Empirical aesthetics has found its way into mainstream cognitive science. Until now, most research has focused either on identifying the internal processes that underlie a perceiver’s aesthetic experience or on identifying the stimulus features that lead to a specific type of aesthetic experience. To progress, empirical aesthetics must integrate these approaches into a unified paradigm […]

Domesticated and vocal learning species can serve as informative model organisms for the reduction of reactive aggression and emergence of speech in our lineage. Amidst mounting evidence that domestication modifies vocal repertoires across different species, we focus on the domesticated Bengalese finch, which has a more complex song than the wild-type white-rumped munia. Our explanation […]