Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition

Olivier Pascalis did an undergraduate degree in Biology and a PhD in Neuroscience in Marseille (France). After rambling around the world he finally settled down in Sheffield in 1998 where he became a Reader. He moved back to France in February 2009 in the LPNC in Grenoble to carry on research on the development of cognition.

Research

My research focuses on how infants, during the first two years of life, learn and memorise from the environment. I am also interested in the impact of experience during this period especially on the development of cognitive ability such as face processing.
I was part of an international team that has systematically examined the ontogeny of face processing expertise from birth to adulthood. My research has contributed significantly to the current understanding of the effects of early visual experience on the development of face expertise. In particular, some of my work has fundamentally transformed knowledge about how asymmetrical visual experiences with own- versus other-race faces lead to the development of expert-level processing of own-race faces but shallow processing of other-race faces. One of the originality of my work is to have wide interest that include adult, atypical development and comparative psychology research.
I am leading Grenoble’s babylab, a structure specialized in infant cognition with optimal equipment to study visual cognition.