PhD Scholarships at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics: English; Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
Two 3-year PhD positions are available in Peter Hagoort’s Neurobiology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics / Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. The positions offer access to
numerous behavioral and EEG laboratories, as well as eye-tracking, MEG, fMRI and TMS facilities. The language research environment in Nijmegen is vibrant with the MPI, Centre for Language Studies (CLS) and Donders Institute on one campus, thus offering many opportunities for collaboration and interdisciplinary training.
PhD Position 1: ‘Mental simulation during story comprehension: A cognitive neuroscience approach’
Daily Supervisor: Dr. Roel Willems
Experiments suggest that people simulate the content of the language they hear or read. For instance, when reading about actions, parts of the sensori-motor system involved in action production can become active. Recent work shows that simulation during language understanding does not always occur, and that individuals differ in how much and when they simulate (see Willems and Casasanto, 2011, Frontiers in Psychology, for overview). The main goal of the project is to use methods from cognitive neuroscience (fMRI, EEG, eye tracking) to study simulative processes during the understanding of stories (literary text). (Look for more project information at http://www.mpi.nl or http://www.ru.nl/donders/.) The ideal candidate holds a master’s degree in a relevant study area; has a passion for research; is interested in literature; has experience with programming; has experience with doing experimental research.
PhD Position 2: ‘Monitoring and control in language production’
Daily Supervisor: Dr. Dan Acheson
Language production is one of the most common actions in which humans engage and correct performance requires us to not only monitor our performance but also exert control when mistakes might occur. The systems responsible for monitoring and control remain poorly understood as neurophysiological studies of overt language production have largely been avoided due to the artifact they induce. Recent advances in electrophysiological methodology, however, have allowed researchers to remove these artifacts, thus opening the opportunity for novel research into overt language production processes. (Look for more project information at http://www.mpi.nl or http://www.ru.nl/donders/.) The ideal candidate holds a master’s degree in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience; is motivated to learn new methodologies; has previous experience doing experimental work; has a working knowledge of statistics and computational skills.
Interested individuals should contact Roel Willems (r.willems@donders.ru.nl) for position 1 and Dan Acheson (dan.acheson@mpi.nl ) for position 2. Applicants should send a CV, letter of interest and two letters of recommendation to Ina Grevel (Ina.Grevel@mpi.nl) by June 15 2012.
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Michigan State University (USA): Cognitive Science; Phonetics; Psycholinguistics Postdoctoral fellowships at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (USA): Non-Colonial Language of Africa; General Linguistics
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