Katie Slocombe
Professor

Research

Overview

Comparative and Developmental psychology, evolution of language, chimpanzee communication and social cognition, human infant communication and social cognition, cross-cultural research, dog vocal communication, human-dog interactions.

Projects

Dog vocal communication: My PhD student Ella Williamson is trying to understand individual variation in dog vocal behaviour. We know that most dogs have more flexibility to vocalise in a range of situations than wolves. It seems likely that through domestication, this increase in communicative flexibility was an adaptation to communicate with humans. We seek to document the variation in (i) how much dogs vocalise; (ii) the number of situations they vocalise in, and (iii) the range of sounds they produce and how they use them. We then want to understand what is driving these individual differences and whether vocally flexible dogs are better able to express their needs and desires to their owners. 

The development of multimodal combinatorial communication in chimpanzees: This project in collaboration with Mael Leroux and Simon Townsend aims to investigate the production of multimodal signal combinations (vocal, gestural, facial signals) in adult chimpanzees from different wild populations in Uganda and to examine how these signal combinations emerge across development and the role social learning may play in their ontogeny. 

Cross cultural variation in normative behaviour: This Leverhulme funded project in collaboration with Bailey House examines how young children start to understand social norms, conform to normative rules and become sensitive to social expectations in rural Uganda and suburban UK. 

Cross cultural variation in communication and social cognition: As part of my ERC Consolidator grant, we conducted a longitudinal study on infants from 3 to 54 months old (with an unfortunate but unavoidable gap for the pandemic). The infants lived in or around the city of York in the UK or in the rural Nyabyeya Parish in Uganda. PhD students Joanna Buryn-Weitzel, Eve Holden and Ellie Donnelley have focussed on prosocial behaviour, early experiences and infant-directed speech with this data set.

Joint attention in human infants, chimpanzees and Sulawesi Crested Macaques: As part of my ERC Consolidator grant, we presented novel stimuli to infant-mother dyads in different spatial constellations to examine if they would share attention about the novel stimuli, or if infants would direct the attention of the mother to the stimulus. We conducted this research in natural environments for each species (home visits for humans, forest for wild chimpanzees and macaques). 

Research group(s)

Megan Lambert (PhD Student)

Claudia Wilke (PhD Student)

Emma Wallace (Phd Student)

Alejandra Picard (PhD Student)

Ed Donnellan (co-supervised PhD student)

Thomas Pinfield (MSc student)

Nicole Lahiff (Research assistant)

Grants

Recent Grants

£9971 BA/Leverhume small grant (2022-23) “Babble development and caregiver speech in English and Ugandan babies” I am Co-I on this grant with Catherine Laing (PI) and Tamar Keren-Portnoy (Co-I).

£ 300,200 Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (2021-2024) entitled “The Development of Normative Prosociality across Diverse Societies” I am the Co-I on this grant with PI Bailey House.

€ 1989,611 ERC Consolidator Award (2017-2022) entitled “The evolutionary and developmental origins of Joint Attention: a longitudinal cross-species and cross-cultural comparison”. I am PI on this grant

Collaborators

• Dr K. Liebal (Freie Universität Berlin) and Dr B. Waller (University of Portsmouth, UK); Multi-modal communication in primates
• Prof R. Wrangham (Harvard University, USA) and Dr M. Muller (University of New Mexico, USA); Chimpanzee vocal communication, Kibale Chimpanzee Project, Uganda.
• Dr A. Seed (University of St Andrews); Corvid and parrot cognition and communication
• Dr Z. Machanda (Harvaard University, USA); Chimpanzee behavior
• Dr S. Townsend (University of Warwick, UK); Chimpanzee communication
• Prof. T. Bugnyar & Dr J. Massen (University of Vienna, Austria); Raven cognition
• Dr A. Taylor (University of Auckland, New Zealand); Corvid cognition
• Prof. K. Zuberbühler (University of Neuchatel, Switzerland) Chimpanzee vocal communication
• Dr Penny Spikins (Archaeology, University of York): Material culture and Autism spectrum Disorder
• Prof  E.J. Milner-Gulland (Imperial College, UK) Human-primate interactions

Available PhD research projects

I would welcome applications from people interested in (i) Evolutionary and Comparative Psychology, more specifically communication and social cognition in primates. I have a good network of contacts to arrange access to a variety of primate species, including wild and captive chimpanzees. For those wishing to embark on a fieldwork PhD study, experience of fieldwork or travel/work in developing countries is a necessity. (ii) Cross cultural and developmental Psychology, more specifically working with children and families in rural Uganda and the UK to examine social cognition and communication / language development.

Publications

Selected publications

Liebal. K., Waller, B., Burrows, A. & Slocombe, K. E. (2013) Primate Communication: a multimodal approach. Cambridge University Press

Full publications list

See also the York Research Database or Google Scholar.

PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

Leroux, M., Schel, A. M., Wilke, C., Chandia, B., Zuberbühler, K., Slocombe, K. E., & Townsend, S. W. (2023). Call combinations and compositional processing in wild chimpanzees. Nature Communications, 14(1), 2225.

Holden, E., Buryn-Weitzel, J. C., Atim, S., Biroch, H., Donnellan, E., Graham, K. E., ... & Slocombe, K. E. (2022). Maternal attitudes and behaviours differentially shape infant early life experience: A cross cultural study. Plos one, 17(12), e0278378.

Wilke, C., Lahiff, N. J., Sabbi, K. H., Watts, D. P., Townsend, S. W., & Slocombe, K. E. (2022). Declarative referential gesturing in a wild chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(47), e2206486119.

Slocombe, K. E., Lahiff, N., Wilke, C., Townsend, S. (2022), Chimpanzee vocal communication: what we know from the wild. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 46, 101171.

Mine, J.G., Slocombe, K. E., Willems, E.P., Gilby, I. C., Yu, M., Emery Thompson, M., Muller, M.N., Wrangham, R. W., Townsend, S.W., Machanda, Z.P., (2022) Vocal signals facilitate cooperative hunting by wild chimpanzees, Scientific Advances, 8(30), eabo5553.

Wilke, C., Lahiff, N.J., Badihi, G., Donnellan, E., Hobaiter, C., Machanda, Z.P., Mundry, R., Pika, S., Soldati, A., Wrangham, R.W., Zuberbűhler, K., & Slocombe, K.E. (2022) Referential gestures are not ubiquitous in wild chimpanzees: alternative functions for exaggerated loud scratch gestures. Animal Behaviour, 189,23- 45.

Liebal, K., Slocombe, K. E., & Waller, B. M. (2022). The language void 10 years on: multimodal primate communication research is still uncommon. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 34(3), 274-287.

Graham, K. E., Buryn-Weitzel, J. C., Lahiff, N. J., Wilke, C., & Slocombe, K. E. (2021). Detecting joint attention events in mother-infant dyads: Sharing looks cannot be reliably identified by naïve third-party observers. PloS one, 16(7), e0255241.

Kavanagh, E., Street, S. E., Angwela, F. O., Bergman, T. J., Blaszczyk, M. B., Bolt, L. M., et al (58 other co-authors) & Slocombe, K. E. (2021). Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates. Royal Society open science, 8(7), 210873.

Morales Picard, A., Mundry, R., Auersperg, A. M., Boeving, E. R., Boucherie, P. H., Bugnyar, T., et al (18 other co-authors) & Slocombe, K.E.  (2020). Why preen others? Predictors of allopreening in parrots and corvids and comparisons to grooming in great apes. Ethology, 126(2), 207-228.

Kamiloglu, R., Slocombe, K., Haun, D., & Sauter, D. (2020). Human Listeners’ Perception of Behavioural Context and Core Affect Dimensions in Chimpanzee Vocalisations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 287, 1929; https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1148

Graham, K. E., Wilke, C. P., Lahiff, N. J., & Slocombe, K. E. (2019). Scratching Beneath the Surface: Intentionality in Great Ape Signal production. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Slocombe, K. E., & Seed, A. M. (2019). Cooperation in children. Current Biology, 29(11), R470-R473.

Donnellan, E., Bannard, C., McGillion, M. L., Slocombe, K. E., & Matthews, D. (2019). Infants’ intentionally communicative vocalisations elicit responses from caregivers and are the best predictors of the transition to language: a longitudinal investigation of infants’ vocalisations, gestures, and word production. Developmental science, e12843.

Benjamin, A., & Slocombe, K. (2018). ‘Who’s a good boy?!’ Dogs prefer naturalistic dog-directed speech. Animal cognition, 21(3), 353-364. 

Cole, E. J., Slocombe, K. E., & Barraclough, N. E. (2018). Abilities to explicitly and implicitly infer intentions from actions in adults with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 48(5), 1712-1726. 

Wilke, C., Kavanagh, E., Donnellan, E., Waller, B. M., Machanda, Z. P., & Slocombe, K. E. (2017). Production of and responses to unimodal and multimodal signals in wild chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii. Animal Behaviour, 123, 305-316.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Current positions in Department of Psychology, University of York

2013 – pres  Module organiser and sole lecturer for ‘Animal Communication and Cognition’ (final year BSc: 40 students)

2024-pres Module organiser and lecturer for one 4-week block and the 3-week ‘Group Challenge’ within the  ‘Applying Psychology’ module (Year 1 module: 320 students)

Previous positions, Dept of Psychology, University of York

2017-2021  Module organiser: Year 3 Empirical Project (~40 Y3 MSci students): Deliver two 2-hour lectures and 4 support sessions. Supervise a quarter of the projects and coordinate 3 other faculty to assist with project supervision.

2019-2023 Teaching block 10 leader for Perception and Cognition: Animal learning and cognition (220-270 Y2 students): Deliver four 2-hour lectures, create 1 hour interactive tutorial and train Graduate Teaching Assistants to deliver it, in addition to online supporting materials and MCQ assessment .

2015-2017 Module organiser: Issues and Methods in Applied Research (~80 MSc students): Deliver 2 seminars and 1 lecture and coordinate other internal and external speakers to deliver the other sessions and responsible for module assessment

2011 – 2014    Module organiser and sole lecturer for ‘Research Methods’ (BSc Year 1: 200 students)

2010 – 2012    Coordinator for ‘Mini-Projects’ (BSc Year 1 and 2: 400 students)

2009 – 2010    Module organiser and lecturer for ‘Data Analysis 1’ (BSc Year 1: 200 students)

2009 – 2011    Module organiser and lecturer for ‘Comparative cognition’ (BSc Year 2: 150 students)

2007 – 2009    Module organiser and sole lecturer for ‘Scientific Skills for Psychologists’ (BSc Year 1: 200 students)

2007 – 2009    Module organiser and lecturer for ‘Introduction to Psychology as a Biological Science’ (BSc Year 1: 200 students)

Other teaching

External Appointments (Teaching)

July 2016 Evolution of language and animal communication lectures, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Genetics & Neurobiology of Language Course, New York, USA 

2012, 2013, 2014 ‘Animal communication masterclass’ for Evolution of Language and Cognition MSc students, University of Edinburgh, UK

2011 Guest Lecturer on ‘Primate behaviour and conservation field course’, Costa Rica