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I have conducted both fieldwork and laboratory-based experiments on primates to investigate social cognition and the interactions among emotion, behavior, and cognition. Through my Hakubi Project, I aim to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms that may have served as the foundation for the evolution of human parenting behavior.
Human parenting is distinctive among mammalian species in that individuals other than the mother also cooperatively contribute to offspring care. In modern human societies, child-rearing environments are undergoing rapid changes, with issues such as parental burnout and declining birth rates becoming increasingly pressing. Gaining a deeper understanding of the cognitive functions underlying human-like cooperative parenting is essential for developing a biologically informed perspective on these challenges. To explore this, I will conduct comparative cognitive experiments with Japanese macaques, a species in which only mothers provide parental care, and common marmosets, a species in which family members engage in cooperative parenting. By comparing these two species with contrasting parenting styles, I aim to identify cognitive differences that contribute to variations in parenting behavior.