Throughout my time at Agnes Scott College, I have built a highly collaborative network of colleagues to facilitate my scholarship. Much of my research has been conducted in collaboration with the Language Research Center (LRC) of Georgia State University, Zoo Atlanta, the National Primate Research Center of Emory University, a local nursery school, as well as a local elementary school. These connections also provide students at Agnes Scott College with opportunities to gain unique research experience and receive rigorous training in the scientific investigation of several critically important domains of psychological research. 

Broadly defined, my research focuses on cognition from a developmental and comparative perspective.  My research assesses changes in cognitive abilities across evolution as well as throughout the aging process including early development. This research allows us to better understand various mechanisms underlying cognitive abilities and how the nervous system underlies such capacities. I have also spent a great deal of my career focusing on issues relating to animal welfare. Finally, I am interested in the effectiveness of informal science education and STEM engagement. These themes of research have developed throughout my career, but here I will focus on the work in the areas following my promotion to tenure in 2019. 

My main areas of focus are briefly described in the following sections as well as highlights from recently published work. In addition to publishing this work in peer-reviewed journals, I have organized and chaired sessions on these topics and presented research at a variety of regional and national conferences.

Themes of Research:
Comparative and Developmental Cognition	Animal Welfare	Informal Science Education and STEM Engagement

Theme 1 – Comparative and Developmental Cognition

My primary training and research focus is on the evolution and development of cognitive abilities. To gain insight into the evolution of cognition, I have studied a wide range of animals including those from the order Carnivora (sun bears, giant pandas, Asian small-clawed otters), the order Primate (rhesus macaques, capuchin monkeys, chimpanzees, humans), and the order Proboscidea (elephants). This process of testing a range of species allows us to better understand how various abilities might have evolved in relation to certain genetic, social or environmental factors. In this line of work, I have investigated a variety of cognitive abilities in nonhuman animals including spatial cognition, self-control, prospective memory, metacognition, and choice behavior.

Following tenure, I have been able to publish collaboratively on issues such as the evolution of quantitative abilities across a range of species (Bryer et al., 2020), and comparative work investigating relative quantity judgments in elephants (Snyder et al., 2021). I am in the final manuscript preparation phase of another collaborative project (with different co-authors) investigating the effect of housing and training protocols on African elephants. I anticipate this work will be published in early 2025. 

In addition to gaining comparative insights into how cognitive abilities are similar or differ across species, I have also worked with children for the last decade to better understand the early development of cognitive abilities in young children. This work broadens the comparative perspective and our understanding of the ontogeny of these abilities. In work funded by the National Science Foundation, I have been working with colleagues to test children ages 2-5 at a local daycare. We collect longitudinal data across multiple years for each child to closely track the development of different abilities with a focus on metacognitive processing for the current grant. 

Recent publications from this collaborative work include the early development of metacognitive capacities in children (Beran et al., 2019; James et al., 2021), and continued investigation of prospective memory (Kelly et al., 2021, Kelly et al., 2023). I have shifted to a more senior role in several of these projects including several senior author positions (last author of publication).

An exciting area that has developed since tenure is the use of eyetracking technology to better understand cognitive processing. This work is possible because of funding from the Professional Development Committee of Agnes Scott and the Holder Fund. Agnes Scott students have led projects using the eyetracker and presented at our internal research conference as well as regional conferences (Howington et al., 2022; Reed et al., 2024; Wubbena et al., 2023). I have had an abstract accepted and will be presenting some of this work at Psychonomics in 2024. In the future, I will continue to focus on the eyetracker as a means to better understand cognitive processes in children and adults. 

References for recent Comparative and Developmental Cognition work

Beran, M. J., Kelly, A. J., Perdue, B. M., Whitham, W., Love, M., Kelly, V., & Parrish, A. E. (2019). Divide and Conquer. Preschool children can assign the hardest tasks to a symbolic helper. Experimental Psychology, 66(4), 296–309. doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000454 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Beran, M. J., Perdue, B. M., & Parrish, A. E. (2020). Cognitive Control and Metacognition in Chimpanzees. In Chimpanzees in Context (pp. 454-478). University of Chicago Press. (Book chapter)

Bryer, M. A., Koopman, S. E., Cantlon, J. F., Piantadosi, S. T., MacLean, E. L., Baker, J. M., Beran, M. J., Jones, S. M., Jordan, K. E., Mahamane, S. and Nieder, A, Perdue, B. M., Range, F., Stevens, J. R., Tomonaga, Ujfalussy, D. J. & Vonk, J. (2022). The evolution of quantitative sensitivity. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377(1844), 20200529. https://doi10.1098/rstb.2020-0529 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Gilkesson, C. Christmas, L., Gilmore, M. and Perdue, B. M. (2022). Effects of episodic future thinking on the monitoring behaviors of preschoolers. Committee on Equality of Professional Opportunity undergraduate poster presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Hilton Head, SC (Student poster presentation)

Howington, J., Lue, C. Gilmore, M., and Perdue, B. M. (March, 2022). Studying prospective memory and external cues in preschool children using eyetracking technology. Committee on Equality of Professional Opportunity undergraduate poster presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Hilton Head, SC (Student poster presentation)

James, B. T., Parrish, A. E., Guild, A. S., Creamer, C., Kelly, V., Perdue, B., & Beran, M. J. (2021). Go if you know: Preschool children’s movements reflect their metacognitive monitoring. Cognitive Development, 57, 101001. doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.101001 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Kelly, A. J., Camden, A. A., Williams, M. C., Beran, M. J., & Perdue, B. M. (2023). Habitual prospective memory in preschool children. Plos one, 18(10), e0293599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2020.101001 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Kelly, A. J., Williams, M. C., Parrish, A. E., Perdue, B. M., Little, S., & Beran, M. J. (2021). Focality and prospective memory in preschool children. The Journal of General Psychology.doi:10.1080/00221309.2021.1978921 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Perdue, B. M., Gilkesson, C., Akbik, M. (April, 2023). Using Eyetracking to Gain Insight into Cognitive Processes in Children. [Conference presentation]. Sixty-ninth annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA, United States. (Conference Presentation)

Reed, L., Kakkad, T., Kelly, A., Perdue, B. M. (2024). Planning Ahead: Prospective Metacognition in Children’s Maze Task. Committee on Equality of Professional Opportunity undergraduate poster presented at the 70th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Orlando, FL. (Student poster presentation) 

Snyder, R. J., Barrett, L. P., Emory, R. A., & Perdue, B. M. (2021). Performance of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) on a quantity discrimination task is similar to that of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana). Animal Cognition, 24, 1-11. doi:10.1007/s10071-021-01504-5 (Peer-reviewed journal article)

Welsh, C., Riley, M. Kelly, A., Beran, M., Perdue, B. M., Parrish, A. (March, 2024). Metacognitive Offloading in Children – An Image Rotation Task. Poster presented at the Southeastern Psychological Association conference, Orlando, FL (Conference poster)

Wubbena, K., Fisher, A., Kakkad, T., & Perdue, B. M. (April, 2023). Swipe Left or Right? Using Eye-Tracking to Explore Cognitive Heuristics and the Decision Making Process of Undergraduates When Using a Mock Dating App.  Committee on Equality of Professional Opportunity undergraduate poster presented at the 69th annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, New Orleans, LA. (Student poster presentation)

Funding for this theme:

Beran, M. J., Church, B. A., Perdue, B. M., Parrish, A. E., & Smith, J. D. (2021-2024). Cognitive Self-regulation and Metacognition in Comparative and Developmental Perspective.  $692,694 (total costs) from the National Science Foundation – Grant BCS 2043667

Beran, M. J., Church, B. A., Perdue, B. M., Parrish, A. E., & Smith, J. D. (2016-2020). Confidence judgments and metacognition in comparative and developmental perspective.  $592,087 (total costs) from the National Science Foundation – Grant BCS 1552405.

Perdue, B. M. (2019-2020). Look Into My Eyes: Portable Eye-tracking Technology for Enhanced Research on Cognition in Adults and Children. $6460 from the Holder Fund and the Professional Development Committee.

Theme 2 – Animal Welfare

Another area that has continued to dominate much of my research is the empirical study of animal welfare. Scientists are in a unique position to design studies to investigate how to improve or optimize the welfare of animals in a variety of captive settings including pets, farm animals, zoo animals and research laboratories. By identifying objective and replicable factors that improve welfare or achieve wellness in animals, policy implications can lead to better overall welfare in a variety of contexts. I have continued collecting data in this domain and recently published a review of the welfare field in Zoos and Aquaria (Maple & Perdue, 2022)

In 2019, I received funding to begin a collaboration with colleagues and the veterinary staff at Emory University and Yerkes National Primate Research Center to investigate cognitive bias alongside a number of other biological measures to assess welfare and monkeys are transitioned to a new outdoor enclosure space. 

I co-edited a series through Frontiers focused on The Science and Practice of Captive Animal Welfare that culminated in an e-book published in 2020 (see Perdue, Sherwen & Maple below). As of July 2024, this e-book had received 230,000 views and almost 24,000 downloads (see metrics). Following this publication, I continued to serve as a co-editor for a Community Series on this topic until 2024. 

Much of my interest in this area was captured in my 2013 co-authored book, Zoo Animal Welfare, which outlines an objective scientific approach to this topic. In 2022, Dr. Maple and I signed a contract to write a second edition of the book which was one of the most downloaded books in the published series. Sadly, Dr. Maple passed away in 2023. Since that time, I have completed several welfare related projects we had initiated prior to his death including a chapter on embracing a comparative approach to better understand adaptive memory (Perdue, Wilson & Maple, in press) and an overview of the ethics regarding animal-visitor interactions at the zoo (Perdue & Maple, in press). I am in continued conversation with the publishers about a revised plan for a solo-authored second edition that also honors his legacy. This work will continue for the foreseeable future.

I also plan to reestablish a more regular research collaboration with our students and the zoo. In 2020, I had a group of students collecting data with animals at the zoo, but this work halted with the Covid pandemic. I would like to spend time re-establishing this connection in the future. To date, this work has led to over 25 student first authored presentations at local conferences or college based research exhibitions. Training the next generation of comparative psychologists is an exciting part of my job and I will continue to do so. 

 

References for recent Animal Welfare work

Perdue, B. M., Wilson, M. A., & Maple, T. L. (in press). The Value of a Comparative Approach to Investigating Adaptive Memory and Cognitive Processes across Species. In M. Toglia, H. Otgaar, J. Altarriba, and W. B. Erickson (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Advances in Understanding Adaptive Memory. (Book chapter, in press). Oxford University Press. 

Perdue, B. M. & Maple, T. L. (in press). The Ethics of Human-Animal-Interactions at the Zoo. In S. Sherwen and E. Fernandez (Eds.), Human-Animal Interactions in Zoos and Aquariums: Merging Exotic Animal Welfare Science and Practice. (Book chapter, in press). CAB International. 

Maple, T. L. & Perdue, B. M. (2022). Zoos and Aquaria. In A. Knight, C. Phillips, and P. Sparks (Eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Animal Welfare. (1st ed., pp. 190–202). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003182351

Perdue, B. M., Sherwen, S., & Maple, T. L. (2020). The Science and Practice of Captive Animal Welfare. Frontiers in Psychology, Edited E-Book publication.

Funding for this theme:

Bloomsmith, M. A., & Perdue, B. M. (2019–2020). The influence of periodic access to more complex spaces on rhesus macaque welfare using a range of assessment techniques. $28,730 from the American College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ACLAM)

Theme 3 – Informal science education and STEM engagement

Prior to earning tenure, I began a project to connect zoo visitors with cognitive science by presenting a video on animal cognition research at an animal exhibit. This allowed visitors to watch the animals engage in impressive cognitive feats. We predicted that this would positively influence the visitor’s learning, engagement and interest in conservation related behaviors.  I’ve recently published aspects of this work in a journal (Perdue & Robinson, 2020) and a book chapter (Perdue, 2019). I applied for funding from NSF-AISL with a collaborator from Emory University to continue this work, but the application was not funded. Nonetheless, this is an area that I will continue to pursue in the future given the importance of educating the general public about cognitive science in animals and STEM more generally. 

In 2023, Professor Toby Emert and I secured funding from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop and investigate the effectiveness of a musical based on the podcast, Millions Bazillions, in educating children about financial literacy. My role on this project was to assess the children’s attitudes and knowledge prior to and after watching the musical. I will be presenting this work at the American Psychological Association in August 2024. We also intend to submit another grant for funding an additional iteration of this project. 

I am also excited to be included on a grant funded by NASA to assess the experience of STEM students at a women’s college and identify connections to career establishment and engagement in STEM. Along with collaborators, I will help develop and administer surveys and focus groups on the student and alumnae experience at Agnes Scott and explore how various high impact practices might correlate to long-term engagement in STEM careers. 

I am passionate about building interest in STEM in the general public and continuing to advance it in our students.

References for recent Informal Science Education and STEM engagement work

Perdue, B. M. (2019). Comparative cognition research in zoos. In A. B. Kaufmann, M. A. Bashaw and T. L. Maple (Eds.), Scientific Foundations of Zoos and Aquariums: Their Role in Conservation and Research (1st ed., pp. 490–510). Cambridge University Press. (Book chapter)

Perdue, B. M. & Emert, T. (to be presented August, 2024). Education in Informal Settings: Investigating how a Play can Teach Children about Financial Literacy. Presented at the 132nd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Seattle, WA. (Conference presentation)

Perdue, B. M., & Robinson, B. (2021). Does exposure to animal cognition research influence the zoo visitor experience? Animal Behavior and Cognition, 8(4), 601-618. https://doi.org/10.26451/abc.08.04.11.2021 (Peer reviewed journal article)

Robinson, B. & Perdue, B. M. (2019, March). Promoting scientific awareness through public zoos. Poster presentation given at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Jacksonville, FL. (Student conference poster)

Funding for portions of this work

Robic, S. (Principal Investigator), Embree, M., Kovacs, J., Lovell, A., Perdue, B., Winget, S. (Other professionals) (2023-2026). Alumnae Network & Career Resources program – STEM support anchored at ASC. $744,191 (total costs) from the Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Emert, T. & Perdue, B. M. (co-investigator) (2023). To support a series of mixed-methods evaluation studies that will explore the effects of arts instruction on the financial literacy of elementary school children. $55,000 from Research Grants in the Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts. GRANT13564132

Perdue, B. M. & Hampton, R. (not funded). Cognitive connections: Developing and assessing methods for engaging zoo visitors with concepts and methods in cognitive science, National Science Foundation, 09/01/2019 – 09/01/2023

Summary

Following tenure in 2019, there were some delays in access to animal populations and childcare centers because of the Covid pandemic. During those times, I transitioned my research efforts as quickly and flexibly as possible to allow a steady stream of productivity and continued opportunities for students to engage. As soon as we were able, we resumed active research and data collection in these settings, but it is worth noting that this did create a multi-year delay on several projects. 

Overall, my scholarship continues to embrace a range of topics, all of which are grounded in my training and interest in cognition and the neurological and developmental processes that underlie it. I am also continuously interested in finding ways to apply that knowledge in a variety of settings including the classroom, the zoo and with the general public. I plan to continue these lines of research as outlined above for the duration of my career in academia.