9357976 HAUSER This award provides support to Dr. Marc Hauser under the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Awards program. The objective of this program is to recognize outstanding young faculty in science and engineering, to enhance the academic career of recent PhD recipients by providing flexible support for research and educational activities, and to foster contact and cooperation between academia, industry, and institutions that support research and education. Dr. Hauser has already made significant research contributions to the field of biological anthropology, and he has the potential to become a leader in academic research and education. This award will allow the investigator to continue his research on the evolution of cognitive ability. By integrating theoretical and methodological insights from cognitive neuroscience with evolutionary biology, he will examine both the neural constraints on behavior and the adaptive significance of a species' cognitive machinery. He will use observational and experimental techniques on both captive and wild nonhuman primates focusing on the role of hemispheric specialization in the categorization of visual and auditory signals. Results will shed light on the evolution of cognition in human and nonhuman primates. Dr. Hauser's research promises to make an important contribution to knowledge at a time when scientists are just beginning to examine the primate origins of social intelligence and the evolution of language. ***
