Address book
Contacts
ROSA RUGANI
Position
Professoressa Associata
Address
VIA VENEZIA, 8 - PADOVA
Telephone
0498276928
After graduation (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. at the University of Padua, my research activities continued primarily at the Department of General Psychology of the same university, the Interdepartmental Center for Mind/Brain at the University of Trento, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. I further enriched my training through various research periods abroad, including i) the Center for Avian Cognition at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, ii) the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA, iii) the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Potsdam, and iv) the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Currently, I am an Associate Professor at the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padua. Throughout my research career, I have developed novel paradigms to study non-verbal numerical abilities in diverse species, including nutcrackers, macaques, frogs, fish, and humans, both adults and infants. The animal model I have predominantly employed is the domestic chicken. My research has been published in prestigious international journals (e.g. Science; PNAS; eLife) and has attracted funding and awards at both national (Mazzocco Award, 2017; Young Researcher Project, 2010; CARIPARO Foundation, 2004; PRIN 2022) and international levels (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action: H2020-MSCA-IF-2017, German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 2017). My work has attracted attention from both national and international media, particularly for its innovative contribution to advancing our understanding of the origin and biological basis of mathematical abilities in animal models.
Notices
Office hours
Thursday from 15:30 to 17:30
at Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Via Venezia, 8 Padova
Si prega di concordare l'appuntamento al seguente indirizzo email: rosa.rugani@unipd.it
Publications
Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=it&user=Jygl4ZYAAAAJ
Thesis proposals
NEW: Numerical and spatial abilities in dogs. The activities are carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Comparative Biomedicine and Food Science – BCA and take place in the laboratories in Legnaro.
NEW: Numerical and spatial abilities in adults and older adults: Analysis of the evolution of non-symbolic numerical cognition and space-number association across the lifespan.
How does a concept of zero emerge and evolve? This study follows a comparative approach, testing both children and domestic chicks, in collaboration with prof Silvia Bernavides and prof Lucia Regolin. One of the objectives is to clarify whether chicks consider zero, understood not merely as absence but as an empty set, the smallest number and whether they can perform simple arithmetic operations that include zero.
Experimental research on the numerical cognition of insects. This project is conducted in collaboration with the museum of Esapolis. It is open to students wishing to conduct bachelor’s (triennale) internships or theses or master’s (magistrale) theses, but it is recommended only for highly interested and passionate students.
Cognitive and behavioral differences between different breeds of chickens – effects of domestication and selection for productivity. This includes: numerical discrimination, ordinal abilities, intra-individual correlations between various numerical abilities, arithmetic abilities and other, cognitive and social aspects.
Experimental research on the numerical abilities and on the spatial-numerical association in preschoolers (approximately 3-5 years). The study uses interactive videogames to investigate how numbers can influence the performance in a spatial task.
EXPERIMENTAL PROJECTS ON DOMESTIC CHICKS:
- Numerical cognition
- Use of space to represent abstract concepts.
- Investigation of the neural bases of hemispheric specialization (left-right asymmetries) in the processing of numerical information.
To learn more about other possible (empirical) thesis topics, contact rosa.rugani@unipd.it.
Overview of current projects and their timelines: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XOrTMWe2tcgsKRuUwSTx629rv3cAzrlAvMGBpgwFa8I/edit?usp=sharing
USEFUL INFORMATION:
- Empirical internships and theses require a lot of dedication, conscientiousness and passion for the scientific study of animal behavior.
- The student must guarantee their readiness to implement ethical regulations and the code of conduct in the lab.
- In the lab, we frequently use English as our principal language of communication. The specialist literature you will refer to when writing your thesis is in English.
- The days on which research activities are conducted depend exclusively on the experimental design (e.g., required age of the animals), and cannot be adapted to students’ personal needs and schedules.
- Conducting an empirical thesis or internship requires at least one semester of time dedicated to the activity.
- The access to the lab can be permitted only after specific preparation and an authorization procedure.
You can read up more on our research topics also on the following website:
https://www.numbersmeetspace.com/
