CeRCA is the acronym for “Cognition and Learning Research Center”. It was created in January 2008 and it is directed by Nicolas Vibert, Research Director at the CNRS, and Christel Bidet-Ildei, associate professor at the University of Poitiers, and Badiâa Bazzaoui, Research engineer at the University of Tours as assistant directors.

CeRCA is Joint Research Unit of the University of Poitiers, the François Rabelais University of Tours, and the “Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique”. CeRCA includes about sixty permanent members (CNRS researchers, professors, associate professors, technical and administrative staff) and forty non-permanent members (doctoral students, post-doctoral students,  contractual researchers). Members are hosted either at the “Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société” in Poitiers or on “le site des Tanneurs” in Tours.”

CeRCA’s work is organized around 5 research teams:

– the “Cognition and Clinical Behavior” team (CoCliCo), whose aim is to better understand the influence of automatic, controlled and proprioceptive cognitive processes in normal human behavior, as well as in the etiology of certain clinical disorders »

– the “Social Cognition” team (SoCog), which is interested in the different ways in which others exert an influence on the individual, thus modifying their thoughts and behavior.

– the “Interactions: Sensorimotor and Communication” team, which is interested in the study of perceptual, decision-making and motor processes allowing an individual to interact with the various elements that make up his environment.

– the “Written Language” team, whose main theme is the study of cognitive processing of reading and writing in literate adults, during their acquisition by children and adolescents, but also in the case of speech disorders.

– the “Aging and Psychopathology of Memory” team (ViPsyM), whose objective is to study cognitive functioning, with a particular interest in memory, in normal and pathological aging and in psychiatric pathologies.

The major objective of CeRCA is to conduct fundamental research allowing a better understanding of the cognitive and social aspects that characterize individuals. These mechanisms are studied in particular according to the characteristics of the individual (age, sex, abilities) and the characteristics of the environment (social aspects, characteristics of the task). In addition, the research carried out at CeRCA aims to respond to several societal challenges relating in particular to education (educational inequalities, role of digital in learning), health (assistance in the diagnosis and rehabilitation of motor, cognitive or psychiatric disorders, preservation of autonomy) and work (gender inequalities, interface between human and artificial systems).