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Postdoc Description
The College of Life & Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, wishes to recruit an Associate Research Fellow or Research Fellow to participate in an extensive research project that focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms allowing humans to change their behaviour. This ERC (European Research Council) funded post is available from 1 March 2013 to 29 February 2016. The start date is negotiable. The expectation is that this postdoctoral Fellowship will, in the normal course of events, lead to the candidate being considered for a permanent position in the College of Life and Environmental Sciences at the University of Exeter.



Adaptive human behaviour is attributed to executive functions that update the cognitive system. But how executive updating mechanisms regulate behavioural change is still unclear. This stems from a lack of careful process analysis and a failure to integrate findings from different research areas. The project will focus on developing a unified account of updating and behavioural change. A starting point is the hypothesis thatthree well-defined cognitive processes (detection-selection-implementation) underlie all forms of updating (Verbruggen, Aron, Stevens, Chambers, 2010; PNAS); each component may be influenced by preparation or practice. This will be tested by using carefully designed behavioural paradigms and by integrating techniques such as neurostimulation (TMS and tDCS), EEG, and mathematical modelling of decision-making to specify how updating occurs and how variation in the effectiveness of updating arises.



The successful applicant will have a background in cognitive/experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience, a good knowledge of the executive/attention control literature, and knowledge of the neuroscience techniques TMS and EEG. Applicants should be able to analyse EEG data. The successful applicant will be responsible for the development of experiments (in collaboration with the research team), collection and analysis of behavioural and neuroscience data, the publication and dissemination of the results, and will be involved in the supervision of research assistants, MSc and PhD students.



For further information please contact Prof. Frederick Verbruggen, e-mail f.l.j.verbruggen@ex.ac.uk.



The job ad can be found here: https://jobs.exeter.ac.uk/hrpr_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=94586777eU&WVID=3817591jNg&LANG=USA

The Job Description and Person Specification document can be found here: http://admin.exeter.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/P44443.pdf

The University of Exeter is an equal opportunity employer which is 'Positive about Disabled People'. Whilst all applicants will be judged on merit alone, we particularly welcome applications from groups currently underrepresented in the workforce.