Nicola S. Clayton

Nicola Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Clare College. Nicky studies the development and evolution of cognition, and the questions she address are informed by an understanding of biology and psychology. Her work has challenged many of the common-held assumptions that only humans can plan for the future and reminisce about the past, and that only humans can understand other minds as well as other times. Nicky’s work is mainly with members of the corvid family (including jackdaws, rooks and jays as well as crows), but includes comparative studies of crows and apes, and more recently young children. This work has led to a radical re-evaluation of animal cognition, and raises important issues about the evolution of cognition, ideas that she has developed with her husband, Nathan Emery, in a recent review in Science on the convergent evolution of cognition in corvids and apes.