CV

Biography

  • August 2018 – Now: Senior researcher (Adjunct Professor) at the Department of Psychology & Logopedics, and Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki.
  • August 2016 – June 2018: Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Psychology, Department of Psychology, Liverpool Hope University.
  • January 2012 – August 2016: Post-doctoral Researcher, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Aalto University & University of Helsinki.
  • April 2009 – December 2011: Post-doctoral Research Fellow, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham.
  • April 2005 – March 2009: PhD candidate, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Leiden University. Received PhD. on 2 December, 2009.
  • 2004 – 2005: Research assistant, Department of Education Development, Leiden University, data analysis.
  • 2003 – 2004: Student assistant, Department of Methodology, Leiden University, statistics seminars.
  • 2002 – 2003: Junior researcher, intern at the TNO Human Factors, Soesterberg.
  • 2003 – 2005: M.Sc. in Psychology, Specialisation in Cognitive Psychology, Leiden University.
  • 1999 – 2003: B.Sc. in Psychology, Department of Psychology, Leiden University.

Teaching (portfolio)

2018-2022 (University of Helsinki)

  • Cognitive Neuroscience (Department of Psychology & Logopedics). Seminar series on cognition, time perception, & neuroimaging/psychophysiology.
  • Human Computer Interaction (Department of Computer Science). Lectures on cognitive theory, embodied cognition, and implications for HCI.
  • EHealth (Department of Psychology & Logopedics). Lectures on use of virtual reality technology in theory and practice. 
  • Postgraduate student supervision. 

2016-2018 (Liverpool Hope University)

  • Classic Cases in Psychology (Year 1). Lectures in Gender & LGBT; Sleep & Dreaming; Dissociative Disorders; Psychology of Religion.
  • Research methods and statistics (Year 1). Lectures in Experimental design; Inferential statistics.
  • Perception and action (Year 3). Lecture series on Sensorimotor Theory;  Ideomotor Theory; Common coding; Embodied Cognition; Motor Development.
  • Cognitive neuroscience (MSc). Lectures on cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging.
  • Classic studies (Year 1). Seminars on understanding experiments  and research design through replicating classic studies in Psychology. Also coordinater (2016-2017). 
  • Foundations in psychology (Year 1). Tutorial series accompanying weekly lectures in Psychology. 
  • Quantitative research methods (Year 2). Seminars on descriptive and inferential statistics.
  • Qualitative research methods (Year 2). Seminars on qualitiative research and thematic analysis.
  • EEG Acquisition & Analysis (Year 3). Seminars on the practice and analysis of psychophysiology. Coordinator and developer of curriculum.
  • Undergraduate and postgraduate student supervision in Psychology.

2010-2015 (University of Nottingham and Aalto University)

  • Always on my mind build your own brain computer interface (MSc in Computer Science and Neuroscience). Aalto University special lecture and seminar series (coordination, lectures) on brain-computer interfacing.
  • Hot cognition (Year 3). COG303 Lectures on cognition, emotion, and emotional cognition at the University of Helsinki, Department of Behavioural Studies. 
  • The Psychophysiology of Mediated Interaction (Year 3). Tieto- ja viestintäteknologian sosiaalipsykologiaa ohjelma ja suorittaminen), University of Helsinki, Department of Social Psychology.
  • Student projects (University of Nottingham), undergraduate supervision and postgraduate supervision (Aalto University). 
  • Workshop in E-Prime (beginners, advanced) JURE 2012 Regensburg, Germany.

2005-2009 (University of Nottingham and Aalto University)

  • Advanced Experimentation I: Programming in E-Prime (Year 3). Series of lectures and seminars on developing experiments and experimental design. Principal coordinator and designer of curriculum. 
  • Cognitive psychology (Year 1). Seminars on conducting experiments and data analysis. 
  • Methodology and Statistics (Year 1). Seminars on research design and statistics. 
  • Undergraduate and postgraduate student supervision in Psychology.

Research (publications)

2019 – 2022 (University of Helsinki)

  1. De la Torre-Ortiz, C., Spapé, M., & Ruotsalo, T. (2022). The P3 indexes the distance between perceived and target image. Psychophysiology, 1-17.
  2. Aulbach, M. B., Harjunen, V. J., & Spapé, M. M. (2022). Visible skin disease symptoms of another person reduce automatic imitation of their hand movements. Psychological research, 1-9.
  3. Spapé, M. M., Harjunen, V. J., & Ravaja, N. (2022). Time to imagine moving: Simulated motor activity affects time perception. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 29, 819-827.
  4. Cowley, B. U., Hellas, A., Ihantola, P., Leinonen, J., & Spape, M. (2022). Seeking Flow from Fine-Grained Log Data. In 44nd International Conference on Software Engineering. ACM.
  5. Harjunen, V. J., Spapé, M., & Ravaja, N. (2022). Anticipation of aversive visual stimuli lengthens perceived temporal duration. Psychological Research, 86(4), 1230-1238.
  6. Askari, S. I., Harjunen, V. J., Spapé, M., Haans, A., Ravaja, N., & IJsselsteijn, W. A. (2021). Receiving a mediated touch from your partner vs. a male stranger: How visual feedback of touch and its sender influence touch experience. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, 2021.
  7. Davis, K. M., Spapé, M., & Ruotsalo, T. (2021). Collaborative filtering with preferences inferred from brain signals. In WWW’21: Proceedings of The Web Conference 2021. pdf.
  8. Serrien, D. J., & Spapé, M. M. (2021). Space, time and number: common coding mechanisms and interactions between domains. Psychological Research, 1-11.
  9. Spapé, M., Davis, K. M., Kangassalo, L. K., Ravaja, N., Sovijärvi-Spapé, Z., & Ruotsalo, T. (2021). Brain-computer interface for generating personally attractive images. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, in press. pdf
  10. Ahmed, I., Harjunen, V. J., Jacucci, G., Ravaja, N., Ruotsalo, T., & Spape, M. (2020). Touching virtual humans: Haptic responses reveal the emotional impact of affective agents. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing.
  11. De la Torre-Ortiz, C., Spapé, M. M., Kangassalo, L., & Ruotsalo, T. (2020, October). Brain Relevance Feedback for Interactive Image Generation. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (pp. 1060-1070).
  12. Kangassalo, L., Spapé, M., & Ruotsalo, T. (2020). Neuroadaptive modelling for generating images matching perceptual categories. Scientific reports, 10(1), 1-10.
  13. Davis, K. M., Kangassalo, L., Spapé, M. & Ruotsalo, T. (2020). Brainsourcing: Crowdsourcing recognition tasks via collaborative brain-computer interfacing. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
  14. Kangassalo, L., Spapé, M., & Ruotsalo, T. (2020). Information gain modulates brain activity evoked by reading. Scientific reports, 10, 1-10.
  15. Spapé, M. & Dundas, K. (2020). I’ll make you an offer you can refuse: How socially sensitive is the MFN? Social Neuroscience, 15, 123-127.
  16. Aulbach, M. B., Harjunen, V. J., Spapé, M., Knittle, K., Haukkala, A., & Ravaja, N. (2020). No evidence of calorie‐related modulation of N2 in food‐related Go/No‐Go training: A preregistered ERP study. Psychophysiology, 57(4), e13518
  17. Spapé, M., Harjunen, V., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2019). The semiotics of the message and the messenger: How nonverbal communication affects fairness perception. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 1-14. preprint, normal.
  18. Kangassalo, L., Spapé, M., Jacucci, G., & Ruotsalo, T. (2019). Why do Users Issue Good Queries?: Neural Correlates of Term Specificity. In Proceedings of the 42nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 375-384). ACM.

2016 – 2018 (Liverpool Hope University)

  1. Harjunen, V. J., Spapé, M., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2018). Persuaded by the machine: The effect of virtual nonverbal cues and individual differences on compliance in economic bargaining. Computers in Human Behavior, 87, 384-394.
  2. Spapé, M. M., Harjunen, V., & Ravaja, N. (2017). Effects of touch on emotional face processing: a study of event-related potentials, facial EMG and cardiac activity. Biological Psychology, 124, 1–10.
  3. Ravaja, N., Harjunen, V., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., & Spapé, M. M. (2017). Feeling touched: Emotional modulation of somatosensory potentials to interpersonal touch. Scientific Reports, 7, 40504.
  4. Harjunen, V. J., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., Ravaja, N., & Spapé, M. M. (2017). Manipulating Bodily Presence Affects Cross-Modal Spatial Attention: A Virtual-Reality-Based ERP Study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 11, 79.
  5. Harjunen, V. J., Spapé, M., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2017). Individual differences in affective touch: Behavioral inhibition and gender define how an interpersonal touch is perceived. Personality and Individual Differences, 107, 88–95.
  6. O’Regan, L., Spapé, M. M., & Serrien, D. J. (2017). Motor timing and covariation with time perception: investigating the role of handedness. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 11, 147.
  7. Barral, O., Kosunen, I., Ruotsalo, T., Spapé, M. M., Eugster, M. J., Ravaja, N., … Jacucci, G. (2017). BCI for Physiological Text Annotation. In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Workshop on An Application-oriented Approach to BCI out of the laboratory (pp. 9–13). ACM.
  8. Spapé, M. M., & Ravaja, N. (2016). Not my problem: Vicarious conflict adaptation with human and virtual co-actors. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 606.
  9. Ahmed, I., Harjunen, V., Jacucci, G., Hoggan, E., Ravaja, N., & Spapé, M. M. (2016). Reach out and touch me: effects of four distinct haptic technologies on affective touch in virtual reality. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (pp. 341–348). ACM.
  10. Ahmed, I., Harjunen, V., Jacucci, G., Ravaja, N., & Spapé, M. M. (2016). Total Immersion: Designing for Affective Symbiosis in a Virtual Reality Game with Haptics, Biosensors, and Emotive Agents. In International Workshop on Symbiotic Interaction (pp. 23–37). Springer.
  11. Barral, O., Kosunen, I., Ruotsalo, T., Spapé, M. M., Eugster, M. J., Ravaja, N., … Jacucci, G. (2016). Extracting relevance and affect information from physiological text annotation. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 26(5), 493–520.
  12. Eugster, M. J., Ruotsalo, T., Spapé, M. M., Barral, O., Ravaja, N., Jacucci, G., & Kaski, S. (2016). Natural brain-information interfaces: Recommending information by relevance inferred from human brain signals. Scientific Reports, 6, 38580.
  13. Serrien, D. J., & Sovijärvi-Spapé, M. M. (2016). Manual dexterity: Functional lateralisation patterns and motor efficiency. Brain and Cognition, 108, 42–46.

2012 – 2015 (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology)

  1. Spapé, M. M., Filetti, M., Eugster, J.A., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2015). Human computer interaction meets psychophysiology: A critical perspective. Symbiotic Interaction, vol. 9359 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, 2015, 145–158.
  2. Spapé, M. M., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2015). The self in conflict: Actors and agency in the mediated sequential Simon Task. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 304. Full article.
  3. Barral, O., Eugster, M. J. A., Spapé, M. M., Kosunen. I., Ravaja, N., Kaski, S. & Jacucci, G. (2015). Exploring Peripheral Physiology as a Predictor of Perceived Relevance in Information Retrieval. Proceedings of the 20th international conference on intelligent user interfaces, 389-399. Link.
  4. Serrien, D. J. & Spapé, M. M. (2015). Hemispheric asymmetries and the control of motor sequences. Behavioural Brain Research, 283, 30-36. Link.
  5. Verschoor, S. A., Paulus, M., Spapé, M., Biro, S. & Hommel, B. (2015). The developing cognitive substrate of sequential action control in 9-to 12-month-olds: Evidence for concurrent activation models. Cognition, 138, 64-78. pdf.
  6. Spapé, M. M., Hoggan, E., Jacucci, G. & Ravaja, N. (2015). The Meaning of the Virtual Midas Touch: An ERP Study in Economic Decision Making. Psychophysiology, 52, 378-387. Link.
  7. Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2014). Sequential modulations of the Simon effect depend on episodic retrieval. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 855. Full article.
  8. Eugster, M. J. A., Ruotsalo, T., Spapé, M. M., Kosunen, I., Barral, O., Ravaja, N. Jacucci, G. & Kaski, S. (2014). Predicting Term-Relevance from Brain Signals. SIGIR 2014 Proceedings of the 37th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research & development in information retrieval, 425-434. Link.
  9. Serrien, D. J., Spapé, M. M., Rana, G. (2014). Developmental changes in motor control: Insights from bimanual coordination. Developmental Psychology, 50, 316–323. Link.
  10. Serrien, D. J., Spapé, M. M. (2013). Cognitive control of response inhibition and switching: Hemispheric lateralization and hand preference. Brain and Cognition, 82, 283-290.
  11. Spapé, M. M., Kivikangas, J. M., Järvelä, S., Kosunen, I., Jacucci, G., & Ravaja, N. (2013). Keep Your Opponents Close: Social Context Affects EEG and fEMG Linkage in a Turn-Based Computer Game. PLoS ONE, 8(11), e78795. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078795. pdf
  12. Verschoor, S. A., Spapé, M. M., Biro, S., & Hommel, B. (2013). From outcome prediction to action selection: developmental change in the role of action–effect bindings. Developmental Science, 16(6), 801–814. doi:10.1111/desc.12085. pdf
  13. Serrien, D. J., Spapé, M. M., Rana, G. (2012). Subliminal priming and effects of hand dominance. Acta Psychologica, 141, 73-77. Link.
  14. Serrien, D. J., Spapé, M. M., Farnsworth, B. (2012). Bimanual control processes and the role of handedness. Neuropsychology, 26, 802-807. Link.

2009-2011 (University of Nottingham)

  1. Spapé, M. M., Band, G. P. H. & Hommel, B. (2011). Compatibility-sequence effects in the Simon task reflect episodic retrieval but not conflict adaptation: Evidence from LRP and N2. Biological Psychology, 88, 116-123. pdf
  2. Spapé, M. M. & Serrien, D. J. (2011). Prediction of collision events: An EEG coherence analysis. Clinical Neurophysiology, 122, 891-896.
  3. Jepma, M., Deinum, J., Asplund, C.L. Rombouts, S.A.R.B., Tamsma, J.T., Tjeerdema, N., Spapé, M.M. Garland, E.M. Robertson, D. Lenders, W.M. & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2011). Neurocognitive function in dopamine-β-hydroxylase deficiency. Neuropsychopharmacology, 36, 1608-1619.
  4. Serrien, D. J. & Spapé, M. M. (2011). Motor awareness and dissociable levels of action representation. Neuroscience letters, 494, 215-219.
  5. Serrien, D. J. & Spapé, M. M. (2010). Coupling between perception and action timing during sensorimotor synchronization. Neuroscience letters, 486, 145-149.
  6. Spapé, M. M. & Serrien, D. J. (2010). Interregional synchrony of visuomotor tracking: perturbation effects and individual differences. Behavioural Brain Research, 213, 313-318.
  7. Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2010). Actions travel with their objects: Evidence for dynamic event files. Psychological Research, 74, 50 – 58. pdf
  8. Serrien, D. J. & Spapé, M. M. (2009). Effects of task complexity and sensory conflict on goal-directed movement. Neuroscience letters, 464, 10 – 13.
  9. Serrien, D. J. & Spapé, M. M. (2009). The Role of hand dominance and sensorimotor congruence in voluntary movement. Experimental Brain Research, 199, 195 – 200.

2005-2008 (Leiden University)

  1. Zmigrod, S., Spapé, M., & Hommel, B. 2008). Intermodal event files: Integrating features across vision, audition, taction, and action. Psychological Research. pdf
  2. Colzato, L. S., Slagter, H. A., Spapé, M. M., & Hommel, B. (2008). Blinks of the eye predict blinks of the mind. Neuropsychologia, 46, 3179-3183. pdf
  3. Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2008). He said, she said: Episodic retrieval induces conflict adaptation in an auditory Stroop task. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 1117-1121. pdf
  4. Van Erp, J. B. F. & Spapé (2008). Time-Shrinking and the Design of Tactons. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5024, 289-294. pdf
  5. Colzato, L. S., Spapé, M. M., Pannebakker, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2007). Working memory and the Attentional Blink: Blink size is predicted by individual differences in operation span. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 1051-1057. pdf

Earlier (Undergraduate)

  1. Van Veen, H.-J., Spapé, M. M.; & Van Erp, J. B. F. (2004). Waypoint Navigation on Land: Different Ways of Coding Distance to the Next Waypoint. Proceedings of the Eurohaptics conference, Madrid. pdf
  2. Van Erp, J. B. F. & Spapé (2003). Distilling the Underlying Dimensions of Tactile Melodies. Proceedings of the Eurohaptics Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 111-120. pdf

Other / not peer reviewed

  • Spapé, M. M. (2009). Back in Control: the episodic retrieval of executive control, doctoral dissertation, Leiden University, 2 December 2009. pdf.
  • Spapé, M., & Ravaja, N. (2014). Social Psychology of the Digital Age: The Interpersonal Neuroscience of Mediated Communication. In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media (pp. 494–505). Springer International Publishing.

Books

Spapé, M. M. (2022). A Psychologist’s guide to EEG: The electric study of the mind. SAGE International, London: UK.

Spapé, M. M., Verdonschot, R. & Van Steenbergen, H. (2019). The E-Primer: An introduction to creating psychological experiments in E-Prime. Second edition updated for E-Prime 3. Leiden University Press: Leiden, Netherlands.

Previously appeared as: Spapé, M. M., Van Dantzig, S., Verdonschot, R. & Van Steenbergen, H. (2014). The E-Primer: An introduction to creating psychological experiments in E-Prime. Leiden University Press: Leiden, Netherlands.

A selection of posters / talks

  • Spapé, M. M. (2019). Neurosemiotics: The use of EEG in VR to understand intention in communication. Talk delivered at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Tenerife, Spain. Chaired section Beyond this Reality (on VR) with Roberta Sellaro.
  • Spapé, M. M., Harjunen, V., Ahmed, I., Jacucci, G. & Ravaja, N. (2017). Facial ERP responses to touch, trust and betrayal: From Midas Touch to Judas’ Kiss Poster presented at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Potsdam, Germany. pdf
  • Spapé, M. M., Ahmed, I., Harjunen, V., Jacucci, G. & Ravaja, N. (2015). Touchy feely: the influence of affect on somatosensory potentials. Poster presented at the XXIst Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, San Francisco, CA, USA. pdf
  • Spapé, M. M. & Ravaja, N. (2013). Actors and agency in the mediated sequential Simon task. Poster presented at the LIVth Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, Canada. pdf
  • Spapé, M. M. & Serrien, D.J. (2010). Effects of consciousness on executive motor control. Lecture presented at the IVth International Conference on Cognitive Science, Tomsk, Russia. Chaired section for learning, attention and memory.
  • Spapé, M. M. Band, G. & Hommel, B. (2009). Sequential effects in the Simon task reflect episodic retrieval but not conflict adaptation: evidence from LRP and N2. Lecture presented at the XVIth Meeting for the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. Krakow, Poland.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2008). Tracking events across perception and action. Poster presented at the IIIrd International Conference on Cognitive Science, Moscow, Russia.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2008). He said, she said: there is no conflict adaptation. Lecture presented at the NVP Winterconference, Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2007). Tracking objects of conflict through episodic memory. Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Publications Annual Meeting, Long Beach, CA. swf
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2007). Tracking events across perception and action. Poster presented at the NWO Autumn School, Doorwerth, Netherlands.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2007). Adaptive memory traces within persistent event files: sequential Simon-effects reversed. Poster presented at the Interdisciplinary College, Guenne-am-Möhnesee, Germany.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2007). Adaptive conflict by morphing features. Poster presented at the European Society for Cognitive Psychology Conference, Marseille, France.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2006). Effects of target-related primes: discounting or code occupation (2). Poster presented at the Psychonomic Society Publications Annual Meeting, Houston, TX.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2006). The hunt for the ghost in the mirror: imitation inhibition or self-definition. Poster presented at the NWO Autumn School, Doorwerth, Netherlands.
  • Spapé, M. M. & Hommel, B. (2005). Effects of target-related primes: discounting or code occupation. Poster presented at the NVP Winterconference, Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands.