*Time*: 4pm (to 5:30pm) Budapest/Vienna time *Date*: Wednesday, March 9, 2022 *Venue*: Online, Zoom meeting 942 7892 8352 <https://us06web.zoom.us/j/94278928352?pwd=ckljaElMYnJtYW41b25sVGZNU09kQT09>, pw: xfhq44 *Speaker*: Nicolas Baumard <https://nicolasbaumards.org/> and Edgar Dubourg <https://edgardubourg.fr/> (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS | Département d’Études Cognitives, ENS-PSL) *Title*: *What fictions do people like at different ages? Predictions from evolutionary developmental psychology* *Abstract*: Narrative fictions (be it in the form of novels, movies, TV series or video games) have surely become the most widespread source of entertainment in the world. Why do humans spend so much time and resources consuming stories that they know to be false? We contend that fiction makers succeed in attracting people's attention by tapping into a myriad of specialized cognitive mechanisms that evolved to solve different adaptive challenges. For instance, humans, being omnivore foragers, evolved to be interested in exploring new environments and discovering new resources. These exploratory preferences can in turn be triggered by fiction makers through for instance the invention of imaginary worlds (i.e. Middle Earth, Hogwart, Hyrule). Importantly, evolutionary developmental psychologists have argued that adaptive challenges are not the same at different life stages. We can therefore derive from evolutionary psychology, and from the idea of evolutionary developmental psychology, a theory of the development of cognitive preferences across ontogeny, and make fine-grained and testable predictions about what fictions toddlers, children, adolescents, young adults and adults should like. *Please let me know if you would like to schedule an online meeting with the speaker. * ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu