Psychology

Profile

Background

KIM A. BARD is Professor of Comparative Developmental Psychology, Director of the Centre for Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and President of the Primate Society of Great Britain (see www.psgb.org).  Prior to arriving at Portsmouth in 1999, she was Research Scientist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, where she investigated the roles of emotion and socialization in early development, and designed a Responsive Care Nursery for chimpanzees to enhance their species-typical development.  She received her BA with Honors in Psychology from Wheaton College, and her PhD in Comparative/Developmental Psychology from Georgia State University, based on fieldwork with orangutans in Borneo, Indonesia.  She currently serves on the Science, Research, & Practice Advisory Board of the Down Syndrome Educational Trust, UK, on the Advisory Board of Primates and is Associate Editor of the British Journal of Psychology.  Prof. Bard has more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and 30 book chapters.

Teaching Responsibilities 

Normally, Prof. Bard lectures on the BSc (Hons) Psychology course in her specialty areas of comparative psychology, infancy, observational methods, and emotional development, and supervises honours projects that involve early social cognition, nonhuman primates, and emotional development, in addition to projects that use observational or ethological methods, and supervises postgraduate researchers-in-training.

During the period from October 2010 – September 2013, however, Prof Bard is on sabbatical leave from teaching, and is conducted research funded by The Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant, entitled “Socio-emotional experiences and primate social cognition”.

Research Interests 

Kim Bard has a distinctive perspective, which concerns understanding the process of development in evolution. She conducts empirical studies with an eye to clarifying universal and species-specific characteristics of humans and great apes. Her studies of social cognition suggest that humans and great apes share a large degree of plasticity, especially in early socio-emotional communicative abilities.  These social cognitive abilities include intentional and referential communication, and social referencing (i.e., the ability to seek information from a caregiver about novel objects and use that emotional information to regulate behaviour).  The study of these abilities across species leads to better understanding of the precursors, contexts, and sequelae of social cognition in human development.

Grants

• KA Bard, PI, 2010-2013, The Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant
• KA Bard, PI, 2010-2011, The Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship for Prof Sarah T. Boysen at University of Portsmouth, UK.
• Dr. Lola Canamero, Project leader, University of Herfordshire, 2006-2010, EU-FP6-2005-IST-6, “FEELIX GROWING: FEEL, Interact, eXpress: a Global appRoach to develOpment With INterdisciplinary Grounding”, (total costs 2,549,500 euros). KA Bard is the PI for University of Portsmouth partner participation (£162,913). see www.feelix-growing.org
• KA Bard, PI, 2002-2005, The Leverhulme Trust, Research Interchange Grant entitled “Chimpanzee Emotions: Development of a facial action coding system” (£128,031).   www.chimpfacs.com

Recent Publications

More recent publications