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SFU Student

“After becoming a research assistant in Dr. Tanya Broesch’s lab in Fall of 2020, I decided to enroll in PSYC 393 Research Engagement with Dr. Broesch in Spring 2021. In this course, I worked on a spear-hunting project, which was a collaborative project with Dr. Sheina Lew-Levy, a biosocial anthropologist with research interests in hunter-gatherer societies, cross-cultural psychology, and social learning.

This project looked at the social learning in BaYaka children in the Congo Basin and how younger children from this hunter-gatherer society learn to hunt with spears through the teachings of others in the village. My job in the lab was to download videos and help code social learning and interactions in BORIS, a video, and audio coding software.

Cultural psychology has introduced me to several topics I can see myself working in, such as travelling to different field sites to help conduct research in non-western societies to expand on our western knowledge and on how humans socially interact with one another. Dr. Broesch has guided me and given me valuable insight into the different paths students take when it comes to getting involved in research and graduate school.”

Aislynn Sharrock is a fourth-year psychology major and a gerontology minor. Her research interests include social learning in focal individuals from the Congo Basin learning how to hunt with spears.


This post was originally posted on the SFU Psychology Instagram on August 12, 2021.