2006 - : Occasional guest lecturer, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University.
2005 - : Researcher, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University.
2000 - 2005: PhD: “Why do New Caledonian crows use tools?”, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford.
1999 - 2000: Volunteer research assistant, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University.
1996 - 1999: BA (Honours) in Biological Sciences (2nd class, 1st division), University of Oxford.
As of 2009 I have now begun a new project investigating the developmental origins of moral judgement in young children.
My recent focus has been on the development of goal-directed behaviour in children, by which I mean behaviour motivated by knowledge of and desire for an action’s consequences. Such goal-directedness has only been demonstrated with any certainly by manipulating the value of an action’s outcome and detecting a consequent change in the tendency to perform the action. I have pioneered the application of this method in infants and toddlers (Kenward et al., in press). The results are surprising and are currently causing me to question the widespread and intuitive assumption that infants are motivated to act because they expect and desire the consequences of their actions. In related work, however, I have demonstrated that 10-month-olds do expect the outcome of their actions (Kenward, under review), indicating a possible disconnection between infants’ knowledge and their ability to use such knowledge to motivate action. Other infant work includes studies of gaze following (Gredebäck et al., in press) and imitation (ongoing).
My doctoral work focussed on the development of tool use and manufacture in juvenile New Caledonian crows. I demonstrated that the basic skills arise primarily through interplay of inherited tendencies and individual learning, although social learning also plays a role (Kenward et al., 2005a; Kenward et al., 2006). I have also studied the laterality of tool use (Weir et al., 2004), proposed a hypothesis to explain its evolution (Kenward et al., submitted-b), studied the ecology of the species (Kenward et al., 2004a), and contributed to several reviews of crow tool use (Kacelnik et al., 2006; Kacelnik et al., 2004).
Other previous work has included the theoretical study of the evolution of animal communication using neural network models of signal receivers (Kenward et al. 2004b), and the development of an outdoor Skinner box for studying learning in wild squirrel populations (Kenward et al., 2005b).
I have organised a symposium (at which I will also present) entitled “The surprisingly late development of goal-directed instrumental action”, which has just been accepted by the Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, 2008.
Aug 2007 Goal-oriented behaviour in the human infant. Human Mind – Human Kind, Aarhus University, Denmark. Submitted talk.
June 2005 Ontogeny of tool oriented behaviours in the New Caledonian crow. St. Andrews International Conference on Animal Social Learning. Submitted talk.
Nov 2004 Social input is not necessary for the expression of tool-oriented behaviour in New Caledonian Crows. Animal Logics symposium, Vienna, Austria. Invited seminar.
Sep 2003 A machine for the identification and feeding of individual squirrels. Third International Tree Squirrel Colloquium. Submitted talk.
Apr 2002 How repetitive signals evolve. Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Easter Conference, Bristol, UK. Submitted talk.
Kenward, B. In press. 10-month infants visually anticipate the outcome of a learnt action. Infancy. [download]
Lopes, M., Melo, F., Kenward, B., Santos-Victor, J. In press. A Computational Model of Social-Learning Mechanisms. Adaptive Behavior. [link]
Kenward, B., Folke, S., Holmberg, J., Johansson, A., & Gredebäck, G. In press. Goal-directedness and decision making in infants. Developmental Psychology. [download]
Gredebäck, G., Theuring, C., Hauf, P. & Kenward, B. 2008. The microstructure of infants' gaze during perception of overt attention shifts. Infancy, 13, 533-543.
Kenward, B., Rutz, C., Weir, A. A. S. & Kacelnik, A. 2006. Development of tool use in New Caledonian crows: inherited action patterns and social influence. Animal Behaviour, 72, 1329-1343. [download]
Kenward, B., Weir, A. A. S., Rutz, C. & Kacelnik, A. 2005a. Tool manufacture by naive juvenile crows. Nature, 433, 121-121. [download]
Kenward, B., Kenward, R. E. & Kacelnik, A. 2005b. An automatic technique for selective feeding and logging of individual wild squirrels. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 17, 271-277.
Kenward, B., Rutz, C., Weir, A. A. S., Chappell, J. & Kacelnik, A. 2004a. Morphology and sexual dimorphism of the New Caledonian crow Corvus moneduloides, with notes on its behaviour and ecology. Ibis, 146, 652-660. [download]
Kenward, B., Wachtmeister, C. A., Ghirlanda, S. & Enquist, M. 2004b. Spots and stripes: the evolution of repetition in visual signal form. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 230, 407-419. [download]
Weir, A. A. S., Kenward, B., Chappell, J. & Kacelnik, A. 2004. Lateralization of tool use in New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides). Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (Suppl.), 271, S344–S346. [download]
Kacelnik, A., Chappell, J., Weir, A. A. S. & Kenward, B. 2006. Cognitive adaptations for tool-related behaviour in New Caledonian crows. In: Comparative cognition: Experimental explorations of animal intelligence (Ed. by Wasserman, E. A. & Zentall, T. R.), pp. 515-528. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kacelnik, A., Chappell, J., Weir, A. A. S. & Kenward, B. 2004. Tool use and manufacture in birds. In: Encyclopedia of animal behavior (Ed. by Bekoff, M.), pp. 1067-1069. Westport, CT, US: Greenwood Publishing Group.