Daniela Escobar Magariño

Background

My path in research began at the University of Havana, where I started as an intern student and later became a thesis student of Dr. Klency González Hernández. My undergraduate thesis (2018) explored whether a video game, The Number Race, could train number sense in Cuban children. That question, how the brain learns mathematics and how we can support that learning, still guides my work today.

That interest took me to China, where, with a Chinese Scholarship Council grant, I completed a Master’s degree in Applied Psychology at Southwest University (2019-2022) under the supervision of Dr. Qinghua He. There I began to study, using fNIRS and meta-analysis, how writing and language shape the way the brain processes numbers. That same question became my doctoral thesis on the influence of language on intraparietal sulcus activation during numerical adaptation, which I defended at the University of Havana in July 2026, again with Dr. González Hernández as my advisor.

During my PhD I was able to broaden my perspective through two research internships: at the University of Tübingen (Germany, 2024, DAAD grant), in the laboratory of Dr. Christina Artemenko and Prof. Hans-Christoph Nuerk, and at the Numerical Cognition Laboratory of Western University (Canada, 2025), with Dr. Daniel Ansari, thanks to the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program. Working with these groups allowed me to learn other ways of doing research and to build new collaborations.

I am currently an Assistant Professor (Profesora Auxiliar) at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Havana, where I joined in 2018 as a professor in training and have since progressed through the ranks of Instructor, Assistant and Auxiliary. I teach Biological Bases of Behavior, Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Processes at the undergraduate level, along with short postgraduate courses, supervise undergraduate teaching assistants and mentor undergraduate theses. I am part of the “Neuropsychology and Neurosciences” research group, and I also collaborate with the Cuban Psychology Society, where I serve on the directive board of the InterCreAcción section and was executive secretary of the organizing committee of the HOMINIS conventions in 2023 and 2026. Since 2026, I have served on the Society’s National Directive Board, where I am in charge of communications.

My current interests include learning and arithmetic strategies, math anxiety and attentional networks, topics that connect me to the group’s work on learning and metacognition, which is why I am delighted to be part of it. To date I have published ten scientific articles, three of them as first author, and I have presented my work at conferences in Cuba, Colombia, and other countries.