Born in 1949, Sally Boysen was raised in Sandusky, Ohio. After studying anthropolgy, psychology and zoology as an undergraduate at Ohio State University, Boysen completed her Ph.D. in 1984. Her current research interests center on animal cognition. She is particularly interested in the acquisition of counting abilities and numerical competence in non-human primates. Boysen also studies cognitive development in the great apes, including attribution, self-recognition, and intentional behavior, and social behavior and tool use in captive lowland gorillas.

Her collaborative research with Gary Berntson includes the application of non-invasive psycho-physiological measures to attention and cognition in primates, and cardiac indices of visual and auditory recognition in the great apes. Boysen is currently Consulting Editor for the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

For more about Sally Boysen and her work with primates, visit the FRONTIERS Web Feature "What Are They Thinking?"