33.1642, Support: Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language: PhD, University of Groningen

Tue May 10 18:07:13 UTC 2022

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1642. Tue May 10 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1642, Support: Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language: PhD, University of Groningen

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Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 14:06:46
From: Petra Hendriks [p.hendriks at rug.nl]
Subject: Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language: PhD, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

 Institution/Organization: University of Groningen 
Department: Faculty of Philosophy 
Web Address: https://www.rug.nl/filosofie/?lang=en 

Level: PhD 

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Philosophy of Language 
Artificial Intelligence, Logic 

Description:

PhD position on the research project "Cognitive building blocks of lie
detection"

Lying is very common in social interactions among people. Being able to detect
lies is therefore important for social functioning. Despite this, adults are
generally not very good at detecting lies. In children, an understanding of
truth and lies gradually develops during the school-age years and seems to
require an understanding of other people’s beliefs and intentions. Children’s
lie detection abilities thus seem to develop in tandem with their theory of
mind abilities, but how these two abilities exactly interact in the course of
children’s development, and what other factors are important, is still an open
question. Furthermore, it is still unknown whether the ability to detect lies
can be enhanced, which could help children and adults to maneuver in a world
in which the truth of utterances is not always evident.

This interdisciplinary project studies how children develop the ability to
detect other people’s lies. This ability not only requires adequate verbal
skills and second-order theory of mind reasoning skills, but also the skills
to construct and actively maintain a representation of one’s own knowledge,
the knowledge of the speaker, and reality. As a starting point, existing
computational cognitive models of sentence interpretation and theory of mind
reasoning will be used, which will be integrated and expanded with
representations of the knowledge involved. By running computational
simulations of the resulting cognitive model, predictions will be generated
about the timing of the components involved in sentence interpretation, theory
of mind reasoning, and lie detection. These predictions will be empirically
tested in psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults.

The project will be supervised by Prof. Petra Hendriks (Faculty of Arts),
Prof. Barteld Kooi (Faculty of Philosophy), and Prof. Rineke Verbrugge
(Faculty of Science and Engineering & Faculty of Philosophy).

Your qualifications are:
 - a Master's degree in artificial intelligence, logic, philosophy,
linguistics or a related discipline, with an excellent academic record (GPA:
min. 8/10; MA thesis: min. 8/10). A Research Master or other two-year Master
programme is preferred
 - experience with at least two of the following four research domains: (1)
computational cognitive modeling, (2) psycholinguistic experimentation, (3)
dynamic epistemic logic, (4) language development
 - proven research abilities and affinity with the research topic
 - excellent command of English and good academic writing skills.

Submission procedure:
Please submit your entire application as a single PDF-file before the deadline
of Monday 6 June, 11:59 p.m., 2022 Dutch local time (CET) at the latest, using
the link specified below.

Your submission should contain the following parts:
 - a cover letter introducing yourself and describing your motivation to
conduct scientific research.
 - a full CV demonstrating academic excellence, including publications and
presentations (if applicable), and a copy of the data page of your passport
 - a certified copy or scan of your MSc or MA diploma (or equivalent) and
academic record including a list of grades and names and contact details of
two academic references. Applicants who have not obtained their MSc or MA
diploma yet but expect to graduate before September 2022 can also apply
 - a short research proposal (1-2 pages) presenting your own ideas and
suggestions in relation to the described research project.

Start date: 1 September 2022

For questions regarding the submission procedure, please contact Dr. Han
Thomas Adriaenssen, e-mail address: h.t.adriaenssen at rug.nl

Interviews with selected candidates will take place in the final week of June
2022.

Application Deadline: 06-Jun-2022 

Web Address for Applications: https://www.rug.nl/phd-scholarships?details=00347-02S000978P 

Contact Information: 
	Prof. Petra Hendriks
	p.hendriks at rug.nl  

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