MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Experimental Psychology

Professor Pedro Macizo Soria, from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2019 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/09Qg).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. It serves more than 60000 students per year, including many foreign students, as UGR is the leader host institution in the Erasmus program. UGR, featuring 3650 professors and more than 2000 auxiliary personnel, offers a total of 75 degrees through its 112 departments and 28 centers.

UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://www.arwu.org/), and it is also well recognized for its web presence (http://www.4icu.org/top200/).

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of H2020, both at partner and coordination. For the duration of the Seventh Framework Programme, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 17.97 million euros, and for H2020, until 2015, more than 25 projects with total funding of more than 6 million euros. Our more than 3,000 researchers are grouped into 365 research groups covering all scientific fields and disciplines.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center at University of Granada (CIMCYC-UGR) is a centre for psychological excellence research. The center incorporates scientists coming from all areas of Psychology motivated by the study of mental and brain functions using a cluster of classical and modern techniques ranging from behavioral tasks, to ERPs, Eye Movements and fMRi. The goal pursued by the researchers of CIMCYC is the understanding of how mental processes and behaviour emerge from normal brain activity, and how behavioral problems are related to the breakdown of brain processes. The CIMCYC is composed by a pleiade of research teams devoted to the study of all aspects of Psychology, encompassing Clinical and Health Psychology, Human Development, Applied Psychology, Higher Cognitive functions and social interactions. CIMCYC is aimed at improving citizens well-being, seeking to disentangle the ways in which mind, brain and behavior are causally related. The center hosts and trains over 250 researchers, and holds collaborations with more than 50 researchers throughout the world.

Apart from conducting high-standard scientific research, the center offers a range of training opportunities to support the development of psychological research both at the regional andalusian level as well as nationally and internationally.

Project description

Embodied Cognition and Bilingualism

The classic approach to the study of language acquisition was based on the idea that meaning is represented in an abstract manner rather than tied to the direct experience people have with the world. More recently, researchers started to focus on how language is linked to bodily experience; namely, they argued that language processing should be considered at the light of the relations between mind and body. This assumption stemmed from experimental evidence showing that thinking about an action or emotion activates the same neural circuits that are activated while performing that action or sensing that specific emotion. While research in monolingualism is quite abundant, no one has focused on embodiment in bilingual populations. From this point of view, the aim of the present project is to fill in this gap, trying to gather evidence about how second language learning modulates the embodied processing of language. In fact, learning a second language does not merely imply learning new symbols, but a cultural shared background that include styles of embodiment that might be different across cultures. Probably only advanced L2 learners or early bilinguals would be able to evoke the same embodied representations triggered in native populations during language processing. In this sense, we would be able to assess how bilinguals represent the basic concepts in the environment, namely how they use the mapping of sensory-motor and affective information in their L1 and L2, and whether embodiment in two languages constitutes an additional advantage for the bilingual brain compared to the monolingual one. Finally, we analyze the implication of embodied cognition for foreign language learning.

Research Area

Economic Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities (ECO-SOC)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Pedro Macizo Soria (xx@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)