Job Information
- Organisation/Company
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra - ETIC
- Department
- Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions
- Research Field
- Neurosciences
- Researcher Profile
- First Stage Researcher (R1)
- Country
- Spain
- Application Deadline
- Type of Contract
- Other
- Job Status
- Part-time
- Hours Per Week
- 25
- Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?
- Not funded by an EU programme
- Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?
- No
Offer Description
Team: The project is a collaboration between the Multisensory Research Group at UPF (Mireia Torralba, Salvador Soto-Faraco) and the Grup de Recerca en Neuroimatge de Transtorns Mentals (Programa de Neurociències) de l’Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM; Clara Pretus).
https://www.imim.es/programesrecerca/neurociencies/neuroimatge.html
Project description: The project goal is to understand the interplay between cognitive conflict and political polarization. Misinformation poses a significant threat to managing global challenges such as COVID-19, climate change, and immigration. Prior research shows that individuals with conservative and far-right ideology are more likely to share misinformation on social media and more resistant to fact-checks, than moderates or liberals (Grinberg et al., 2019). In addition, past studies have reported that in comparison to liberals, conservatives exhibit lower scores in cognitive flexibility (the ability to incorporate new information into behavioural sequences) and reduced neural markers of cognitive conflict during executive tasks (Amodio et al., 2007). This leads to the hypothesis that cognitive (in)flexibility is a relevant predictor of misinformation sharing on social media. We propose to address precisely this hypothesis. WE aim at testing this hypothesis using neuroimaging (EEG) and behavioural measures of reactions to cognitive conflict, as well as in-the-wild analysis of social media data.
Tasks: The research assistant will join a multidisciplinary team to collect behavioural and electrophysiological data in a study on adult human subjects during various tasks including executive control and opinion questionnaires about political or social issues. In particular, the research assistant will:
- Recruit subjects for the experiments.
- Manage communication with subjects.
- Prepare experimental materials for performing experiments.
- Collect behavioural and electrophysiological data.
- Pre-processing electrophysiological data.
- Maintenance of group’s web and social media.
The position is linked to the data collection and pre-processing phase of the subproject "Is cognitive inflexibility a predictor of misinformation sharing on social media?" of the María de Maeztu Strategic Research Program on Artificial and Natural Intelligence. The duration of these tasks is estimated for a period of 20 months.
Planned remuneration approx: 19.887,06 € gross / year
Dedication and working hours: part time (25h/week)
Financing fund: Ayuda PRESP08722 - AEI - MDM-CEX2021-001195-M - DTIC - LOZANO, Angel - Unidades de Excelencia María de Maeztu - Departamento de Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones financiada por MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033
Requirements
- Research Field
- Neurosciences
- Education Level
- Master Degree or equivalent
- Master in Cognitive Neuroscience or similar.
- Good English skills, both written and spoken.
- Intermediate to native knowledge of Spanish (to be able to communicate with subjects).
- Living in Barcelona or moving to Barcelona to perform the job.
- Basic programming skills (e.g., Matlab/Psychtoolbox, Python).
- Demonstrable experience in a cognitive neuroscience laboratory (preferably with EEG data collection and processing).
The expected start date is October 1st, 2023, the job is in Barcelona, and Nie and a work permit is required.
Additional Information
The selection of the candidates will be made through evaluation of the curriculum and, where appropriate, with the carrying out a test and/or interview. Valuation will be as follows:
- Academic Training (0-20 points).
- Performance in the required studies (Master in Cognitive Neuroscience or similar) and alignment of the topic of the final master’s degree with the tasks of the project.
- Professional experience and Adequacy to the proposed profile (0-60 points):
- Previous experience in: subject recruitment, human electrophysiological and behavioural data collection in a cognitive neuroscience laboratory.
- Experience in electrophysiological data pre-processing and analysis.
- Other merits (0-20 points):
- Programming skills (Matlab, Python, R).
- Communication skills (English and Spanish).
The minimum score to pass the selection process is 70 points. The candidate with the highest score in the selection process will be offered the job and in case of resignation, the position will be awarded to the next person in order of score obtained.
For more information about the call, how to apply, the list of those admitted and excluded, as well as the hiring proposal, check the website: https://www.upf.edu/web/etic/management
Work Location(s)
- Number of offers available
- 1
- Company/Institute
- Universitat Pompeu Fabra - ETIC
- Country
- Spain
- City
- Barcelona
- Postal Code
- 08018
- Street
- Roc Boronat 138
- Geofield
Where to apply
- Website
Contact
- City
- Barcelona
- Website
- Street
- Roc Boronat 138
- Postal Code
- 08018
- recerca.etic@upf.edurandp.dtic@upf.edu