Basic and applied cognition (Prof. Murgia)

Research Strand:

Cognition and applied cognitive psychology (Psychology)

Associate Professor in General Psychology (M-PSI/01)

W Building (San Giovanni Park), room 120.
Phone: +39 040 558 8869
Email: mauromurgia@units.it

Biosketch

Mauro Murgia is an Associate Professor of General Psychology at the University of Trieste. He received his bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Cagliari and his master's degree in Experimental Psychology from the University of Trieste in 2008. He earned his PhD in Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Trieste in 2012. From 2013 to 2020, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher and adjunct professor at the universities of Trieste, Cagliari, and Udine. From 2020 to 2023, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Trieste.

At the international level, he spent several research periods in Spain, Germany and the United States. From 2019 to 2023 he was member of the managing council and coordinator of the Research Department of the scientific association ENYSSP. He is a member of the editorial board of various international journals and has organized several prestigious conferences, including the 41st European Conference on Visual Perception in Trieste in 2018.

At the University of Trieste, he served as the coordinator of the academic program “Percorso 24CFU” for teaching in secondary schools, and he is currently the vice coordinator of the Master Program in Psychology. He is a member of the board of the Doctoral program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.

His research interests focus on the perceptual-motor processes involved in complex movements, specifically how visual and auditory information affect biological motion perception and movement execution. In recent years he has dedicated a growing attention to numerical cognition, investigating how people mentally represent quantities and how these representations influence interactions with the external space. He is interested in the applications of cognitive psychology in sports, motor rehabilitation, driving, and technology.

Info

Research

The main lines of research are:

1) Spatial associations for symbolic and non-symbolic quantities

The research group has recently conducted several studies in the field of numerical cognition. In particular, the studies have focused on the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect, as well as on SNARC-like effects for non-numerical quantities (i.e., luminance, musical note value, objects’ size, emotions). Our studies have contributed to clarify the role of order and magnitude of the stimuli in driving spatial associations, as well as the flexibility of these effects and its connection with task demands.

2) Perceptual-cognitive processes in sports

The group has an extensive experience in sport psychology and, specifically, in the investigation of the perceptual-cognitive mechanisms behind sport performances. These studies have shown how expert athletes can use ecological sport sounds to recognize their own movements, to discriminate the power of shots and to predict the length of shots in ball sports. Moreover, visual trainings for football goalkeepers have been developed. Recently, the influence of spectators and of their absence on performance outcomes and referees’ decisions have been investigated.

3) Perceptual-cognitive processes and motor rehabilitation in Parkinson’s disease

This line of research deals with the relationship between perception and movement disturbances. In particular, some studies have been conducted on the rhythmic auditory stimulation and its influence on motor rehabilitation of people affected by Parkinson’s disease. Other studies have been conducted on the influence of physical activity on gait patterns and on the role of evaluation settings on quantitative assessment of gait. Currently, we are running an exploratory study on the perception of visual illusions by people with Parkinson’s disease.

4) Cognition and mobile phones

Recently, we have started working on a new line of research on how the mobile phones affect cognition and humans’ behavior. We are studying whether the use of mobile phones can induce the inattentional blindness and inattentional deafness phenomena, and how smartphones affect time perception. Moreover, we are studying how university students suffer from a short-term mobile phone abstinence, when they cannot use their own device, and the effects of the abstinence on cognitive processes.

Main research collaborations

Maurizio Bertollo, University of Chieti-Pescara
Eleonora Bilotta, University of Calabria
Peter Brugger, Zurich Psychiatric University Hospital (Switzerland)
Krzysztof Cipora, Loughborough University (UK)
Dražen Domijan, University of Rijeka (Croatia)
Marco Guicciardi, University of Cagliari
Penny McCullagh, California State University East Bay (USA)
Jenny O, California State University East Bay (USA)
Massimiliano Pau, University of Cagliari
Valter Prpic, University of Bologna
Markus Raab, German Sport University Cologne (Germany)

People

Post-docs

Serena Mingolo

PhD students

Alberto Cucca
Alberto Mariconda

Post-graduate collaborators

Claudia Virginia Manara

Master students

Melory Busin
Lara Giorgetti
Dhea Longo
Nicolaus Pagnanelli
Lory Shabanaj
Clarissa Ulcigrai

Publications

Full list of the publications of the Principal Investigator

Google Scholar
ResearchGate
Scopus

Selected publications

Prpic, V., Basamh, Y. A., Goodridge, C. M., Agostini, T., & Murgia, M. (2023). Contrasting symbolic and non-symbolic numerical representations in a joint classification task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02246-w
Sors, F., Grassi, M., Agostini, T., & Murgia, M. (2023). The influence of spectators on home advantage and referee bias in national teams matches: Insights from UEFA Nations League. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 21(2), 290-305. https://doi.org/10.1080/1612197X.2022.2044367
Mingolo, S., Prpic, V., Bilotta, E., Fantoni, C., Agostini, T., & Murgia, M. (2021). SNARCing with a phone: the role of order in spatial-numerical associations is revealed by context and task demands. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 47(10), 1365-1377. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000947
Sors, F., Grassi, M., Agostini, T., & Murgia, M. (2021). The sound of silence in association football: Home advantage and referee bias decrease in matches played without spectators. European Journal of Sport Science, 21(12), 1597-1605. https://doi.org/10.1080/17461391.2020.1845814
Murgia, M., Pili, R., Corona, F., Sors, F., Agostini, T., Bernardis, P., Casula, C., Cossu, G., Guicciardi, M., & Pau, M. (2018). The use of footstep sounds as rhythmic auditory stimulation for gait rehabilitation in Parkinson's disease: A randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in Neurology, 9:358, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2018.00348
Sors, F., Murgia, M., Santoro, I., Prpic, V., Galmonte, A., & Agostini, T. (2017). The contribution of early auditory and visual information to the discrimination of shot power in ball sports. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 31, 44-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2017.04.005
Prpic, V., Fumarola, A., De Tommaso, M., Luccio, R., Murgia, M., & Agostini, T. (2016). Separate mechanisms for magnitude and order processing in the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) Effect: The strange case of musical note values. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 42(8), 1241-1251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000217
Fumarola, A., Prpic, V., Da Pos, O., Murgia, M., Umiltà, C., & Agostini, T. (2014). Automatic spatial association for luminance. Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, 76, 759-765. http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/s13414-013-0614-y
Murgia, M., Sors, F., Muroni, A. F., Santoro, I., Prpic, V., Galmonte, A., & Agostini, T. (2014). Using perceptual home-training to improve anticipation skills of soccer goalkeepers. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 15, 642-648. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.07.009
Murgia, M., Hohmann, T., Galmonte, A., Raab, M., & Agostini, T. (2012). Recognising one’s own motor action through sound: The role of temporal factors. Perception, 41, 976-987. https://doi.org/10.1068/p7227

Last update: 04-19-2024 - 23:30

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