Objective The way children learn to communicate verbally and non-verbally depends to a great extent to the culture in which they are raised. Much is known about the social environment of children living in Western societies, but much less is known about how children are socialized in hunter-gatherer societies. The proposed project aims at gaining insights into the development of communication in hunter-gatherer children. The project’s aims are • to develop a minimally intrusive assessment method that gives access to the learning process by including physiological measures.• to analyze physiological responses to infants’ verbal and non-verbal interactions with their social environment focusing on the Hadza, as a particularly interesting cultural community. • extract patterns in data from diverse sources (audio, video, observation, electrophysiological measures) with automated data mining methods.The approach is interdisciplinary, integrating methods from anthropology and ethology with modern physiological assessment methods, innovative wearable technology and data mining techniques. It is important to know more about the development of communication in Hadza infants as communication in hunter-gatherers has not been comprehensively studied and the Hadza are a community living in conditions that resemble our ancestors’ living conditions. This helps to shed light on the evolution of language in our species. As hunter-gatherer societies are increasingly threatened due to ecological, economic and political changes in their environment, it is crucial to conduct this research as soon as possible.My personal training targets are to apply my previous field work experience to a new and interesting cultural community and relate this to theories about the evolution of language, to fruitfully combine methods from different disciplines and learn how to use data mining techniques in order to analyze large amounts of data from various sources. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetinternet of thingsnatural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata miningsocial sciencessociologyanthropologynatural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological behavioural sciencesethologysocial sciencessociologydemographyhuman migrations Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Main Programme H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility Topic(s) MSCA-IF-2014-EF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) Call for proposal H2020-MSCA-IF-2014 See other projects for this call Funding Scheme MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF Coordinator TILBURG UNIVERSITY- UNIVERSITEIT VAN TILBURG Net EU contribution € 177 598,80 Address WARANDELAAN 2 5037 AB Tilburg Netherlands See on map Region Zuid-Nederland Noord-Brabant Midden-Noord-Brabant Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 177 598,80