Sara holds a European Ph.D. in Psychology (2025), as well as a Master's degree in Health Psychology and Neuropsychological Rehabilitation (2018) and a Bachelor's degree in Psychology (2016), all from the University of Aveiro. Her research interests primarily focus on memory and attention. Her doctoral work, grounded in an evolutionary psychology framework, investigated the animacy effect (the mnemonic advantage for animate/living over inanimate/non-living stimuli) and its expression in prospective memory (i.e., memory for intended future actions), across young and older adults. Sara is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the William James Center for Research at ISPA-Instituto Universitário, where she contributes to research examining attentional disengagement from alcohol-related cues and its predictive role in relapse during treatment in individuals with alcohol use disorder.
Awards:
2025: Ph.D. awarded with Merit and Distinction
2022: J. Frank Yates Student Conference Award – Psychonomic Society
2022: Travel Grant – European Society for Cognitive Psychology
Recent publications:
Félix, S. B., Poirier, M., & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2025). Exploring the animacy effect in focal prospective memory tasks: When animates don’t stand out. Journal of Memory and Language, 144, 104673. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2025.104673
Félix, S. B., Poirier, M., James S. Nairne, & Pandeirada, J. N. S. (2024). The breadth of animacy in memory: New evidence from prospective memory. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 31, 1323–1334. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02406-y