Tânia Fernandes

I am Assistant Professor at Faculty of Psychology, ULisboa, Portugal, and the coordinator of the Research Group Cognition in Context (CO2) of the Research Center for Psychological Science (CICPSI) at ULisboa. I am a senior researcher in the research team Memory and Language.

I have been working in the field of Cognitive Psychology at the interface of Cognitive Neurosciences and Neuropsychology. My major scientific interest is to understand how cultural experiences like literacy can modulate the human brain and mind in such powerful and specific ways. My scientific work has been conducted in two lines of research: in visual word recognition in typical and dyslexic readers and on the impact of learning to read and write in independent cognitive systems (visual and language processes).

Since my post-doctoral work at Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2008 with Régine Kolinsky, I have been studying the impact of literacy acquisition on visual processing (i.e., in the visual object recognition system, including mirror-image discrimination). Given my interest in reading and in visual processes in typical and atypical development, including in adults differing in schooling and literacy, I have also been studying the associated causes and consequences of poor reading in developmental dyslexia.

In my free time, I love to cook (I am an aspiring chef and I love even more to eat!), travelling (India was my last big journey), and I am a movie buff (huge fan of Tarantino’s!).

If you want to know more about my research, please send me an e-mail.