Sang Ah Lee

Her broad research interests are in cognitive evolution and cognitive development. Currently, her main focus is on spatial cognition and navigation in both human children and non-human animals. An ability as basic and essential as navigation has ancient evolutionary foundations, and through behavioural studies with various species, she is piecing together the underlying mechanisms that allow navigating animals to learn and recognize places and find their way around their environment. Beyond those mechanisms that are shared across different species of animals, she is  also interested in how these core systems may serve, in humans, as the basis for an abstract conception of space, as in Euclidean geometry.

Research Projects

As a part of the research team at the Animal Cognition and Neuroscience lab at Cimec, I am currently involved in several projects involving spatial reorientation in various species of fish, bumblebees, and chicks. By developing new methodologies in animal navigation research, we have made it possible to make more valid comparisons in patterns of behaviour across various species.

Current collaborations

• Harvard University – Professor Elizabeth Spelke
• Temple University – Professor Nora Newcombe
  Cimec - Marius Peelen
  CIMeC -  Luigi Cattaneo
  University of Durham, UK - Prof Colin Lever
  Italian Institute of Technology - Prof Valter Tucci
  Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome - Prof Maria Luisa Scattoni
  Wesleyan University - Prof Anna Shusterman
  MIT - Nathan Winkler Rhoades, PhD

Publications (last three years)

Lee, S. A., Winkler-Rhoades, N., & Spelke, E. S. (in press). Spontaneous reorientation is guided by perceived surface distance, not by image matching or comparison. PLOS ONE.

Spelke, E. S., & Lee, S. A. (2012). Core system of geometry in animal minds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367, 2784-2793.

Lee, S. A., Vallortigara, G., Ruga, V., & Sovrano, V. A. (2012). Independent uses of geometry and landmarks in a spontaneous reorientation task: A study of two species of fish. Animal Cognition, 5, 861-870. 

Lee, S. A., Spelke, E. S., & Vallortigara, G. (2012). Chicks, like children, spontaneously reorient by 3-D environmental geometry, not by image matching. Biology Letters, 8, 492-494.

Lee, S. A., Sovrano, V. A., & Spelke, E. S. (2012). Navigation as a source of geometric knowledge: Young children’s use of length, angle, distance, and direction in a reorientation task. Cognition, 123,144-161

Shusterman, A., Lee, S. A., & Spelke, E. S. (2011). Cognitive effects of language on human navigation. Cognition, 120, 186-201.

Lee, S. A, & Spelke, E. S. (2011). Young children navigate by computing layout geometry, not by matching images of the environment. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18, 192-198.

Hyde, D. C., Winkler-Rhoades, N., Lee, S. A., Izard, V., Shapiro, K. A., & Spelke, E. S. (2011). Spatial and numerical abilities without a complete natural language, Neuropsychologia, 49, 924-936.

Lee, S. A., & Spelke, E. S. (2010). Two systems of spatial representation underlying navigation. Experimental Brain Research, 206, 179-188.

Spelke, E. S., Lee, S. A., & Izard, V. (2010). Beyond core knowledge: Natural geometry. Cognitive Science, 34, 863-884.

Lee, S. A., & Spelke, E. S. (2010). A modular mechanism for navigation in disoriented children. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 152-176.