Sónia Santos

Sónia Santos’s research interests are in experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology. Her PhD project aims to explore the mnemonic effect for sources of contamination and how to use it to promote infection prevention behaviors. More specific goals include the exploration of the mnemonic tuning for contamination found in free recall in other mnemonic processes (e.g., recognition); the examination of this mnemonic sensibility when using stimuli of different sensorial modalities (e.g., visual, audio); and, the investigation on how to best present information to afford a stronger mnemonic contamination effect. The integration of these findings aspire to inform how to address risk communication to better promote preventive behaviors. Sónia’s Phd project is being supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the call DOCTORATES 4 COVID-19 (2020.09585.BD). She is also team member in the exploratory project “Coming out of the box: Moving from traditional to virtual procedures to explore prospective memory and contamination” (EXPL/PSI-GER/1008/2021), supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.

Supervised in WJCR by: Josefa N. S. Pandeirada and Natália Lisandra Fernandes