Social interaction among children is crucial for the proper development of social and cognitive skills, as well as for proper brain development. However, the topic of how children acquire the ability to form social bonds with their peers remains understudied and therefore poorly understood. One possibility for exploring this question is to simultaneously measure the brain activity of two children during social interaction, a technique that is called hyperscanning. The inter-brain synchrony data elicited in this way can then be related to data on children’s embodied interaction with one another, data on the strength of their social bonds, and data on their performance on a collaborative task.
Playing a key role in the collection and analysis of data for this study will be the job of the postdoc hired for this position.
The Post-Doc chosen for this project should have a broad range of skills including at least several of the following:
– Hands-on management of hyperscanning experiments, including the use of PsychoPy and lab recorder software to develop triggers to allow alignment of the different kinds of data (language, nonverbal behavior, inter-brain synchrony).
– Knowledge of hyperscanning technologies, particularly functional Near-InfraRed Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Familiarity with the NIRx system is a plus.
– Analysis of hyperscanning neuroimaging data, using advanced statistics and machine learning methodologies for temporally-sensitive data, such as GLMM, Random Forests, LSTM, etc..
– Use of MatLab and video-visioning software (particulalry LIONirs) for pre-processing, experience in programming in Python and use of relevant
architectures, software, and libraries, such as HyPyP – used for analyzing random pairs and therefore
IBS.
The successful candidate must be able work in a multi-disciplinary team to conduct hyperscanning experiments with adults and children, and work with the team to analyze the multimodal resultant data, and as well as to collaborate to write-up results for presentations and publications.
Languages: French, English
Theoretical background in one or several of the following fields is required: neuroscience, cognitive sciences, linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, computer science.
Location: Inria Paris (France)
Start date: Ideally early March, 2026 (flexible)
Deadline to apply: February 15 , 2026
Initial inquiries and applications (CV, cover letter, names and contact information of 3 referees) can be sent directly to: [ mailto:sophie.etling@inria.fr | sophie.etling@inria.fr ]