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Background
My academic career has been shaped by the attempt to bring together very diverse interests. This has led me to seek to break down the boundaries between disciplines and approaches, including the traditional barriers between fields conventionally regarded as scientific and those usually framed as belonging to the humanities. That is how I began my studies at the University of Costa Rica (U.C.R.), enrolling in courses in philosophy and in statistics. In 1989 I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Statistics with an emphasis in computing and information technology, and I began teaching courses at the School of Statistics of the U.C.R. Although my graduation project was developed in a more epidemiological field (Survival Analysis in the presence of competing risks), my interests clearly drifted towards statistical developments in the field of psychometrics and the mathematical modelling of psychological phenomena. This led me to pursue a Master’s in Cognitive Sciences, also at the University of Costa Rica. As part of my studies I spent a one-year stay at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I took courses in Psychology and Linguistics. When I finished my Master’s I returned as a researcher at the Institute for Psychological Research (IIP) of the U.C.R., working on various studies in the field of cognition and human abilities. I later received a scholarship from the government of Greece and completed my doctoral studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. On my return to the University of Costa Rica I continued at the IIP (where I am a tenured researcher) and carried out research together with other units, such as the Neuroscience Research Center, developing a project on the computational modelling of animal behaviour. Since then I have carried out research in the field of metacognition, including the computational modelling of metacognitive judgements, a line in which I continue to collaborate, even though in 2018 I took over the direction of the School of Philosophy of the U.C.R. My involvement with this unit has also allowed me to work on various aspects of philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. In particular, I have been interested in the relationship between metacognition and consciousness, as well as in the topic of modularity.
In addition to these fields, for several years I have devoted myself to literature. I have published various books in Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and Egypt. I have also received several awards, including the National Poetry Prize of Costa Rica (2016). As I mentioned earlier, I have tried to combine my academic and literary interests. Thus, I have published works on readings of science-fiction works from the perspective of philosophy of mind, on executive functions and music learning, and on metaphor from a cognitive perspective.
Some of my most recent publications are: