Research Assistant Position - ERC ADVANCED GRANT - DISORDERED SPEECH

Euraxess; Vitoria; Presencial; EUR 28.000 - 36.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

The Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) invites applications for a Research Assistant to join the DISORDERED SPEECH ERC-funded project, focusing on developmental language disorders in children and bilingual populations. The role emphasizes speech rhythm and prosody in a pioneering research setting.

Responsibilities include coordinating participant recruitment and testing in Vitoria-Gasteiz, collecting behavioural and neuroimaging data, designing experiments, preprocessing data,

Formación

• Master’s degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or related field.
• Previous involvement in research projects (e.g., data collection, analysis).
• Experience with working with children with developmental disabilities.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English.
• Familiarity with statistical software such as RStudio.

Responsabilidades

• Coordinate participant recruitment and testing in the BCBL Junior Lab in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
• Collect behavioural and neuroimaging data from bilingual children.
• Collaborate on experimental designs and implementation.
• Preprocess and organize behavioural data.
• Participate in regular scientific meetings of the research groups at BCBL.
• Disseminate research findings to the general public.

Conocimientos

Communication

Data visualization

English proficiency

Working with children

Excel

RStudio

Educación

Master’s degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or related field

Herramientas

Excel

RStudio

Descripción del empleo

BCBL BASQUE CENTER ON COGNITION BRAIN AND LANGUAGE

Organisation/Company BCBL BASQUE CENTER ON COGNITION BRAIN AND LANGUAGE Research Field Neurosciences Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions Research Support Positions Application Deadline 1 Sep 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Madrid) Country Spain Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 1 Oct 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - ERC Reference Number ERC-2024-ADG_101199408 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL) is offering a Research Assistant position within the DISORDERED SPEECH project, recently funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Advances in recent years have improved our ability to address language problems in both children and adults, with roughly 7 % of children known to have significant spoken language problems (developmental language disorder, DLD) and another 7 % having written language problems (developmental dyslexia, DD). Early identification remains difficult, and no theory has yet explained their overlaps. The ERC-funded DISORDERED-SPEECH project will introduce and explore a novel research frontier for developmental language disorders, focusing on speech rhythm and the accurate production of prosodic patterns. It will use novel speech-production tasks alongside the neural theory of child language acquisition to develop tools for the identification of DD and DLD across a variety of European languages.

Job Description:

• Coordinate participant recruitment and testing through outreach activities in the BCBL Junior Lab (Colegio Carmelitas Sagrado Corazón) in Vitoria-Gasteiz
• Collect behavioural and neuroimaging data from bilingual children with and without developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorders in the BCBL Junior Lab (Colegio Carmelitas Sagrado Corazón) in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
• Collaborate on the finalization and implementation of experimental designs
• Preprocess and organize behavioural data
• Participate in regular scientific meetings of the research groups at BCBL
• Contribute to the dissemination of research findings to the general public

Marie Lallier is an Ikerbasque Research Professor and the leader of the Educational Neuroscience and Developmental Disorders group. The group has extensive experience in clinical and educational neurocognitive science research and employs a wide range of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques (e.g., EEG, MEG), as well as diverse experimental designs (e.g., longitudinal, training-based, and single-case studies) involving young populations with or without developmental language disorders. The team is also strongly committed to the societal impact of science, actively engaging in the transfer of scientific knowledge to society by working closely with clinicians and educators and fostering dialogue between scientists and the broader community.

Marina Kalashnikova is an Ikerbasque Research Professor and the leader of the Infant Language and Cognition group Thegroup investigates the process of early language acquisition in monolingual and bilingual infants, as well as the interactions between early language abilities and the development of general perceptual and cognitive capacities. The group’s primary objective is to define the earliest determinants of later individual language ability, including but not limited to endogenous factors, such as family risk for developmental language disorders or hearing loss, and environmental factors, such as the quantity and quality of infants’ early language input. The team is highly multidisciplinary; our expertise combines the fields of linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. The group members have unrestricted access to the BCBL’s BabyLab, a state-of-the-art facility that hosts specialized methods for investigating the first steps of human language development, including fNIRS, EEG, eye-tracking, and LENA, among others.

• Excellent written and oral communication skills in both Basque and Spanish
• Previous experience working with children and communicating with their families
• Strong organizational and interpersonal skills
• Proficiency in organizing and visualizing data (e.g., using Excel)

Specific Requirements

• Previous experience conducting neuropsychological assessments of language and reading disorders
• Experience with working with children with developmental disabilities
• Master’s degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or a related field
• Previous involvement in research projects (e.g., data collection, analysis)
• Good written and oral communication skills in English
• Familiarity with statistical software such as RStudio

Training opportunities and Career development plan:

Opportunity to develop professionally in a multicultural, young and dynamic environment.

The necessary technical training for this position will be offered by the centre.

BCBL seeks to foster an environment where all talents can flourish, regardless of gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, sociocultural background, nationality or impairments. We are proud to have in place both an LGTBIQ+ Plan and a Gender Equality Plan to actively promote inclusion and equal opportunities. If you have any questions relating to accessibility or support, please contact us.

Selection process

Number of offers available 1 Company/Institute BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain & Language Country Spain Geofield