Ana Paula Soares is Assistant Professor at the Department of Basic Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Minho and affiliated researcher of the Center for Research in Psychology (CIPsi) where coordinates the Research Group of Psycholinguistics of the Human Cognition Lab of the School of Psychology at the same university (see http://escola.psi.uminho.pt/unidades/psicolinguistica/index.html).
Research interests in different areas of language production, comprehension and acquisition. Specifically, in the study of the lexical and sublexical factors that affect visual-word recognition both in adults and children with typical and atypical developmental trajectories (e.g., Dyslexia, Specific Language Impairment); in the study of the lexico-semantic factors that affect the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in monolinguals and bilinguals; in the study of how bilinguals represent and process words of both languages (namely from spoken and sign languages), switch from one language to another and recover from a Tip-of-the-Tongue state (TOT). Lastly, in the development of psycholinguistic research tools (e.g., lexical databases, subjective word norms) that support research in those areas. Principal investigator of several national research projects funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) and member of the research team of different national and international research projects.
Teaching activities in several Language and Cognition courses both at undergraduate and graduate levels of the Integrated Master’s in Psychology and in the PhD Program of Basic Psychology at the University of Minho. Experience in supervising Masters and PhD theses in Psycholinguistics.
Cognitive Psychology
Psycholinguistics
Visual word recignition and reading
Sentence processing and resolution of syntactic ambiguities
First and second language acquisition
Developmental Language Disorder
Dyslexia
Bilingualism
Selected publications
Soares, A. P., Perea, M., & Comesaña, M. (2014). Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: Evidence with developing readers. PLoS ONE 9(2), e88580. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088580.
DOI
Soares, A. P., Medeiros, J. C., Simões, A., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Pinheiro, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2014). ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese Elementary to Middle School textbooks. Behavior Research Methods, 46(1), 240-253. DOI
Soares, A. P., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Simões, A., Almeida, J. J., Comesaña, M., & Perea, M. (2015). On the advantages of frequency measures extracted from subtitles: The case of Portuguese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(4), 680-696. DOI
Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., França, P., Machado, J., & Comesaña, M. (2014). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): Uma nova medida de frequência lexical do Português Europeu contemporâneo [Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A new measure of word frequency for contemporary European Portuguese]. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 27(1), 1-14. DOI
Soares, A. P., Fraga I. C., Comesaña, M., & Piñeiro, A. (2010). El papel de la animacidad en la resolución de ambigüedades sintácticas en portugués europeo: Evidencia en tareas de producción y comprensión [The role of animacy in the resolution of European Portuguese syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from production and comprehension tasks]. Psicothema, 22(4), 691-696. ISSN 0214 - 9915 CODEN PSOTEG DOI
Soares, A. P., Comesaña, M., Pinheiro, A. P., Simões, A., & Frade, S. (2012). The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for European Portuguese. Behavior Research Methods, 44(1), 256-269. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-011-0131-7. DOI
Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., Machado, J., França, P., Comesaña, M., Rauber, A., & Perea, M. (2018). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database. Behavior Research Methods, 50(4), 1461-1481. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-018-1058-z DOI
Soares, A. P., Oliveira, H., Comesaña, M., & Costa, A. S. (2018). Lexico-syntactic interactions in the resolution of relative clause ambiguities in a second language (L2): The role cognate status and L2 proficiency. Psicológica, 39, 164-197. DOI: 10.2478/psicolj-2018-0008. DOI
Soares, A. P., Pureza, R., & Comesaña, M. (2018). Portuguese norms for name agreement, concept familiarity, subjective frequency and visual complexity for a new set of 150 colored pictures. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 21, e8, 1–15. doi:10.1017/sjp.2018.10 DOI
Campos, A.D., Mendes, H. O., & Soares, A. P. (2018). The role of syllables in intermediate-depth stress-timed languages: Masked priming evidence in European Portuguese. Reading and Writing, 31, 1209-1229. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-018-9835-8. DOI
Comesaña, M., Bertin, P., Oliveira, H., Soares, A. P., Hernández, J., & Casalis S. (2018). The impact of cognateness of word bases and suffixes on morpho-orthographic processing: A masked priming study with intermediate and high-proficiency Portuguese-English bilinguals. PLoS ONE, 13(3), e0193480. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193480 DOI
Vasconcelos, M., Dias, M., Soares, A. P., & Pinheiro, A. P. (2017). What is the melody of that voice? Probing unbiased recognition accuracy with the Montreal Affective Voices. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 41(3), 239-267. DOI: 10.1007/s10919-017-0253-4 DOI
Other publications
Soares, A. P., Perea, M., & Comesaña, M. (2014). Tracking the emergence of the consonant bias in visual-word recognition: Evidence with developing readers. PLoS ONE 9(2), e88580. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0088580.
DOI
Soares, A. P., Medeiros, J. C., Simões, A., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Pinheiro, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2014). ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese Elementary to Middle School textbooks. Behavior Research Methods, 46(1), 240-253. DOI
Soares, A. P., Machado, J., Costa, A., Iriarte, A., Simões, A., Almeida, J. J., Comesaña, M., & Perea, M. (2015). On the advantages of frequency measures extracted from subtitles: The case of Portuguese. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(4), 680-696. DOI
Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., França, P., Machado, J., & Comesaña, M. (2014). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): Uma nova medida de frequência lexical do Português Europeu contemporâneo [Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A new measure of word frequency for contemporary European Portuguese]. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 27(1), 1-14. DOI
Soares, A. P., Fraga I. C., Comesaña, M., & Piñeiro, A. (2010). El papel de la animacidad en la resolución de ambigüedades sintácticas en portugués europeo: Evidencia en tareas de producción y comprensión [The role of animacy in the resolution of European Portuguese syntactic ambiguities: Evidence from production and comprehension tasks]. Psicothema, 22(4), 691-696. ISSN 0214 - 9915 CODEN PSOTEG DOI
Soares, A. P., Comesaña, M., Pinheiro, A. P., Simões, A., & Frade, S. (2012). The adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for European Portuguese. Behavior Research Methods, 44(1), 256-269. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-011-0131-7. DOI
Soares, A. P., Iriarte, A., Almeida, J. J., Simões, A., Costa, A., Machado, J., França, P., Comesaña, M., Rauber, A., & Perea, M. (2018). Procura-PALavras (P-PAL): A web-based interface for a new European Portuguese lexical database. Behavior Research Methods, 50(4), 1461-1481. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-018-1058-z DOI
Soares, A. P., Oliveira, H., Comesaña, M., & Costa, A. S. (2018). Lexico-syntactic interactions in the resolution of relative clause ambiguities in a second language (L2): The role cognate status and L2 proficiency. Psicológica, 39, 164-197. DOI: 10.2478/psicolj-2018-0008. DOI
Soares, A. P., Pureza, R., & Comesaña, M. (2018). Portuguese norms for name agreement, concept familiarity, subjective frequency and visual complexity for a new set of 150 colored pictures. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 21, e8, 1–15. doi:10.1017/sjp.2018.10 DOI
Campos, A.D., Mendes, H. O., & Soares, A. P. (2018). The role of syllables in intermediate-depth stress-timed languages: Masked priming evidence in European Portuguese. Reading and Writing, 31, 1209-1229. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-018-9835-8. DOI
Comesaña, M., Bertin, P., Oliveira, H., Soares, A. P., Hernández, J., & Casalis S. (2018). The impact of cognateness of word bases and suffixes on morpho-orthographic processing: A masked priming study with intermediate and high-proficiency Portuguese-English bilinguals. PLoS ONE, 13(3), e0193480. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193480 DOI
Vasconcelos, M., Dias, M., Soares, A. P., & Pinheiro, A. P. (2017). What is the melody of that voice? Probing unbiased recognition accuracy with the Montreal Affective Voices. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 41(3), 239-267. DOI: 10.1007/s10919-017-0253-4 DOI
Soares, A. P., Costa, A. S., Machado, J., Comesaña, M., & Oliveira, H. (2017). The Minho Word Pool: Norms for imageability, concreteness and subjective frequency for 3,800 Portuguese words. Behavior Research Methods, 49, 1065–1081. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0767-4 DOI
Pinheiro, A. P., Dias, M., Pedrosa, J., & Soares, A. P. (2017). Minho Affective Sentences (MAS): Probing the role of sex, mood and empathy in affective ratings of verbal stimuli. Behavior Research Methods, 49, 698-716. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0726-0 DOI
Parmentier, F. B. R., Comesaña, M., & Soares, A. P. (2017). Disentangling the effects of word frequency and contextual diversity on serial recall performance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(1), 1–17. DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1105268 DOI
Comesaña, M., Soares, A. P., Marcet, A. & Perea, M. (2016). On the nature of consonant/vowel differences in letter position coding: Evidence from developing and adult readers. British Journal of Psychology, 107(4), 651–674. DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12179 DOI
Valente, D., Ferré, P., Soares, A.P., Rato, A., & Comesaña, M. (2018). Does phonological overlap of cognate words modulate cognate acquisition and processing in developing and skilled readers? Language Acquisition, 25(4), 438-453. DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2017.1395029. DOI
Comesaña, M., Coelho, R., Oliveira, H., & Soares, A. P. (2018). How letter order is encoded in bilingual reading? The role of deviant-letter position in cognate word recognition. Speech, Language and Hearing, 21(2), 90-93. DOI: 10.1080/2050571X.2017.1369049. DOI
Soares, A. P., Nunes, A., Martins, P., & Lousada, M. (2018). Do children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) present implicit learning (IL) deficits? Evidence from an Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) paradigm. BMC Health Services Research, 18(2), 93.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3444-8 DOI
García-Orza, J., Comesaña, M., Piñeiro, A., Soares, A. P., & Perea, M. (2016). Is VIRTU4L larger than VIR7UAL? Automatic processing of number quantity and lexical representations in leet words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42, 855-865. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000211 DOI
Pureza, R., Soares, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2016). Cognate status, syllable position and word length on bilingual Tip-Of-the-Tongue states induction and resolution. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(3), 533-549. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000206 DOI
Soares, A. P., Pinheiro, A. P., Costa, A., Frade, S., Comesaña, M., & Pureza, R. (2015). The Adaptation of the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) for European Portuguese. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 1159-1177. DOI 10.3758/s13428-014-0535-2 DOI
Comesaña, M., Ferré, P., Guasch, M., Romero, J., Soares, A. P., & García-Chico, T. (2015). Facilitative effect of cognate words vanishes when reducing the orthographic overlap: The effect of stimuli list composition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(3), 614-635. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000065 DOI
Soares, A. P., Pinheiro, A. P., Costa, A., Frade, S., Comesaña, M., & Pureza, R. (2013). Affective auditory stimuli: Adaptation of the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-2) for European Portuguese. Behavior Research Methods, 45(4), 1168-1181. DOI: 10.3758/s13428-012-0310-1. DOI
Pureza, R., Soares, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2013). Syllabic pseudohomophone priming in Tip-Of-the-Tongue (TOT) states resolution: The role of syllabic position and word length. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(5), 910-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2012.722658 DOI
Comesaña, M., Fraga, I., Moreia, A. J., Frade, C. S., & Soares, A. P. (2014). Free associate norms for 139 European Portuguese words for children from different age groups. Behavior Research Methods, 46(2), 564-574. DOI 10.3758/s13428-013-0388-0. DOI
Perea, M., Soares, A. P., & Comesaña, M. (2013). Contextual diversity is a main determinant of word-identification times in young readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 116, 37-44. DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2012.10.014. DOI
Comesaña, M., Soares, A. P., Perea, M., Piñeiro, A., Fraga, I., & Pinheiro, A. P. (2013). ERP correlates of masked affective priming with emoticons and words ?. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 588–595. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2012.10.020 DOI
Perea, M., Comesaña, M., & Soares, A. P. (2012). Does the advantage of the upper part of words occur at the lexical level? Memory & Cognition, 8, 1257–1265. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-012-0219-z. DOI
Comesaña, M., Sánchez-Casas, R., Soares, A. P., Pinheiro, A., Rauber, A., Frade, S., & Fraga, I. (2012). The interplay of phonology and orthography in visual cognate word recognition: An ERP study. Neuroscience Letters, 559(1), 75-79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2012.09.010 DOI
Comesaña, M., Soares, A. P., Sánchez-Casas, R., & Lima, C. (2012). Lexical and semantic representations of L2 cognate and noncognate words acquisition in children: Evidence from two learning methods. British Journal of Psychology, 103 (3), 378-392. DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02080.x. DOI
Perea, M., Comesaña, M., Soares, A. P., & Moret-Tatay, C. (2012). On the role of the upper part of words in lexical access: Evidence with masked priming. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(5), 911-925. DOI:10.1080/17470218.2011.636151. DOI
Pinheiro, A., Soares, A. P., Comesaña, M., Niznikiewicz, M., & Gonçalves, O. F. (2010). Sentence final word completion norms for Portuguese children and adolescents: effects of age and sentence context. Behavior Research Methods,42 (4), 1022-1029. doi:10.3758/BRM.42.4.1022. DOI
Comesaña, M., Soares, A. P., & Lima, C. (2010). Semantic representations of new cognate vs. non cognate words: Evidence from two second language learning methods. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 5, 199-203. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.072 DOI
Soares, A. P., Guisande, M. A., Diniz, A., & Almeida, L. S. (2006). Construcción y validación de un modelo multidimensional de ajuste de los jóvenes al contexto universitario [Construction and validation of a multidimensional model of college students adjustment]. Psicothema, 18(2), 249-255. ISSN 0214 - 9915 CODEN PSOTEG DOI
Soares, A. P., Guisande, M. A., Almeida, L. S., & Páramo, M. F. (2009). Academic achievement on first-year Portuguese college students: The role of academic preparation and learning strategies. International Journal of Psychology, 44(3), 204-212. doi: 10.1080/00207590701700545. DOI
Guisande M. A., Páramo, M. F., Soares, A. P., & Almeida, L. S. (2007). Field dependence-independence and career counseling: Directions for research. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 104, 654-662. doi: 10.2466/pms.104.2.654-662 DOI
Soares, A. P., Guisande, M. A., & Almeida, L. S. (2007). Autonomía y ajuste académico: Un estudio con estudiantes portugueses de primer año [Autonomy and academic adjustment: A study of first-year Portuguese students]. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 7(3), 753-765. ISSN 1697-2600 DOI
Almeida, L. S., Guisande M. A., Soares, A. P., & Saavedra, L. (2006). Acesso e sucesso no Ensino Superior em Portugal: Questões de género, origem socio-cultural e percurso académico dos alunos [Access and success in higher education in Portugal: Issues of gender, socio-cultural status and students’ high school grades]. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, 19(3), 507-514. DOI
Machado, C., Almeida, L. S. & Soares, A. P. (2003). Academic experience at the beginning and the end of university studies. European Journal of Education, 37(4), 387-394. DOI: 10.1111/1467-3435.00117 DOI
2024/2025
Estágio de Investigação em Cognição Humana
Master
