Fernanda was currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University. at the time of this interview.

1. Please describe an experience that helped cultivate your interest in cognitive science/psychology.

My path towards cognitive science was somewhat accidental. I got a medical degree in Mexico City. I was interested in neurology and psychiatry. When rotating in the psychiatry unit, I realized we did not know much about what was going on at the neurocognitive level when, for example, people were having delusions or hallucinations. It was all about neurotransmitter imbalances. This sparked my interest in studying the cognitive underpinnings of neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly schizophrenia. As a finished my MD degree, I applied to come to Montreal to McGill University, where they have an integrated Neuroscience program, for my PhD. For the first six months, I was in a lab where I was studying semantic processing in schizophrenia. This was my entry to Cognitive Neuroscience. We were using Even Related Potentials -ERPs- to measure the way our brain detects semantic incongruence, and if and how this was altered in schizophrenia. This opened the world to me about studying cognitive processing with brain markers. I then started working with Dr. Stevan Harnad, who looks at how learning categories changes our perception. I stayed in his lab for my PhD and realized my medical training was not related to this new world. I wanted to know how the brain worked and ended up working with a cognitive psychologist who was a bit skeptical about how much the brain could explain about cognitive processes. I understood how important it was to focus on WHAT question you are asking the brain. Neuroimaging is great, but you need cognitive science to direct you to the processes and mechanisms. This gives you the how and why, not just where and when things happen.

2. What is the focus of your research?

My Masters and PhD work was about the neurocognitive underpinnings of categorization. We worked with very basic visual stimuli and used EEG to see what changed in people’s brains when they learned to sort these stimuli in two categories . I learned how, when you learn a new category, you learn to highlight the common features within it and to ignore particularities. I also learned that this process happens “fast” -within the first 150 ms after seeing the stimulus. This is very important for acting in the world effectively, but does have its downfalls, for example when it comes to social categorizations and stereotypes. Grouping people in a category can lead to loss of individuality of the people in tit. For my postdoc, I began a project to study how social categorization interacts with other processes of social cognition such as theory of mind. We know social categorization also happens “on the fly” (e.g., by the first 250ms get some basic features to categorize big 3 – race, age, and gender). Our brain extracts this information even when we do not want to, and we make in/out group judgments on these instantly and automatically too. In this same fraction of time, we also extract a rough version of what this person may be thinking or feeling. I was interested in how these two processes interact. Do ingroup/outgroup categorizations impact the way we infer other people’s mental states? Can we do anything to change our initial judgments? My research has then a third element, exploring fiction as an intervention to improve how we understand people outside our social group. There is evidence that reading increases empathy already, so, can having people read stories featuring characters from another social group improves our cognitive empathy toward people in this group?

3. What aspects of your work do people get really excited about?

I think people find the fiction and empathy part interesting and exciting, also because it is interdisciplinary. It deals with how art helps our individual and social well-being. You could also do it with film, for example. On the other hand, studying Theory of Mind (TOM) across racial and ethnic groups is also novel. In psychology, most of the participants in the study are from WEIRD contexts, which only represents 4% of the worldwide population. Also, many of the research stimuli to study social cognition are also made with these folks. The classic reading the mind in the eyes test, for example, uses only white actors, which does not allow cross-cultural comparisons. What if it is a face of someone who is prejudiced against in your culture? We are thus creating a multi-ethnic database with images depicting 93 different mental states. We hired actors have 18 actors from different ages, ethnicities, and genders and made high quality videos and photos of them expressing the mental states. We. We have also been recruiting more ethnically diverse populations for out studies. This should lead to a more inclusive cognitive science.

4. What contributions do you hope your work will have to the field?

First, I hope that our multiethnic database will be widely used for a more diverse and representative cognitive science especially for theory of mind work. Also, I hope the fiction work can inspire real-life interventions to reduce prejudice and increase empathy towards minorities. Prior intervention work to reduce bias and stereotyping suggests increased contact is effective, but we do not always have the option to be in contact with people from different groups. We hope fiction can act as simulated contact and have a similar effect, while reducing the discomfort and the potential for harm that takes place when people are interacting with those for whom they hold biases.

5. Do you see yourself in industry or academics moving forward?

I do not think I will go to industry, but academia can be hard to navigate. You may need to move and not everyone is able to do that. I do have the clinical research path. I have also thought about science communication. We should all cultivate alternative paths during the PhD. Science communication is a great option, I think nowadays we need people who can translate the science for lay people.

6. What's it like being a person of color in cognitive science?

I know my experience is not necessarily relatable to other experiences While all minorities have in common not being the dominant or standard, I struggle to put us all in the same category, “people of color.” I come from Mexico, from a middle-class family with access to education. I identify as an immigrant, but, when people ask if I am a visible minority, I don’t know what to respond. More than being discriminated by the way I look, there are two things I feel judged by the most – language and background. English is not my first language, and it is an additional struggle to express yourself clearly in a second language. You make mistakes and there is research showing that having an accent can be perceived as being less intelligent. Being a minority is not just about how you look but how you look and sound. When I was first teaching, I think that was a factor that was in play for the students. It impacted first impressions that I then had to overcome. Then there is this notion of North America (USA and Canada) being the center of the world and imagining the rest as “under-developed”. There are great universities in Latin America and other parts of the world, but in my experience having studied in Mexico was considered an inferior education. This bias may not be malicious, but it is has a role in how they perceive you. It can bring you down and make you feel that what you have done is less of an achievement.

7. How do you protect your time and energy?

I like to cultivate things and interests outside my main academic career. I dance as a hobby that I have participated in for many years. It is a space to wind down and express myself and cultivate mindfulness. It is a form of mediation to me. I also like to put boundaries on when I finish work. I have tried to put clear times where I am and am not working, and to be intentional and focused for whichever of these I am in. I also like journaling, writing, and reading books that are not related to work.

8. What changes have you noticed and found useful or not in your field or the field more generally?

In neuroscience between when I was in med school and now, we have moved more from a localization approach to a complex networks approach and from speaking about particular regions to speaking about networks as a seat of cognitive processes. I hope this will soon include not just brain but body and social/cultural networks as well. Moving away from the modular approach to move to more studying people in context as well. This has a cost for experimental control but is still important. Embodiment, social, and cultural factors being taken into account is a meaningful step for the field.

9. Do you see spaces where diversity will change how/what questions cognitive psychology/cog Science is asking?

Yes, taking into account the social and cultural contexts is an example of this. Going beyond north American contexts and English language when studying cognitive function. The last Cognitive Science Society meeting had some conversations about this. Not every subfield is necessarily suited for this, but I am seeing more of an active effort to include historically marginalized communities and take transcultural approaches. We must push cognitive science outside of study participants similar in worldview, education, language, and social contexts. Prolific and similar tools can help with this. Online research will be important for this, but you then have to add in the IRB piece being more complicated.

10. Do you have any words of advice for aspiring researchers of color?

First of all, be patient with yourself and be kind to yourself. Graduate studies are a hard time, and you will have a lot of self-doubt. Be proud of yourself. If you are the only one there, it is never easy. You may have to do double or triple effort to get where your white colleague is. Never forget that, remember it whenever you are feeling not good enough. If you are an immigrant, remember that besides all the graduate research work you are also learning a new culture, language, and adaptation to a new place. Beware of focusing only on productivity. I now recognize I was managing a lot of things in my life while doing my PhD. The second is to remember you have a lot to offer and your diversity brings richness. The differences of the way you see life can be a source of creativity and ideas and being unique. This can be transformed to something positive. Finally, do not be afraid to speak out when you are being discriminated against. It is important. In the past I let people make inappropriate comments and did not speak out. Nowadays we can counter this more freely. You do not have to start a fight or assume they are a bad person but do point it out. You are where you deserve to be, so work to own it and towards increasing your confidence every day.