Agnes Melinda Kovacs

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Agnes Melinda Kovacs is a psychologist, linguist and cognitive scientist based at the Central European University. [1]

Contents

Education, career and honours

Kovacs received an MSc in psychology from Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 2002, then studied for a PhD at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy, which she received in 2008. [2] Her doctoral studies focused on bilingualism and theory of mind. [3]

From 2008 to 2010 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, supported by a Marie Curie research fellowship. In 2010 she moved to the Central European University to continue her postdoctoral research at the Cognitive Development Center there. [1] [2]

In 2012 Kovacs was the recipient of a European Research Council Starting Grant for her project REPCOLLAB (Representational preconditions for understanding other minds in the service of human collaboration and social learning), which she carried out at the Central European University (CEU). [2] [3] She was promoted to Research Fellow in 2015 and took up a position as associate professor in 2017. [1] She is currently director of the Cognitive Development Center at CEU. [4]

In 2019 Kovacs was elected ordinary member of the Academia Europaea. [1]

Research

Kovacs's team combines methods from cognitive neuroscience with ideas from philosophy of mind. Their focus is on understanding the minds of others, and they conduct neuroimaging and behavioural experiments on infants and adults. [3] In her early work, conducted with Jacques Mehler among others, she investigated the effects of bilingualism on executive functions and on false-belief reasoning. [5]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. A theory of mind includes the knowledge that others' beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts may be different from one's own. Possessing a functional theory of mind is crucial for success in everyday human social interactions. People utilize a theory of mind when analyzing, judging, and inferring others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants. Factors including drug and alcohol consumption, language development, cognitive delays, age, and culture can affect a person's capacity to display theory of mind. Having a theory of mind is similar to but not identical with having the capacity for empathy or sympathy.

Cognitive development is a field of study in neuroscience and psychology focusing on a child's development in terms of information processing, conceptual resources, perceptual skill, language learning, and other aspects of the developed adult brain and cognitive psychology. Qualitative differences between how a child processes their waking experience and how an adult processes their waking experience are acknowledged. Cognitive development is defined as the emergence of the ability to consciously cognize, understand, and articulate their understanding in adult terms. Cognitive development is how a person perceives, thinks, and gains understanding of their world through the relations of genetic and learning factors. There are four stages to cognitive information development. They are, reasoning, intelligence, language, and memory. These stages start when the baby is about 18 months old, they play with toys, listen to their parents speak, they watch TV, anything that catches their attention helps build their cognitive development.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Agnes Melinda Kovacs". Academia Europaea. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  2. 1 2 3 "Agnes Melinda Kovacs - Curriculum Vitae". Academia Europaea. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  3. 1 2 3 "Building a career on understanding the minds of others". European Research Council. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  4. "Cognitive Development Center". Central European University. Retrieved 13 April 2024.
  5. "The academic advantages of a bilingual brain" (PDF). Brain Matters (University of Illinois). Retrieved 13 April 2024.