CV

Industry CV (PDF)

Education

October 2018 - Present

PhD, Biomedicine; Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain); Supervisor: Núria Sebastian-Galles.

October 2017 - July 2018

MSc, Neurosciences; University of Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). Dissertation: Phonemic Contrast Perception: A Segmentation Study on Monolingual and Bilingual Infants; Supervisors: Núria Sebastian-Galles and Chiara Santolin.

September 2013 - July 2017

BSc, Psychology; University of Oviedo (Oviedo, Spain). Dissertation: Effects of Environmental Enrichment on Attention, Spatial Reference Memory, and Cytochrome C Oxidase Activity; Supervisors: Azucena Begega and Marcelino Cuesta.

Contributions

Articles

Santolin, C., García-Castro, G., Zettersten, M., Sebastian-Galles, N., Saffran, J. (2020). Experience with research paradigms relates to infants’ direction of preference. Infancy, 00, 1–8. URL OSF PsyArxiv DOI GitHub

Sampedro-Piquero, P., Álvarez-Suárez, P., Moreno-Fernández, R., García-Castro, G., Cuesta, M., Begega, A. (2018). Environmental enrichment results in both brain connectivity efficiency and selective improvement in different behavioral tasks. Neuroscience, 388, 374-383. URL Google Scholar

Conference presentations

Siow, S., Guillen, N., Lepadatu, I., Garcia-Castro, G., Avila-Varela, D., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (2022). A longitudinal exploration of bilingual toddler’s processing of cognates. Presented at the International Congress on Infant Studies. URL

Garcia-Castro, G., Franco-Martínez, A., Rodríguez-Prada, C., Castillejo, I., Sebastian-Galles, N. (2022). Estimando curvas de adquisición léxica en la infancia mediante un modelo de bayesiano de TRI. Presented at the XVII Congreso de Metodología de las Ciencias Sociales y de la Salud. URL

Proceedings

Siow, S., Guillen, N., Lepadatu, I., Garcia-Castro, G., Avila-Varela, D., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (2022). An alternative approach to defining cross-linguistic phonological similarity using a model of monolingual speech recognition. Proceedings of the 46th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development. URL DOI

Siow, S., Guillen, N., Lepadatu, I., Garcia-Castro, G., Avila-Varela, D., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (2021). A study of linguistic distance and infant vocabulary trajectories using bilingual CDIs of English and one additional language. Presented at the Boston University Conference in Language Development, held online (Boston, United States).

Siow, S., Garcia-Castro, G., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (2021). An alternative approach to defining cross-linguistic phonological similarity using a model of monolingual speech recognition. Presentation at the Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing conference, held online (Paris, France). URL DOI

Posters

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Lepadatu, I., Guillen, N., Avila-Varela, D. S., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (August, 2021). The emergence of inhibitory links in the developing lexicon: insights from bilingual participants. Poster presented at the Workshop in Infant Language Development (San Sebastián/Donostia, Spain). URL

Zacharaki, K. E., Garcia-Castro, G., Sebastian-Galles, N. (June, 2022). Selective attention to the mouth of signing faces. Poster presented at the Workshop in Infant Language Development (San Sebastián/Donostia, Spain). URL

Zacharaki, K. E., Garcia-Castro, G., Sebastian-Galles, N. (June, 2022). Selective attention to the mouth of signing faces. Poster presented at the Workshop in Infant Language Development (San Sebastián/Donostia, Spain). URL

Siow, S., Guillen, N., Lepadatu, I., Garcia-Castro, G., Avila-Varela, D. S., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (August, 2021). A study of linguistic distance and infant vocabulary trajectories using bilingual CDIs of English and one additional language. Presentation at the Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, held online (Lancaster, United Kingdom).

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Sebastian-Galles, N., Plunkett, K. (August, 2021). The impact of cognateness on bilingual lexical access: a longitudinal priming study. Poster presented at the Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development, held online (Lancaster, United Kingdom).

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Sebastian-Galles, N. and Plunkett, Kim (June, 2021). The role of cognateness in nonnative spoken word recognition. Poster presented at the XI International Symposium of Psycholinguistics (Madrid, Spain, held online).

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Sebastian-Galles, N. and Plunkett, Kim (July, 2020). The role of lexical similarity on bilingual parallel activation: A priming study in toddlers. Poster presented at the International Congress on Infant Studies (Edimburgh, United Kingdom, held online). proceedings

Garcia-Castro, G., Avila-Varela, D. S., and Sebastian-Galles, N. (July, 2020). Does phonological overlap across translation equivalents predict earlier age of acquisition?. Poster presented at the International Congress on Infant Studies (Edimburgh, United Kingdom, held online). proceedings

Siow, S., Garcia-Castro, G., Sebastian-Galles, N., and Plunkett, K. (August, 2019). The impact of phonology (cognateness) on the bilingual lexicon: Parallel cross-language phonological priming. Poster presented at the Lancaster Conference on Infant and Early Child Development (Lancaster, United Kingdom).

Garcia-Castro, G., Marimon, M., Santolin, C., and Sebastian-Galles, N. (June, 2019). Encoding new word forms when contrastive phonemes are interchanged: A preliminary study on 8-month-old infants. Poster presented at the Workshop in Infant Language Development (Potsdam, Germany). https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GYKUH

García-Castro, G., Álvarez-Suárez, P., García-Abad, N., Cuesta, M., and Begega, A. (June, 2017). Pro-cognitive effects of environmental enrichment on attention and spatial memory: hippocampal metabolic activity in a Wistar rat model. Poster presented at the 4th International Congress on Health and Aging Research (Murcia, Spain).

García-Abad, N., Santirso, M., García-Castro, G., and Álvarez-Suárez, P. (June, 2017). Efectos del omega-3 en las redes implicadas en la memoria de trabajo espacial en ratas Wistar. Poster presented at the 3rd National Congress of Psychology (Oviedo, Spain)

Invited talks

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Sebastian-Galles, N., and Plunkett, K. (March, 2022). The role of cognateness during word recognition in a non-native language. Talk given at the Psycholinguistics Coffee (University of Edinburgh, held online). URL

Garcia-Castro, G., Siow, S., Lepadatu, I., Guillen, N., Avila-Varela, D., Sebastian-Galles, N. y Plunkett, K. (January 2022). Parallel activation and the developing bilingual lexicon: a longitudinal study on word recognition. Talk given at the LACRE research group (Cardiff University, held online).

Scientific dissemination

Zacharaki, K., García-Castro, G. (2019, October). “Descubriendo la mente de los bebés” Talk presented at 13a Festa de la Ciència, Barcelona, Spain. [Link] [Video]

García-Castro, G., Avila-Varela (2019, October). “Estudiando la mente de los bebés: Desde el lenguaje hasta la lógica” Talk presented at Centre Cívic, Barcelona, Spain. [Link] [Video])

Repositories

García-Castro, G., Santolin, C., Marimon, M., and Sebastian-Galles, N. (2019, October 22th). Segmentation: Catalan and Spanish natural speech segmentation at 8 months of age. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/42GUP)

Santolin, C., García-Castro, G., Zettersten, M., Sebastian-Galles, N., & Saffran, J. (2020, March 5). Flip: Experience with research paradigms relates to infants’ direction of preference. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/G95UB

Others

Animal research

Research Staff Certificate for animal research, issued on 15/05/2018 by the Direcció General de Polítiques Ambientals i Medi Natural.

Skills

  • Data processing: I particularly enjoy wrangling my way through messy data using the tidyverse family of packages. with some time, I can also google my way through Python.
  • Data analysis: Linear mixed models using R, both frequentist (lme4) and Bayesian (brms); reproducible reports using RMarkdown. I can also perform acoustic analysis on stimuli using Praat, and one of its R interfaces (PraatR).
  • Data visualisation using ggplot2. I can make animations using gganimate, and I’m currently learning to make maps, and Shiny Apps.
  • Designing experiments and questionnaires: I can program lab-based experiments using Matlab (PsychToolbox-3) and Python (Psychopy), online experiments using the PsychoPy/PsychoJS/Pavlovia workflow, and design reproducible online questionnaires using formR.
  • Git/GitHub/Bitbucket
  • JASP/SPSS

Languages

  • Spanish (native speaker)
  • English: C1
  • French: C1

Short courses

August 2018

Data Science: Multiple imputation in practice, Utrecht Summer School, Utrecht University. Introduction to Multiple Imputation as a powerful tool for dealing with missing data in experimental studies.

August 2018

Data Science: Statistical Programming with R, Utrecht Summer School, Utrecht University.

August 2016

Introduction to Neuroscience: From Molecule to Behavior, Radboud Summer School, Radboud University Nijmegen. Hands-on training at research labs of the Donders Institute for Brain and Cognition.

August 2016

How to Improve the Quality and Translatability of Preclinical Animal Studies, Radboud Summer School, Radboud University Nijmegen. Course organized by SYRCLE institute, Radboud University Nijmegen and Radboud University Medical Centre. Theory and hands-on experience on Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis in preclinical animal studies. Overview of the main software available to conduct a Meta-Analysis and basic formation on academic reading and writing.