Nicky Clayton · Lablypedia

In a nutshell

Nicola Susan Clayton (born 22 November 1962) is a British psychologist. She is Professor of Comparative Cognition at the University of Cambridge, Scientist in Residence at Rambert Dance Company, co-founder of 'The Captured Thought', a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, where she is Director of Studies in Psychology, and a fellow of the Royal Society since 2010. Clayton was made Honorary Director of Studies and advisor to the 'China UK Development Centre'(CUDC) in 2018. She has been awarded professorships by Nanjing University, Institute of Technology, China (2018), Beijing University of Language and Culture, China (2019), and Hangzhou Diangi University, China (2019). Clayton was made Director of the Cambridge Centre for the Integration of Science, Technology and Culture (CCISTC) in 2020. A position she held until 2023. Since 2024, Clayton is deputy chair of the steering committee for the future researcher initiative at UniHive.

Related on Lably

Through Memory, Biology and Psychology

Lab · Class 11Psychology Experiments Lab · Class 11Binary and Logic Gates LabThe Pattern Parade Lab · Class 9Biology Lab — Helix Studio Hub

Early life and education

Clayton graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in zoology from the University of Oxford in 1984, before gaining a PhD from the University of St Andrews in 1987.

3 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

Career

University of Cambridge

Clayton has made major contributions in the study of animal cognition as well as cognitive development in human children, with significant impact in the neurobiology of memory and overall cognitive development.^[5]Her expertise in the study of comparative cognition integrates a knowledge of both biology and psychology in providing new methods of thinking about the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children. Clayton studies cognition not only in humans but also in members of the crow family (including jackdaws, rooks and jays). This work has challenged many assumptions that only humans can reminisce about the past and plan for the future, and that only humans can understand other times as well as other minds. Her work has also led to a re-evaluation of the cognitive capacities of animals, specifically birds, and resulted in a theory that intelligence evolved independently in at least two groups, the apes and the crows, and most recently cephalopods. This has also had scientific impact in changing the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill. Nicky presented an edition of Between the Ears entitled 'Year of the Covids' on BBC Radio 3 on 3 April 2023.

Rambert Dance Company

Since 2009, Clayton has worked with the Rambert Dance Company as science collaborator, then scientific adviser, and now scientist-in-residence. As a dancer, specializing in tango and salsa, she draws evidence from both the arts and science in her collaborations. In 2009, Clayton experienced her first collaboration by becoming involved in a dance piece called The Comedy of Change, which was inspired by Charles Darwin's ideas of natural and sexual selection. She met the choreographer and Artistic Director of Rambert Dance Company, Mark Baldwin, and gave input about science that could inform the piece. Other choreographic works inspired by science Clayton has collaborated with Baldwin on include Seven For a Secret, Never To Be Told, What Wild Ecstasy, The Strange Charm of Mother Nature, The Creation, Perpetual Movement and Bold.

The piece Seven For a Secret, Never To Be Told was based on the psychology of children, an area of Clayton's research. Clayton singled out themes related to the behavioural development of children, such as the importance of play, which helped to inspire the choreography. This piece was another collaboration between Clayton and Baldwin; the title inspired by a line from the nursery rhyme One for Sorrow, which was based on a superstition associating the number of magpies one sees to prediction of one's future.

The Captured Thought

Another of Clayton's collaborations is with the artist and author Clive Wilkins, who has been Artist in Resident in the psychology department at the University of Cambridge since 2012, a position created especially for Wilkins. Their collaboration arose out of a mutual interest in mental time travel and resulted in Clayton and Wilkins co-founding "The Captured Thought~ an arts/science collaboration." Their work and lectures explore the subjective experience of thinking, by drawing evidence from both science and the arts to examine perception and the nature of mental time travel, as well as the mechanisms we use to think about the future and reminisce about the past. The goal of this project is to illuminate ideas concerning memories and question the power of analysis. Important aspects of The Captured Thought's work have been highlighted in articles in 'The Guardian' newspaper in 2019 and in 'Die Zeit' magazine in 2020. The Captured Thought were invited speakers at The University of Vienna's CogSciHub inauguration 2019 and India's National Brain Research Centre 16th Foundation Day. Clayton and Wilkins continue to present their work in lectures to universities and conferences across the globe~ including UK, Europe, USA, Asia, China and Australasia. Their work together featured in the New Scientist Special Christmas and New Year issue 2022.

Published works

1998: Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays
2001: Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies in scrub jays
2004: The mentality of crows. Convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes
2006: Food-caching western scrubjays keep track of who was watching when
2007: Planning for the future by Western Scrub-Jays
2009: Western scrub-jays conceal auditory information when competitors can hear but cannot see
2009: Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5- year-old-children: The ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view
2009: Chimpanzees solve the trap problem when the confound of tool-use is removed
2012: Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) overcome their current desires to anticipate two distinct future needs and plan for them appropriately
2013: Careful cachers and prying pilferers: Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) limit auditory information available to competitors
2013: Evidence suggesting that desire-state attribution may govern food sharing in Eurasian jays
2014: EPS Mid Career Award Lecture. Ways of Thinking: From Crows to Children and Back Again
2014: Of babies and birds: complex tool behaviours are not sufficient for the evolution of the ability to create a novel causal intervention
2014: Pilfering Eurasian jays use visual and acoustic information to locate caches
2014: The Evolution of Self Control
2015: Thinking ahead about where something is needed: New insights about episodic foresight in preschoolers
2019: Tricks of the Mind. Experiencing the Impossible Current Biology. Book review
2019: Mind Tricks. Magic and mysticism reveal cognitive shortcuts with implications beyond entertainment
2019: Reflections on the Spoon Test. Neuropsychologia
2020: An unexpected audience. Science
2021: Exploring the perceptual inabilities of Eurasian jays (Garrulus glandarius) using magic effects. PNAS
2021: Schnell, A.K., Clayton, N.S., Hanlon, R.T. & Jozet-Alves, C.. Episodic-like memory is preserved with age in cuttlefish. Proceedings of the Royal Society, 288, 20211052
2021: Schnell, A. K., Loconsole, M., Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Wilkins, C. & Clayton, N. S.. Jays are sensitive to cognitive illusions. Royal Society Open Science, 8, 202358
2021: Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Wilkins, C. & Clayton, N. S.. The ape that lived to tell the tale. The evolution of the art of storytelling and its relationship to Mental Time Travel and Theory of Mind. Frontiers in Psychology 12, 755–783
2022: Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Schnell, A. K., Wilkins, C. & Clayton, N. S.. Could it be Protomagic? Deceptive tactics in non-human animals resemble magician’s misdirection. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research and Practice, in press
2022: Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Wilkins, C. & Clayton, N. S.. Are magicians specialists at identifying deceptive motion? The role of expertise in being fooled by sleight of hand. Scientific Reports, in press
2023: Goldberg J, Wilkins, C. A. P. & Clayton, N. S. (2023). Sleight of Wing. The Linking Ring, in press
2023: Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Miller, R. A., Wilkins, C. A. P. & Clayton, N. S. (2023). Manual action expectation and biomechanical ability in three species of New World monkey. Current Biology, 33, 1-6.
2024: Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Schnell, A. K., Wilkins, C. & Clayton, N. S. (2024). Beyond the Tricks: The Science and Comparative Cognition of Magic. Annual Review of Psychology 75, 289–293
2025: Ajuwon, V., Monteiro, T,. Schnell, A. K. & Clayton, N. S. (2025). To Know or Not to Know. Curiousity and the value of prospective information in animals. Learning and Behavior 53, 114-127
2025: Cornero, F. C., Lane, W. & Clayton. N. S. (2025). Can an old rook learn new tricks? Vocal command comprehesion [sic?] and obedience in rooks. Animal Cognition, in Press.
2025: Veit, W., Browning, H., Garcia-Pelegrin, E., Davies, J. R., DuBois, J. G. & Clayton, N. S. (2025). Dimensions of Corvid Consciousness. Animal Cognition, 28(1), 1-17.
2026: Pendleton, Pritchard, Wilkinson, Wilkins, Clayton (2026) From plausibility in climate-risk scenarios: a cognitive framework for decision-making under deep uncertainty

Awards

1997: Best Teachers in America Award
1999: American Psychological Association's Frank Beach Award
2003: Klaus Immelmann Award in Animal Behavior
2010: Jean-Marie Delwart Award in Comparative and Evolutionary Neuroscience, Belgium Academy of Sciences
2010: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society
2012: Experimental Psychology Society Mid-Career Award
2013: Fellow of the American Ornithological Society
2019: President of the British Science Association Psychology Section
2021: ASAB Tinbergen Lecturer award
2022: Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) Medal
2024: Comparative Cognition Research Award and special issue of the journal Learning and Behavior and associated podcast.

More in Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians

National Academy of SciencesScience branch of the US National Academies Bill ClintonPresident of the United States from 1993 to 2001 American Philosophical SocietyAmerican scholarly organization and learned society Birth nameA birth name is the name of a person given when they are born. The term may be applied to National Institutes of HealthUS government medical research agency GermansPeople of Germany