Faculty in Focus: The Learning Laboratories of Francys Subiaul

April 30, 2026

Authored by:

John DiConsiglio, Video by Long Nguyen

At the National Children's Museum in Washington, D.C., 5-year-old Anaya grins as she taps through a tablet game, stacks cubes and repeats silly phrases that send George Washington University student researchers into cheers.

On the GW campus, in the basement of the Hortense Amsterdam House, Walter-a 9-year-old terrier-Corgi mix with a nose for treats-paces in front of upside-down yellow cups while a Ph.D. student points him toward his hidden reward.

Across G Street, in a Hall of Government classroom, students watch monkeys on screen-videos of bonobos in an Iowa conservation sanctuary playing a version of Simon Says on a touchscreen.

These are the research worlds of Francys Subiaul, an associate professor in the Departments of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Anthropology at the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

Each scene-a child playing with blocks, a dog hunting snacks, an ape at a computer-is a learning laboratory. And for Subiaul, each offers clues to a riddle that's become his life's work: What are the secrets of social learning-the ways humans and animals acquire knowledge by observing others? And what makes us so good at it?

"In a general sense, all animals are social learners," Subiaul said. "But humans are truly exceptional-if not downright weird!"

Subiaul is a cognitive scientist-an interdisciplinary field that investigates intelligence and how the mind and brain work. His research on social learning also leaps forward into the more complex realm of cultural learning-a rare step taken by only a few species.

Social learning is influenced by watching others, Subiaul explained. It's a broad category, encompassing everything from imitation to learning from others' mistakes. Think of a school child stopping himself from speaking out of turn after seeing the teacher correct a classmate.

Cultural learning is a sophisticated form of social learning where information is passed across communities over generations. That might mean children adapting to norms like shaking hands in one culture and bowing in another. In chimpanzee troops, the same concept may play out when some apes learn to use sticks to fish for termites in trees while others probe for honey in beehives.

"Knowledge increases exponentially when we not only get information from others, but combine and generalize that information," Subiaul noted. Indeed, Subiaul says that's the key to our cognitive success. "We're not so great at creating new ideas-we're much better at recycling them."

Evolution, animated

Subiaul's scientific curiosity was sparked early-not from a textbook but from a Disney cartoon. After moving from Cuba to Miami at age 7, he remembers being captivated by the movie "Fantasia." Rather than Mickey Mouse's beloved "Sorcerer's Apprentice" scene, a lesser-known dinosaur sequence grabbed his attention. "Most people don't even remember the dinosaur scene," he laughed. When he asked his mother, she described a prehistoric world filled with strange creatures. "I was fascinated by that," he said.

A high school psychology class introduced him to the evolution of the mind, and in college he discovered anthropology. "I had no idea that there was a whole discipline that studied human evolution," Subiaul said.

Subiaul's research spans disciplines-like psychology, linguistics and cognitive science-as well as species. At its core, he studies what makes humans unique, framing our development in relation to other living primates and animals that have evolved alongside us.

"We are extremely versatile in what and how much we learn from others," he said. "We mimic sounds and gestures, we invent new tools and create imaginary worlds. No other animal is quite like us."

Learning machines

Back at the Children's Museum, GW senior Eliane Spalding, a researcher in Subiaul's Social Cognition Lab, cheers on Anaya as she builds a toy tower. "Good job!" Spalding claps. It looks like play, but as Spalding explained, it's really a carefully designed social learning experiment.

Spalding showed Anaya two separate components of the tower: a base made of stacked cubes and a top of connected flat squares. "She never saw one whole tower," said Spalding, a biological anthropology and political science major. "But she combined them on her own."

"Kids are…learning machines," Subiaul said. At the Children's Museum, he guides young learners through tasks with student researchers (from left) Layla Moussavi, Eliane Spalding and Stella Simpson.

Through similar tasks-like punching patterns on a tablet and recognizing subtle shifts in nonsensical word combinations-Anaya demonstrated how young minds absorb and organize information from the world around them.

"Kids are extremely curious. They're learning machines," Subiaul said. "Children show us, in fast-forward, how a mind gets built-a window into how human intelligence evolved."

For sophomore research assistant Stella Simpson, a cognitive neuroscience major, the project-a collaboration with Georgetown University and the University of Maryland-bridges theory and practice. Drawing on both her fieldwork and her babysitting jobs, she's seen how quickly children develop. "It's fascinating to connect what I learn in the lab to what I see in real life," said Simpson, who credits Subiaul with fostering her interest in child development. "I never considered how complex social learning is before being in his lab. Plus the kids are cute-so what's not to like?"

The dog pound

Meanwhile, Walter the dog is sniffing for treats at the GW Canine Cognition Collaborative, Subiaul's partnership with the Animal Welfare League of Arlington and local pet owners.

Walter follows Ph.D. student Anya Parks-Russell's pointing cues to find the cheesy prizes hidden under plastic cups. This social learning shell game tests how dogs spontaneously respond to human directions-while also offering insights into the evolution of our own communication.

"Dogs are an interesting model of the effects of the environment on cognition," Subiaul said, noting that our canine companions lived alongside early humans for as many as 30,000 years. "Their whole evolution has been shaped by us."

Ph.D. student Anya Parks-Russell uses pointing cues to help Walter the dog find hidden treats at the GW Canine Cognition Collaborative.

Subiaul was initially reluctant to add dogs to his research resume. With no biological link to humans, "I didn't see what we could get from them," he admitted. But former anthropology Ph.D. student Courtney Sexton, M.S. '19, M.Phil. '23, who conducted her own cross-species communication studies, convinced Subiaul that old dogs can teach humans new tricks. "Dogs are excellent social learners in the sense that they're highly attuned to us," Subiaul said.

When Subiaul dog-sits Walter, a friend's playful pup, he sees this dynamic firsthand: Walter wags his tail and drops a toy into his lap, inviting a human into an interspecies game. "That kind of engagement with another species is extremely unusual," he said. "Thousands of years of these interactions have made dogs, in some ways, more like us than our closest primate relatives."

Superstar learners

After nearly two decades at GW, Subiaul remains as curious as ever. For a collaboration with the Ape Initiative in Iowa, he's recently received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to study language-trained bonobos. His courses-including Foundations of Human Communication and Primate Cognition-translate his research questions into classroom discussions. And his popular lab draws 15 to 20 students each year with an eclectic mix of majors from anthropology to business.

"For someone who is so intellectual and who knows so much, you can approach him with almost any question," said Layla Moussavi, a sophomore neuroscience major in Subiaul's lab who also works on the Children's Museum project. "He gives [students] an opportunity to be deeply involved in his research."

Subiaul's scientific bucket list includes a long-held fascination with "super learners," as he calls them-people with exceptional abilities to imitate and absorb others' knowledge. He hopes to someday, for example, study dancers who quickly master choreography and Meryl Streep-like actors who excel at mimicking accents and impersonation.

And there's one more animal he'd add to his research dream team: dolphins. The marine mammals are social observational superstars, Subiaul said, passing down foraging and communication skills across generations. "Just imagine what dolphins might do if they had hands-would they conquer the world?" Subiaul joked. "That opens up so many new possibilities."