Meet our Principal Investigator
Sarah Pope-Caldwell
Dr. Pope-Caldwell is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Georgia State University, specializing in cognitive flexibility. Her work spans research sites in the Republic of the Congo, Germany, and Atlanta. Dr. Pope-Caldwell blends cross-cultural and developmental psychology, neuroscience, and primatology to understand how both human and nonhuman primates navigate problem-solving challenges across varying contexts
Research Coordinators
Ardain Dzabatou
is the Congo site Research Coordinator and a student at Marien Ngouabi University. His research interests include understanding how eco-cultural environments impact children's knowledge of local animals and how traditional foraging skillsets can be preserved and shared with future generations.
Ludwig Paeth
is the research coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Originally from the field of communication research, he is particularly interested in topics related to communication, co-operation and decision-making of humans in groups.
Tamara Morton
is the Georgia State University Research Coordinator in Atlanta, GA . Previous research interests focused on multimodal communication in chimpanzees. She has worked in wildlife rehabilitation, handling, and conservation, and remains particularly interested in how animal cognition research can inform and support conservation efforts.PhD Students
Nicholas Lienhard
is a graduate student in Cognitive Sciences at Georgia State University. He is interested in primate attention and problem-solving and what internal/external factors may impact those behaviors. Future research interests include how smart devices and touchscreen technology can be used and may impact captive primates in terms of care, enrichment, and research-related activities.
Skylar Brodnan
is a graduate student in Psychology at Georgia State University. She is interested in the evolution of cognition, specifically, the relationship between social structure, ecology, and problem-solving strategies in primates.
Sahith Reddy Thummala is a graduate student in Computer Science at Georgia State University with expertise in machine learning, natural language processing, and backend development. With a strong foundation in software development and problem-solving, he is passionate about leveraging technology for impactful, real-world applications.
Paul Mekouno Paul is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting interviews and research games with Bandongo and BaYaka participants.
Bienvenue Mbongo Bienvenue is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting research games with BaYaka participants.
GSU Research Assistants
Farez Parmar is an undergraduate student at Georgia State University pursuing animal psychology. He has an interest in learning about how animals interact with their environment and other animals in it. He is exited to work alongside the team and hopes to learn a lot from this opportunity.
Phillip Morgan is a volunteer research assistant in the ADAPT Lab. He earned his bachelor’s in psychology from Georgia State University and master’s in psychology with a focus on applied research . His academic interests center on advancing his methodological and applied research skills, and he is currently preparing to apply to Georgia State University’s Ph.D. program in psychology.
Congo Research Assistants
Diop Dzabatou Diop is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in collecting observational video data and conducting research games with Bandongo participants.
Issa Dzabatou Issa is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting research games with BaYaka and Bandongo participants.
Destin Dzanguendet Destin is a Research Assistant at our Congo research site. He specializes in conducting research games with Bandongo participants.
Close Collaborators
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Wilson Vieira
Wilson is a PhD candidate in the Department for Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. His focus is in cross-cultural psychology. Specifically, his research aims to understand variation in cognitive flexibility in humans. More specifically, his research looks at how environmental contexts and sources of information influence the way humans decide to forego known, working strategies for unknown, alternative ones.
WebsiteCollaborative Projects:
1) The Influence of Eco-cultural contexts in shaping the development of Risk-Preferences and Explorative Tendencies
2) The Impact of Eco-Cultural Environment and Information Source on the Ontogeny of Elective Flexibility -
Sheina Lew-Levy
Sheina is an Associate Professor at Durham University. Combining research methods from anthropology and psychology, Dr. Lew-Levy conducts research in hunter-gatherer societies to understand the cultural diversity in, and evolution of, social learning in childhood. Her primary research uses behavioural observations to understand social learning. She has also collected biological samples, social network data, and conducted experiments for collaborative cross-cultural projects.
WebsiteCollaborative Projects:
Age-based imitation bias throughout development, during daily interactions, and across cultures -
Daniel Haun
Daniel is the director of the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a Professor for Comparative Cultural Psychology at Leipzig University. Daniel ultimately wants to understand how human cognition compares to that of other animals. He believes that understanding differences across animal species requires studying cognitive diversity within those species. That's why his group studies non-human great apes across different communities and humans in diverse cultural and ecological settings across 6 continents.
Website
Collaborative Projects:
Likouala Community Congo Research Site
NiftyShifty : The development of flexible decision-making and related executive functioning across cultures
Previous Lab Members
Celeste Walton - Graduated with a M.S. in Neuroscience from GSU in 2025.
Alex Navas - Graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from GSU in 2025.