David White | University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology

Assistant Professor

Department:

Psychology

Education:

BA, Psychology, University of Western Ontario; Ph.D., Psychology, McMaster University

Address:

Solomon Labs, 3720 Walnut St, Room D21

Phone:

215-898-7866

Email:

whitedj@psych.upenn.edu

Lab Page

Specific Research Areas:

Ecological and evolutionary approaches to the study of social learning and social development in cowbirds

Research Synopsis:

My work takes an ecological and evolutionary approach to study how the social environment can influence learning and development of functionally important behavior. I have studied social learning in several different contexts including rat foraging and Japanese quail mate choice.

More recently I have developed a research program that involves studying brown-headed cowbirds in large outdoor aviaries. I am interested in contextual effects on the birds' fitness, learning, and development. I focus on social factors impact communicative competence and reproductive success.

I have incorporated new tools into this preparation including, robotics, voice recognition and programmable databases, and computer simulations to model the patterns of behavior of cowbirds in the aviaries.

Dr. White will not be accepting new Psychology graduate students for Fall 2011.

Representative Courses:

PSYC 331 Research Methods in Animal Behavior

Appointments:

Psychology Graduate Group

Advisees:

Grace Freed-Brown [Psychology Graduate Student]
Andrew Gersick [Psychology Graduate Student]

Representative Publications:

White, D. J., Ho, L. & Freed-Brown, S. G. (2009). Counting chicks before they hatch: female cowbirds assess temporal quality of nests for parasitism. Psychological Science. 20, 1140-1145.

Freed-Brown, S. G. & White, D. J. (2009) Acoustic mate copying: female cowbirds attend to other females’ vocalizations to modify their song preferences. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B. 276, 3319-3325.

White, D. J. & Smith, V. A. (2007). Testing measures of animal social association by computer simulation. Behaviour. 144, 1447-1468.

White, D. J., King, A. P., West, M. J., Gros-Louis, J. & Papkhian, M. A. (2007). Constructing culture in cowbirds. Journal of Comparative Psychology. 121, 113-122

White, D. J., Ho, L., de los Santos, G. & Godoy, I. (2007). An experimental examination of preferences for nest contents in an obligate brood parasite, Molothrus ater. Behavioral Ecology, 18, 922-928

Freeberg, T. M. & White, D. J. (2006). Social traditions and the maintenance and loss of geographic variation in mating patterns of brown-headed cowbirds. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 19, 206-222.