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Dr Cristina Villalba García, PhD

Dr Cristina Villalba García, PhD Image

University of Gibraltar:

Researcher
Staff
Centre of Excellence in Responsible Gaming
Research

Research Background

Cristina obtained her BSc degree in Neuropsychology in 2013 and her MSc degree in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2014 at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM). Afterwards, Cristina earned her PhD in Psychology at the same institution in 2019. After her PhD dissertation, Cristina held a two-year position as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University (SU). Transversally, since 2021 Cristina has collaborated as affiliated teaching staff in the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) combining both research and teaching tasks. Recently, after her postdoctoral stage, Cristina has joined the University of Gibraltar in 2022 as a Researcher in Neuropsychology for the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Gaming (CERG).

Research Interests

Cristina has published different research papers mainly in the domain of perception, attention, consciousness, linguistics or emotion within the framework of cognitive neuroscience. Over the years, the main objective of her research has been to study the neural correlates underlying different behaviours through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) techniques among other research methods. Currently, Cristina is interested in examining the neurophysiological markers underlying gambling disorder.

Selected Publications

Villalba-García, C., Jimenez, M., Luna, D., Hinojosa, J. A., & Montoro, P. R. (2021). Competition between perceptual grouping cues in an indirect objective task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(10), 1724-1736.
Jimenez, M., Poch, C., Villalba-García, C., Sabater, L., Hinojosa, J. A., Montoro, P. R., & Koivisto, M. (2021). The Level of Processing Modulates Visual Awareness: Evidence from Behavioral and Electrophysiological Measures. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 33(7), 1295-1310.
Aguado, L., Dieguez-Risco, T., Villalba-García, C., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2019). Double-checking emotions: valence and emotion category in contextual integration of facial expressions of emotion. Biological Psychology, 107723.
Jimenez, M., Villalba-García, C., Luna, D., Hinojosa, J. A., & Montoro, P. R. (2019). The nature of visual awareness at stimulus energy and feature levels: A backward masking study. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1-18.
Villalba-García, C., Santaniello, G., Luna, D., Montoro, P. R., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2018). Temporal brain dynamics of the competition between proximity and shape similarity grouping cues in vision. Neuropsychologia, 121, 88-97.
Montoro, P. R., Villalba-García, C., Luna, D., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2017). Common region wins the competition between extrinsic grouping cues: Evidence from a task without explicit attention to grouping. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1-6.
Luna, D., Villalba-García, C., Montoro, P. R., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2016). Dominance dynamics of competition between intrinsic and extrinsic grouping cues. Acta psychologica, 170, 146-154.
Hinojosa, J. A., Rincón-Pérez, I., Romero-Ferreiro, M. V., Martínez-García, N., Villalba-García, C., Montoro, P. R., & Pozo, M. A. (2016). The Madrid Affective Database for Spanish (MADS): Ratings of dominance, familiarity, subjective age of acquisition and sensory experience. PloS one, 11(5).
Hinojosa, J. A., Martínez-García, N., Villalba-García, C., Fernández-Folgueiras, U., Sánchez-Carmona, A., Pozo, M. A., & Montoro, P. R. (2016). Affective norms of 875
Spanish words for five discrete emotional categories and two emotional dimensions. Behavior research methods, 48(1), 272-284.
Hinojosa, J. A., Mercado, F., Albert, J., Barjola, P., Peláez, I., Villalba-García, C., & Carretié, L. (2015). Neural correlates of an early attentional capture by positive distractor words. Frontiers in psychology, 6.