Research projects proposed in the lab to students B2-B3 (3 ECTS):

Are you interested in research? 

Come and join Prof. Evie Vergauwe’s Working Memory, Cognition, and Development lab!

When you do a research project in our lab, you can get the opportunity to work closely with children or adults and to discover different stages of research. Not only would you participate in the ongoing research, but we can also involve you in the process of making research more open and reproducible, for example, by using the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/) to share data and materials. 

Examples of past internship research questions:

• Which types of distractors in the environment disturb children’s memory performance the most? 
• Do school-aged children use mechanisms to maintain information in working memory in a recognition task? 
• Is there a domain-general relation between memory speed and capacity in adults?

Conditions

• Student in B2 or B3
• Period in Autumn (September - December) or Spring semester (February - May)

Examples of Tasks

• Data collection of computer tasks with children (in primary schools in the canton of Geneva) and/or young adults (at the University of Geneva)
• Communication with the school board and teaching staff of the primary schools
• Bibliographical research
• Assistance in the analysis of the data

Assets

• Eager to learn, motivated to get involved in research
• Responsible, independent, curious, pleasant, team player
• Experience with working with children (non-research-related experience counts!)
• Fluent in French, comfortable in English

If you have any questions or you would like to apply, contact Evie.Vergauwe@unige.ch. For applications, please enclose your CV, last PV results, and a motivation letter. 

Courses taught by members of the lab:

74101 Introduction to developmental cognitive psychology by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

74301 Cognitive development in childhood by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

751330 Cognitive development and learning by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

74189 Scientific skills and knowledge in psychology by Dr. Naomi Langerock

751342 From theories of cognitive development to their practical implications by Dr. Naomi Langerock

751345 The profession and best practices of psychology researchers by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

751CL3 Developmental psychology research symposium by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

Resources related to Reproducibility and Open Science:

CUSO workshop titled "Research in Psychology: From replication crisis to open science" by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

Swiss Open Psychological Science Initiative (SOPSI) by Prof. Evie Vergauwe

Examples of master's research topics:

Examples of master's research topics for the Research colloquium of the cognitive and developmental orientations (751CL2 and 751CL3)

• How to optimize retention/execution of instructions in the classroom? 

• Is multi-tasking done differently by children compared to adults? 

• Does the speed of search in working memory increase with age? 

• Can we reproduce the famous "Inhibition-of-return effect" in working memory? 

• Multisensory distraction in working memory as a model for classroom learning.