Marco Vasconcelos

Marco Vasconcelos is an active researcher at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, where he serves as an Integrated Member of the Cognition Team. With a PhD from the University of Aveiro, he has established himself as a prominent figure in animal cognition and decision-making research, with 95 publications, 9,723 reads, and 1,322 citations to his name. His research spans multiple institutions and collaborations across Europe, particularly with colleagues at the University of Aveiro and international collaborators including Armando Machado, Tiago Monteiro, and Alex Kacelnik.

Vasconcelos's primary research focus centers on decision making and rationality, integrating concepts and techniques from operant and developmental psychology, comparative cognition research, optimal foraging theory, and microeconomics. His work examines how animals, particularly pigeons and starlings, make choices between alternatives, modeling how these options are valued and how valuation drives decisions. He employs optimality and learning theory to address valuation, using empirically supported algorithms to translate valuation into choice. His research often involves developing mathematical models of causative processes and testing them through controlled experiments, with particular emphasis on timing mechanisms, suboptimal choice phenomena, and information processing in animal decision making.

Analysis of Vasconcelos's recent publications reveals a strong focus on temporal cognition and decision processes in animals. His work consistently explores how timing mechanisms interact with reinforcement structures to shape behavior, with particular attention to midsession reversal tasks, suboptimal choice phenomena, and numerical discrimination. The research demonstrates sophisticated integration of theoretical models from economics with empirical behavioral data, creating a bridge between normative decision theory and descriptive behavioral observations. His 2022-2025 publications show increasing methodological sophistication with variable trial spacings, differential reinforcement probabilities, and advanced modeling approaches.

Vasconcelos maintains active collaborations with researchers across multiple institutions, particularly with Armando Machado at the University of Aveiro and Alex Kacelnik at the University of Oxford. His research has been supported through various grants that enable extensive behavioral experimentation with animal subjects. While specific grant details aren't provided in the available text, his consistent publication output across numerous high-impact journals indicates sustained research funding.

As part of the Cognition Team at the University of Aveiro, Vasconcelos contributes to a vibrant research environment focused on animal learning and behavior. His work with the team has produced significant insights into how animals process temporal information, make decisions under uncertainty, and develop cognitive representations of numerical quantities. The research group employs sophisticated behavioral paradigms to investigate fundamental questions about the nature of decision processes and cognitive mechanisms in non-human animals.