Sarah Placì

Research Scientist in the field of Comparative Cognition at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (University of Trento)

About me

I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC - University of Trento) working in the Animal Brain & Cognition group (ABC group) of the Animal Cognition and Neuroscience lab (ACN lab) and in the Reasoning & Decision group (RAD). I am interested in the cognitive tools animals – including humans – evolved to deal with the uncertainty of their physical and social environment, and in how these cognitive tools help them learn and make rational decisions. I am currently investigating probability intuitions in newly-hatched chicks and young human children as well as the formation of geometry categories in human adults and newly-hatched chicks.

On this website you can find my CV as well as up-to-date information about my academic projects and achievements, i.e. my publication list and recent/ upcoming presentations.

Interests

Animal Cognition
Learning and reasoning
Categorization

Education

PhD in Behaviour and Cognition, 2019 University of Göttingen
MSc in Behaviour, Evolution and Conservation, 2014 University of Lausanne
BSc in Biology, 2012 University of Neuchâtel

Honors & Awards & Fellowships

Postdoc.Mobility fellowship (SNSF) (2022)
Early Postdoc.Mobility fellowship (SNSF) (2020)
RTG2070 Kick-start fund for female Ph.D (2019)

Recent and upcoming Talks & Conference Presentations

2023

Warm-up Talk given at [SPUDM2023]: The development of probabilistic reasoning during preschool years (June 2023, [remote])

2022

Flash Talk given at [CogSci2022]: When Newton beats Euclid: intuitive physics underlies sensitivity to geometry (July 2022, Toronto [remote])

2022

Talk given at [SPP & ESPP]: The importance of gravity in minds’ sensitivity to geometry (July 2022, Milan, Italy)

2021

Poster presentation [virtual] given at TiPs: When Euclid needs Newton: intuitive physics underlies sensitivity to geometry (November 2021, Harvard, MA)

2020

Talk [virtual] given at the MPRG iSearch: Probability intuitions in human and nonhuman animals (November 2020, Berlin)

2019

Talk given at the CIMeC: Probability intuitions in human children and nonhuman animals (July 2019, Rovereto)

Publications

Lemaire, B., Zanon, M., Placì, S., Werk, B. & Vallortigara, G. (2023). Flickering stimuli presentation in imprinting. Journal of Ornithology.
Placì, S. (2022). Sensitivity to geometry in humans and other animals. In&Vertebrates.
Placì, S., Stephan, S., Waldmann, M. & Vallortigara G. (2021). When Newton beats Euclid: intuitive physics underlies sensitivity to geometry. PsyArXiv.
Stephan, S., Placì, S., Waldmann, M. (2021). Evaluating General versus Singular Causal Prevention. In T. Fitch, C. Lamm, H. Leder, & K. Tessmar (Eds.) Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Placì, S., Fischer, J., & Rakoczy, H. (2020). Do infants and preschoolers quantify probabilities based on proportions? Royal Society Open Science.
Farrar, B., Altschul, D., Fischer, J., Van der Mescht, J., Placì, S., Troisi, C.A., Vernouillet, A., Clayton, N.S., & Ostojic, L. (2020). Trialling Meta-Research in Comparative Cognition: Claims and Statistical Inference in Animal Physical Cognition. Animal Behavior and Cognition.
Placì, S., Padberg, M., Rakoczy, H. & Fischer, J. (2019). Long-tailed macaques extract statistical information from repeated types of events to make rational decisions under uncertainty. Scientific Reports.
Placì, S., Eckert, J., Rakoczy, H. & Fischer, J. (2018). Long-tailed macaques ( Macaca fascicularis ) can use simple heuristics but fail at drawing statistical inferences from populations to samples. Royal Society Open Science.
McClung, J. S., Placì, S., Bangerter, A., Clément, F., & Bshary, R. (2017). The language of cooperation: Shared intentionality drives variation in helping as a function of group membership. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
Dos Santos, M., Placì, S., & Wedekind, C. (2015). Stochasticity in economic losses increases the value of reputation in indirect reciprocity. Scientific Reports.