ORIT NAFCHA (PhD)

Orit has worked on her M.A. thesis (graduated 2015) at the Motivation Cognition lab under the supervision of Dr. Baruch Eitam. In her thesis, she explored the motivational force behind habitual behavior and how belief in free will influences the motor system and specifically the implicit sense of agency. She is currently continuing in both these projects and also investigating the influence of different types of rewards on attentional processes.

She is currently working on her PhD at the University of Haifa in the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Prof. Simone Shamay-Tsoory‏ and Dr. Shai Gabay. In her PhD, she focuses on understanding the mechanism and the neural basis, by which we perceive, understand and are influenced by others’ actions; in particular, she wishes to understand the social inhibition of return effect and its evolutionary origin by using the Archer fish.