Isabel M. Santos

Isabel M. Santos’s general research interests relate to experimental psychology, cognitive neurosciences and psychophysiology. She is particularly interested in the different aspects of face perception, and in investigating how people perceive the different social signals that are transmitted by the human face (social characteristics, identity, emotions, gaze, etc.), which factors affect these processes and their applications in different contexts (forensic psychology, psychopathology, etc.).  Her current lines of research involve the study of eyewitness testimony and the development of approaches that can help reduce the number of erroneous identifications. Isabel is also interested in exploring the effect of chronobiological variables in face perception and recognition, specifically how individual preferences for morningness or eveningness (i.e., chronotype) and time-of-day when tasks are carried out influences the ability to recognize faces, as well as the perception of emotion and social information from faces. An additional line of research focuses on the use of psychophysiological approaches, eye tracking and experimental methodology as tools to explore brain correlates of cognitive and emotional processes in specific conditions (e.g., neuropsychological functioning in cancer patients; attentional bias in cancer patients and trauma; marketing and tourism experiences; etc.).