Alex Miklashevsky

I'm a cognitive scientist studying how the human mind works and interacts with the body. I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Potsdam Embodied Cognition Group at the University of Potsdam and in the Brain Language Laboratory at the Free University of Berlin. Since April 2024, I have been a scientific director of the WiNoDa Knowledge Lab at the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

I work within the framework of embodied cognition. In my PhD thesis, I used psycholinguistic databases and behavioral methods to examine perceptual and motor semantics in language.

My main interests are embodied semantics (such as spatial, perceptual, or motor semantics), spatial attention, and the motor system. I'm particularly interested in how we understand abstract concepts (such as time, valence, or numbers). 

In my research, I bring three perspectives together: (1) the role of our body in cognition, (2) the role of language in knowledge acquisition and use, and (3) the individual differences approach that highlights similarities and uniqueness of our cognitive profiles.

Research methods & statistics

I use behavioral methods (online and offline reaction time recording, mouse movement tracking, eye tracking) and the recording of continuous biological signals (grip force recording). I also use standard psychological and psycholinguistic methods: questionnaires, tests, and Likert scales.

I use various statistical methods and techniques, ranging from descriptive statistics to exploratory and confirmatory methods: cluster analysis, factor analysis or principal component analysis, correlational analysis, ANOVA, ANCOVA, non-parametric methods, multiple linear and nonlinear regression, and linear mixed-effects modeling. I also use cluster permutation analysis to process continuous data from physiological sensors.

I mainly conduct my analyses in R using packages such as dplyr (data preparation and processing), lme4 (mixed-effects linear modeling), effects, sjPlot, ggplot2 (data visualization), permuco (cluster permutation analysis), and others.