MSCA-PF-2025: Comparative Minds Research Group_Universitat de Girona

euraxess.ec.europa.eu - Jobboard; España; Presencial; EUR 30.000 - 45.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

The Comparative Minds research group at Universitat de Girona is seeking eligible researchers to apply for a role focusing on human and non-human behavior, cognition, and communication. Candidates will work on interdisciplinary research projects supported by a team of experienced supervisors, exploring key questions in psychology and linguistics. Successful candidates will also leverage an extensive network of international collaborators, contributing to the evolution of knowledge in these fields. Applications are open until July 1st, 2025.

Formación

• Experience in interdisciplinary research projects.
• Strong background in psychology, cognitive science, or linguistics.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment.

Responsabilidades

• Conduct research in psychology and cognition.
• Collaborate with an interdisciplinary team.
• Engage in the development and application of research methodologies.

Conocimientos

Interdisciplinary research

Team collaboration

Communication skills

Educación

PhD or equivalent in Psychology or related field

Descripción del empleo

Organisation / Company Universitat de Girona Department Department of Psychology Laboratory Comparative Minds Research Group Is the Hosting related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Description

University of Girona (UdG) is located in Girona city and is part of the Catalan public university system since 1992. UdG, deeply rooted in Catalonia and the Catalan culture, is one of the primary economic and cultural motors of the region. At the same time, it pursues a vocation of universality and openness to all traditions and cultures.

UdG is a public institution devoted to excellence in teaching and research and to participating in the progress and development of society through the creation, transmission, dissemination, and criticism of knowledge related to the sciences, technology, the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts. During the last 10 years, UdG has participated in more than 20 European Projects, including 7 ERC projects.

• Research Group:

The Comparative Minds research group is composed of four active researchers (plus one postdoctoral researcher and four PhD students) from the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Girona: Dr. Miquel Llorente Espino (Comparative Psychologist, Serra Húnter Fellow), Dr. Thomas Castelain (Cognitive Psychologist, Serra Húnter Fellow), Dr. Martijn Wokke (Neuroscientist, Ramón & Cajal researcher), all three members of the Department of Psychology, and Dr. Ingrid Vilà-Giménez (Psycholinguist), member of the Department of Specific Didactics.

The creation of this research group arises from the need to build an interdisciplinary team to address some fundamental questions concerning human and non-human behavior, cognition, and communication. Specifically, the research team aims to address the following questions: What are the distinctive psychological, cognitive, and communicative features and characteristics of our species? What is the phylogeny and ontogeny of communication and language? How have socio-cognitive and communicative abilities evolved in humans, and what are the explanatory factors? What is the influence of culture on cognition? How do multimodal language strategies, such as prosodic and gestural cues, develop in different communicative contexts? What is their contribution to language development and in the language teaching-learning process? Where do our thoughts come from, and how much awareness do we have of our ‘thinking’? What are the evolutionary and phylogenetic foundations of mental disorders in humans?

The research group strengthened and diversified the research activities carried out at the University of Girona in different ways. Firstly, it has established four new lines of research: (1) Comparative Psychology and Animal Behavior led by Dr. Miquel Llorente; (2) Sociocognitive Development and Communication led by Dr. Thomas Castelain; (3) Multimodal Language Development and Learningled by Dr. Ingrid Vilà-Giménez; (4) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Thinkingled by Dr. Martijn Wokke. Secondly, given its interdisciplinary nature, the group has diversified the research methods and techniques within the fields of neuroscience, psychology and (psycho)linguistics, bolstering an evolutionary, comparative, experimental, linguistic, and cross-cultural approach to investigating animal and human behavior, cognition, and communication. Importantly, the team provides a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the generation of knowledge in neuroscience, psychology and (psycho)linguistics and its theoretical and practical applications in education and mental health contexts.

Main research lines of interest

The members of the Comparative Minds research group have been leading and collaborating in numerous research projects funded by international and national agencies such as the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Independent Research Fund Denmark, “La Caixa” Foundation and the Generalitat de Catalunya, among others (for further details, please refer to the web page of the unit).

For the development of its research, the research group can also rely on an extensive network of close national and international collaborators who are leaders and experts in their respective fields. These collaborators include Dr. Federica Amici (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Dr. Marina Mosquera (Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution), Dr. Hugo Mercier (CNRS, Institut Jean Nicod), Dr. Olivier Mascaro (CNRS, University of Paris), Dr. Jean-Baptiste Van der Henst (CNRS, University of Lyon), Dr. Pilar Prieto (ICREA, Pompeu Fabra University), Dr. Ece Demir-Lira (University of Iowa), among many others.

The Comparative Minds research group aims to advance our understanding of human and non-human behavior, cognition, and communication, through (1) investigating the evolutionary origins of various aspects of human behavior, thereby identifying both shared and distinctive characteristics across species; (2) providing insights into the development of sociocognitive and communicative skills, and their application within education; (3) incorporating a multimodal approach to communication, through the integration of gesture and speech, to understand the role of speech gestures and prosody in language production and in linguistic and cognitive processing, with potential applications in educational practices; (4) contributing to the understanding of thinking, human consciousness, implicit learning, and their associated (neural) mechanisms; (5) employing a comparative perspective to study animal behavior and its relevance for human health and well-being to generate strategies for the prevention and treatment of mental health problems. These objectives are integrated into the four main lines of research, each of which is described in more detail below.

Comparative Psychology and Animal Behavior . This line of research is dedicated to the comparative study of different animal species, with a primary focus on non-human primates, across diverse settings from natural habitats to captivity. Our investigations delve into their behavior, cognitive processes, and personality, from both fundamental and applied research perspectives. By studying the behavior and cognition of species that share evolutionary ties with humans, as well as other non-human species, we aim to identify both similarities and differences, and thus understand the evolution and phylogeny of human behavior and our cognitive, emotional, social, and cultural systems. This research is essential for unraveling the evolutionary origins of our behaviors, including cognitive abilities, communication, and social dynamics. Understanding how other species experience the world and interact with their peers can be valuable from both a scientific and practical standpoint, with implications for biodiversity conservation, animal welfare, education, and human psychology.

Socio-cognitive Development and Communication . This line of research focuses on the understanding of how children make sense of their social environment, and how they communicate with and learn from others while considering the influence of culture on their socialization and cognitive development. We aim to address fundamental questions such as how epistemic vigilance, trust, social hierarchy, and argumentation emerge and develop in young children. Our research also explores the cognitive processes underlying collaborative learning and how cultural factors can impact its development. Beyond these theoretical considerations, our findings hold practical implications. By enhancing our understanding of these socio-cognitive processes, we can develop educational interventions to promote argumentative and reasoning skills in preschoolers, fostering both cognitive development and social interaction abilities.

Multimodal Language Development and Learning . This line of research explores the intricate nature of communication which extends beyond speech to encompass various non-verbal communicative elements such as hand, head, and body gestures or movements, as well as facial expressions. The combination of multiple modalities is referred to as "multimodal language". The main objective is to delve into the developmental and learning aspects of language from a multimodal perspective to unravel the predictive and causal mechanisms underlying co-speech gestures in human communication and cognition. This research will contribute to our knowledge of multimodal language development, leading to a better understanding of the pragmatic and discursive functions of co-speech gestures, as well as their linguistic and cognitive benefits in teaching-learning processes and children's language acquisition. The outcomes of this research hold significant practical and methodological implications for educational practices, offering insights that can enrich teaching methodologies and improve language learning results.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Thinking. Please close your eyes for a moment and consider what you will be doing tomorrow. While you are thinking about social appointments, dinner plans, or work related activities, something very intriguing is happening: You are mentally navigating through a simulated future created by your brain. Although thinking about tomorrow just now might feel like a deliberate and conscious process, internally generating information appears to be fundamental to how the brain operates, and often flies under the radar of awareness. To illustrate, when you see a person for the first time, your brain automatically starts to internally produce all kinds of thoughts or hypotheses about this person (our so-called first impression) that goes far beyond directly observable information. But also sometimes late at night, your brain might bother you with the generation of troublesome possible future scenarios that keep you from your precious sleep. These examples show that the brain’s information generation machinery operates with different levels of awareness and control to guide our behavior and our thinking. Remarkably, while much effort has been dedicated to understanding how external information is processed by the brain under different levels of awareness (e.g., during visual perception), the realm of internally generated information remains unclear. Through this research we aim to explore how the brain internally creates information, that contribute to processes such as inference (i.e., the filling-in of information that is not explicitly or immediately present) ‘thinking’ (i.e., the internal generation and transformation of information), and the generalization of prior experiences (apply previous experiences in novel situations).

• How to apply?

Eligible researchers willing to apply should send the following document, before July 1st 2025:

• CV
• Letter of interest
• One to 2 letters of Recommendation from previous supervisors
• Contact person (UdG Supervisor)

The person interested can specify in their letter of interest the line of research of the group their project will fit better. The corresponding head of the line of research will be the potential supervisor of the candidate. In case the research project falls into two lines of research, the two relevant researchers will be the supervisors of the candidate.

Comparative Psychology and Animal Behavior

Socio-cognitive Development and Communication

Multimodal Language Development and Learning