Our TeamGiacomo Vivanti, Ph.D.
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Post Doctoral Fellow Office phone (916) 703 0326 |
Giacomo Vivanti is a psychologist doing his post-doctoral work at the MIND Institute under the mentorship of Prof. Sally Rogers and Prof. Peter Mundy. His areas of professional interest are developmental clinical psychology and cognitive science. His previous work includes three years of clinical experience in the Child NeuroPsychiatry Unit of the University Hospital of Siena, Italy and a research fellowship at the Yale Child Study Center. He is the author of a book and numerous articles on clinical practice with children with autism in Italian, and research papers published internationally in peer-reviewed journals.
His current research is focused on the cognitive processes underlying action understanding, imitation, and learning in autism and typical development. The primary questions motivating his research work are: How do children with autism and typically developing children make sense of other people’s behavior? What processes underlie the ability to understand, imitate, and learn the actions they observe? Why is understanding and imitating the behavior of other people difficult for children with autism? How do these difficulties in early childhood affect the cognitive and social development of children with autism? What interventions can help children with autism overcome these difficulties?
Dr. Vivanti is a member of INSAR, the International Society for Autism Research, and a scientific consultant for both research institutes and treatment programs serving people with autism. In addition to his research and clinical work, Dr. Vivanti has collaborated with non-profit international associations for the rights of children with disability, including Autism-Europe and Save the Children.
Education:
Ph.D. Cognitive Science, University of Siena, Italy, 2008
M.S. Cognitive Science, University of Siena, Italy, 2005
B.A. Psychology, University of Milan, Italy, 2003