Perception, Cognition and Language

Perception, Cognition and Language. Team leader: dr Bibianna Bałaj

Our emerging field “Perception, Cognition and Language” (PeCoLa) consists of four separate but collaborating research groups:

The PeCoLa team has 12 staff members and 14 students. We plan to continue collaboration and expand the team. The research area primarily covers psychology but also cognitive science and philosophy (epistemology). We try to understand human development throughout life, individual differences in the processing of information. We give much attention to language that not only allows us to communicate but also shapes our thinking and understanding of the world, the ability of mindreading. In our research, we take into account perception, reading, orientation in space and intercultural differences.

The Emerging Field is an opportunity for us to strengthen our research capabilities (purchasing equipment and commissioning services) and expand our international collaboration (e.g. with the Universities of New York, Hong Kong, Regensburg, Ulm, Oslo) and conducting intercultural research. Given the fact that people belong to different cultures, they shape the image of the real world and the world of culture differently. It is fascinating how people guess the states of mind of other people by observing their behaviour or reading literature.

Dr Bibianna Bałaj – Vice-Director of the Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive and Comparative Psychology at the Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences. Doctor of Humanities in psychology, a graduate of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and the European PhD. College of Polish and Ukrainian Universities in Lublin. She is an experimental psychologist researching cognitive functioning daily and conducting experiments with the use of eye movement measurement as a diagnostic and training tool. The central areas of scientific interest include visual imagination, spatial orientation and disorientation, attention processes. She tests and develops methods of visual interaction with computers for people with motor disabilities: together with her team, she won an award for the OKOMUNIKACJA project. A co-author of several dozen scientific articles. The contractor of research grants (including a supervision grant) as well as projects that commercialize the results of scientific work. Vice-Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, a member of the Scientific and Ethical Council of the “Light” Foundation in Toruń.