ROSA RUGANI

ROSA RUGANI is an Associate Professor at the University of Padua, Italy, specializing in cognitive and developmental psychology with a focus on numerical cognition. Her work explores how numerical and spatial representations emerge in non-human animals and humans, particularly through studies on domestic chicks, rhesus monkeys, zebrafish, and insects. She investigates foundational questions about innate numerical abilities, spatial-numerical associations, and the evolutionary origins of mathematical concepts. Her research integrates behavioral experiments, comparative approaches, and developmental studies to understand cross-species cognition.

Research interests include proto-arithmetic capacities in animals, the mental number line in non-linguistic species, and the interaction between animacy, numerosity, and spatial processing. She has pioneered studies demonstrating that newborn chicks exhibit left-to-right spatial-numerical associations similar to humans, suggesting evolutionary conservation of these mechanisms. Her work challenges anthropocentric views of numerical cognition, emphasizing cognitive capacities in animals.

Rugani's studies often use interdisciplinary methods, combining behavioral testing with computational modeling and neurobiological insights. She has contributed to debates on the biological basis of numerical concepts, the role of early environmental influences on cognitive development, and the relationship between numerical processing and other cognitive domains like object individuation and spatial attention.