Job Radboud University Nijmegen - PhD student for ‘The Development of Motor Imagery in Young Children'

The focus of this PhD project is on the development of motor imagery (MI) capacity in young children (5-10 years). During the first phase, a longitudinal study will be performed to chart the developmental trajectories of MI and motor planning and execution in 5- to 10-year-olds in detail. EEG registration is used to scrutinize the concomitant age-related changes in brain activity, in particular with respect to the fronto-parietal coupling. While it is clear that cognitive, motor and brain development occur concurrently during childhood, much less is known about the direction of the relationships between them. Hence, during the second phase, experimental learning designs are implemented to investigate the effects of MI training on the development of motor control and to determine the age period most sensitive to intervention. Finally, the changes in brain activity induced by MI-training will be examined via the innovative trial-by-trial analysis of the EEG/ERP signal. The project will result in a PhD thesis, comprising papers published in top scientific journals.

You should have: - a Master’s degree in psychology, pedagogy/remedial education, neuropsychology, rehabilitation psychology, cognitive or experimental psychology, human movement science, or a related field; - excellent writing skills (in Dutch and English) and data-analysis skills preferably evidenced by authorship or co-authorship of published articles; - experience with setting up longitudinal and experimental research, preferably on young children, and experience with data analysis in experimental designs is desirable;. - good organization skills and experience with EEG/ERP registration and analysis are desirable; - experience with SPSS is desirable.

Your performance will be evaluated after 18 months. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 3.5 years. As part of the contract, you will participate in educational activities (i.e. teaching students). The starting salary is €2,042 per month on a full-time base; the salary will increase to €2,612 per month in the fourth year.

Strategically located in Europe, Radboud University Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. A place with a personal touch, where top-flight education and research take place on a beautiful green campus in modern buildings with state-of-art facilities.

You will work within the BSI’s Learning and Plasticity programme. This programme deals with the micro-analysis of learning and cognitive plasticity. The main focus of this programme is on the learning and development of communication and cognition in normal and atypical populations. Intervention studies on individuals with a variety of disorders as well as on those at risk will also be conducted to yield a better understanding of the dynamic factors that can prevent or remediate learning problems. This project is part of the Brain and Cognition programme (NWO). You will work on the project in close collaboration with a post-doctoral researcher. The project is supervised by Prof. Bert Steenbergen (Website: http://www.ru.nl/fsw) and Dr John van der Kamp (Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University Amsterdam). The Faculty of Social Sciences is one of the largest faculties at Radboud University Nijmegen. The faculty currently employs approximately 650 employees. The faculty’s ambition is to become one of the top social science institutes in Europe, providing high-quality research programmes and study programmes that rank among the best in the Netherlands.

prof. dr. Bert Steenbergen
+31 24 3612642
b.steenbergen@pwo.ru.nl
http://www.ru.nl/fsw
Radboud University Nijmegen