. I am co-director, along with Sheina Lew-Levy.
