Bence C. Farkas 

Born in the Miskolc, Hungary, Bence earned his BA in Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest in 2019. He then completed an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience and the diplôme de l’ENS in Paris, graduating in 2021, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, after having been selected for their International Selection scholarship programme. He is currently completing his PhD, in public health, with a focus on evolutionary developmental psychopathology, at Ecole Doctorale de Santé Publique, of Université Paris-Saclay. Bence has taken a keen interest in quantitative research, experimental psychology, and computational modelling early on in his studies. He initially worked as part of the Brain, Memory and Language lab of Eötvös Loránd University, where he studied implicit learning processes in neurodevelopmental disorders. Before starting his master’s degree, he briefly worked for the Child Welfare Service of his hometown of Miskolc, an experience that was crucial in solidifying his interest in better understanding the effects of childhood adversity. During his years in Paris, developmental psychopathology has become his focus. He currently strives to combine computational modelling, evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience in order to elucidate the ways in which early life environments affect emotional and neurocognitive development and decision making and to gain insight into neuropsychiatric conditions, such as Tourettes syndrome, OCD and psychopathology in general. Bence joined Forward College in 2022 as Teaching assistant and has since taught research design and statistics courses at Forward’s Paris campus.

•  Develomental psychopathology
•  Evolutionary psychology
• Reinforcement learning
• Procedural learning
• Computational psychiatry

•  PL2020 Research design and statistics 2A: analysis of variance
• PL2030 Research design and statistics 2B: multivariate measures

Peer Reviewed Articles

Farkas, B. C., Tóth-Fáber, E., Janacsek, K., & Nemeth, D. (2021). A process-oriented view of procedural memory can help better understand Tourette’s syndrome. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15,
doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.683885

Farkas, B. C., Chambon, V., & Jacquet, P. O. (2022). Do perceived control and time orientation mediate the effect of early life adversity on reproductive behaviour and health status? Insights from the European Value Study and the European Social Survey. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1-14. doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01066-y

Farkas, B. C., Krajcsi, A., Janacsek, K., & Nemeth, D. (2023). The complexity of measuring reliability in learning tasks: An illustration using the Alternating Serial Reaction Time task. Behavior Research Methods,
doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-02038-5

Farkas, B.C., Baptista, A., Speranza, M. et al. Specifying the timescale of early life unpredictability helps explain the development of internalising and externalising behaviours. Scientific Reports 14, 3563 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-54093-x

Farkas, B. C., & Jacquet, P. O. (2023). Early life adversity jointly regulates body-mass index and working memory development. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 290(2011), 20231945. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2023.1945

Preprints

Tóth-Fáber, E., Farkas, B. C., Tánczos, T., Nemeth, D., & Janacsek, K. (2024, August 3). Longitudinal evidence for decreasing statistical learning abilities across childhood. PsyArXiv, https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/gj3hq

Simor P., Vékony T., Farkas B. C., Szalárdy O., Bogdány T., Brezóczki B., Csifcsák G., Németh D. (2024 July 30). Mind wandering during implicit learning is associated with increased periodic EEG activity and improved extraction of hidden probabilistic patterns. bioRxiv 2024.07.30.605743; https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.30.605743

Conference Presentations, Participation, and Invited Talks 

“Executive functions and procedural learning in Tourette’s syndrome”
International Convention of Psychological Science
2019 March 7 – 9

“Tanulási folyamatok Tourette szindrómában / Learning processes in Tourette’s syndrome”
XXVIII. National Scientific Assembly of the Hungarian Psychological Associations
2019 May 30 – June 1

“Investigating the differential role of early life unpredictability and volatility on human psychopathological development”
European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association Conference
2022 April 19 – 22

“Understanding individual differences in reward-guided learning as an efficient adaptation to task uncertainty and computational noise”
Forum of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies
2022 July 9 – 13

“Prévisibilité, volatilité et trauma : quel devenir pour les enfants ? / Unpredictability, volatility and trauma : Their impact on children”
Journée scientifique Réseau francophone des thérapies basées sur la mentalisation
2022 November 30