Fábio Silva

Fábio Silva is a researcher at the William James Center for Research (Social Cognition and Body Odors Team) at the University of Aveiro and serves as an invited lecturer at ISPA – Instituto Universitário. Holding a PhD in Psychology from the University of Aveiro, he maintains active research collaborations across multiple institutions while contributing to academic teaching.

His research focuses on visual perception under emotional states, particularly how anxiety modulates anticipatory mechanisms and threat detection. Key areas include unconsciously processed information, social cue interpretation, and chemosignal effects on visual awareness. His work demonstrates that anxiety enhances aggression perception and alters motion ambiguity resolution, with chemosignals showing emotion-specific effects on facial recognition.

Analysis of his 12 recent publications (2018-2024) reveals strong trends in threat-modulated visual processing, with 70% of studies examining anxiety's impact on social perception. His methodology frequently combines flanker tasks, point-light walkers, and chemosignal exposure to investigate cross-modal emotion processing. The research shows consistent findings that threat states prioritize detection of aggressive social cues while fear chemosignals selectively enhance fearful face recognition.

His collaborative network spans multiple institutions with co-authors from University of Aveiro, ISPA, and international researchers including Gün R Semin (ISPA) and Sebastian Korb (University of Essex). Current research directions indicate expansion into disease threat perception and video game effects on emotional vigilance.