Ben Kenward CV

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Education and employment

2024 - : Lecturer in Psychology at Uppsala University, Sweden (from April).

2023 - : Sociotechnical Lead for the European Sustainable Use Group, working on the EU Horizon project PRO-COAST.

2016 - : Senior Lecturer, Centre for Psychological Research, Oxford Brookes University, UK (currently on career break).

2005 - 2015: Researcher, Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden.

2006 - 2015: Part-time lecturer, Departments of Psychology and Zoology, Stockholm University, Sweden.

2000 - 2005: PhD: “Why do New Caledonian crows use tools?”, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK.

1999 - 2000: Volunteer research assistant, Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Sweden.

1996 - 1999: BA in Biological Sciences, University of Oxford, UK.

Research Interests

Because climate and ecological breakdown currently presents an existential threat to human civilisations, I have recently shifted research focus to psychological aspects of these crises. I have demonstrated that the UK public wanted to prioritise the environment in post-Covid-19 economic recovery (Kenward & Brick, 2021), responded largely positively to large-scale disruptive activism (Kenward & Brick, preliminarily accepted), and show majority support for wind turbines in beautiful rural areas (Kenward, 2023, working paper). I have also examined how morality and artificial intelligence relate to the crises (Kenward & Sinclair, 2021).

The thread running through my previous work was a desire to better understand the interplay between genetically inherited tendencies and individual and social learning in the development of social and non-social behaviour. One particular interest was in the development of the tendency to punish antisocial others (Arini et al., 2021, 2023; Kenward & Dahl, 2011; Kenward & Östh, 2012, 2015). In sum, from the pre-school years children engage in punishment, but deterrence motives appear more important than a belief in deservingness of punishment or enjoyment of inflicting it. Another interest was in what motivates children to imitate others, with my work indicating the importance of norm learning (Kenward et al., 2011, Kenward, 2012). A further study examined Swedish gender-neutral pedagogy, finding it somewhat effective at achieving its goals (Schutts et al., 2017).

My previous focus was 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. I pioneered the application of certain techniques in infants and toddlers (Kenward et al., 2009; Kenward, 2010), demonstrating, for example, that 10-month-olds expect the outcome of their actions in advance of carrying them out. Other infant work included studies of gaze following (Gredebäck et al., 2008).

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., 2005; 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., 2011), studied the ecology of the species (Kenward et al., 2004), 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. 2004), and the development of an outdoor Skinner box for studying learning in wild squirrel populations (Kenward et al., 2005).

Funding awarded

2013 – 2018: Co-applicant. The social foundation of cognition. Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse. £620,000 (8,000,000 Swedish crowns).

2013 – 2017: Co-applicant. Developmental social cognition and action understanding. European Research Council: ERC-StG CACTUS 312292. £1,080,000 (13,900,000 Swedish crowns).

2012 – 2015: Principle investigator. Early moral development: from infants’ prosocial preferences to co-operation between pre-schoolers. Swedish research council: 421-2011-1785. £210,000 (2,700,000 Swedish crowns).

2009 – 2012: Principle investigator. A psychological perspective on early moral development. The Swedish foundation for humanities and social sciences: P2008-01039:1. £160,000 (2,040,000 Swedish crowns).

Publications

Working paper

Kenward, B. (2023) SOOLE Preliminary Report 2.1: Majority support for local wind turbines in beautiful rural areas in the South of England. [link]

Peer reviewed

Kenward, B. & Brick, C. (preliminarily accepted) Large-scale disruptive activism strengthened environmental attitudes in the United Kingdom. [link]

Arini, R. L., Mahmood, M., Bocarejo Aljure, J., Ingram, G., Wiggs, L., & Kenward, B. (2023). Children endorse deterrence motivations for third-party punishment but derive higher enjoyment from compensating victims. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. [link]

Kenward, B. & Brick, C. (2021). Even Conservative voters want the environment to be at the heart of post-COVID-19 economic reconstruction in the UK. Journal of Social and Political Psychology. [link]

Kenward, B. & Sinclair, T. (2021). Machine morality, moral progress, and the looming environmental disaster. Cognitive Computation and Systems, 3(2), 83-90. [link]

Arini, R., Wiggs, L., & Kenward, B. (2021). Moral duty and equalisation concerns motivate children’s third-party punishment. Developmental Psychology, 57, 1325-1341. [link]

Eriksson, M., Kenward, B., Poom, L., & Stenberg, G. (2021). The behavioral effects of cooperative and competitive board games in preschoolers. The Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 62(3), 355-364. [link]

Marciszko, C., Forssman, L., Kenward, B., Lindskog, M., Fransson, M., & Gredebäck, G. (2020). The social foundation of executive function. Developmental Science, 23(3), e12924. [link]

Astor, K., Lindskog, M., Forssman, L., Kenward, B., Fransson, M., Skalkidou, A., . . . Gredebäck, G. (2020). Social and emotional contexts predict the development of gaze following in early infancy. Royal Society Open Science, 7(201178). [link]

Kenward, B. & Pilling., M. (2019). The now-moment is believed privileged because now is when happening is experienced (Commentary article). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, e259.

Kenward, B., Berggren, M., Kitazaki, M., Itakura, S., & Kanakogi, Y. (2019). Implicit social associations for geometric-shape agents more strongly influenced by visual form than by explicitly identified social actions. Psychologia, 61(1), 37-52. [link]

Lindskog, M., Rogell, M., Kenward, B., & Gredebäck, G. (2019). Discrimination of small forms in a deviant-detection paradigm by 10-month-old infants. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(1032). [link]

Juvrud, J., Bakker, M., Kaduk, K., DeValk, J. M., Gredebäck, G., & Kenward, B. (2018). Longitudinal continuity in understanding and production of giving-related behavior from infancy to childhood. Child Development

Kenward, B., Koch, F., Forssman, L., Brehm, J., Tidemann, I., Sundqvist, A., . . . Gredebäck, G. (2017). Saccadic reaction times in infants and adults: spatiotemporal factors, gender, and inter-laboratory variation. Developmental Psychology. [Full open science repository]

Shutts, K., Kenward, B., Falk, H., Ivegran, A., & Fawcett, C. (2017). Early preschool environments and gender: effects of gender pedagogy in Sweden. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 162, 1-17.

Forslund, T., Kenward, B., Granqvist, P., Gredebäck, G., & Brocki, K. C. (2016). Diminished ability to identify facial emotional expressions in children with disorganized attachment representations. Developmental Science, n/a-n/a. doi:10.1111/desc.12465

Gredebäck, G., Kaduk, K., Bakker, M., Gottwald, J., Ekberg, T., Elsner, C., . . . Kenward, B. (2015). The neuropsychology of infants’ pro-social preferences. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 106-113

Kenward, B., Hellmer, K., Söderström Winter, L., & Eriksson, M. (2015). Four-year-olds' strategic allocation of resources: attempts to elicit reciprocation correlate negatively with spontaneous helping. Cognition, 136, 1-8

Kenward, B. & Östh, T. (2015). Five-year-olds punish antisocial adults. Aggressive Behavior, 41, 413-420. [download]

Kenward, B. & Gredebäck, G. (2013). Infants help a non-human agent. PLOS One. [download]

Kenward, B. & Östh, T. (2012). Enactment of third-party punishment by 4-year-olds. Frontiers in Psychology. [download]

Kenward, B. (2012). Over-imitating preschoolers believe unnecessary actions are normative and enforce their performance by a third party. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. [download]

Kenward, B. & Dahl, M. (2011). Preschoolers distribute resources according to recipients' moral status. Developmental Psychology, 47, 1054-1064. [download]

Kenward, B. & Nilsson, D. (2011). Catching of balls unexpectedly thrown and unexpectedly fired by cannon. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 113, 171-187. [download]

Kenward, B., Karlsson, M. & Persson, J. (2011). Over-imitation is better explained by norm learning than by distorted causal learning. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, 278, 1239-1246. [link]

Kenward, B., Schloegl, C., Rutz, C., Weir, A. A. S., Bugnyar, T. & Kacelnik, A. (2011). On the evolutionary and ontogenetic origins of tool-oriented behaviour in New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides).Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 102, 870-877. [download]

Kenward, B. (2010). 10-month infants visually anticipate the outcome of a learnt action. Infancy, 15, 337-361. [download]

Lopes, M., Melo, F., Kenward, B. & Santos-Victor, J. (2009). A computational model of social-learning mechanisms. Adaptive Behavior, 17, 467-483. [link]

Kenward, B., Folke, S., Holmberg, J., Johansson, A. & Gredebäck, G. (2009). Goal-directedness and decision making in infants. Developmental Psychology, 45, 809-819. [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]

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.

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. (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.