Call for papers - Integrative and translational serial dependence

Guest Editors

Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, PhD, University of Iceland, Iceland
Árni Kristjánsson, PhD, University of Iceland, Iceland
David Pascucci, PhD, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
David Whitney, PhD, University of California Berkeley, USA

Submission Status: Open | Submission Deadline: 11 July 2025

BMC Biology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Integrative and translational serial dependence. This Collection welcomes studies exploring the implications of serial dependence in fields such as applied cognition, real-world applications, clinical settings, developmental psychology, sense of agency, social cognition, and economic decision-making.

We encourage submissions that will allow us to improve the understanding of sequential effects and serial dependence, marked by multidisciplinary collaboration, novel perspectives as well as integrative and translational approaches. The ultimate goal is to establish a unified concept of serial dependence across different domains.

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Meet the Guest Editors

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Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, PhD, Icelandic Vision Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Iceland, Iceland

Sabrina Hansmann-Roth is a vision scientist and her research focusses on human visual perception using behavioural methods and computational modelling. In particular, she is interested in the mechanisms used to represent visual information in the brain. For that, she investigates probabilistic representations of visual ensembles, visual priming, and perceptual biases such as serial dependence. She obtained her PhD in Cognitive Science from Université Paris Descartes (now Université Paris Cité) and after Postdocs in France and Iceland, she is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Iceland and one of the Principal Investigators of the Icelandic Vision Lab. Webpage

Árni Kristjánsson, PhD, Icelandic Vision Lab, School of Health Sciences, University of Iceland, Iceland

Árni Kristjánsson is a Principal Investigator at the Icelandic Vision Lab, where his research focuses on various aspects of human visual perception, such as visual attention and eye movements, how representations of the visual world are formed, visual foraging, and the influence of perceptual history on perception in the present. Dr Kristjánsson received his PhD from harvard University in 2002, and worked as Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL before joining the University of Iceland. Webpage

David Pascucci, PhD, Lausanne University Hospital & University of Lausanne, Switzerland

David Pascucci studied Experimental Psychology at the University of Florence, Italy, and received his Master's degree in 2009 with a focus on auditory and visual signal integration. In 2014, he earned his PhD in Cognitive Science at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), where he researched mechanisms underlying plasticity and learning in attention and visual perception. Dr Pascucci completed his first postdoc at the University of Verona, investigating the role of temporal context in vision. From 2015 to 2019, he worked at the University of Fribourg, focusing on dynamic network approaches to human vision. In 2019, David became a Principal Investigator at EPFL, and as of 2024, an Assistant Professor at CHUV and UNIL.

David Whitney, PhD, University of California Berkeley, USA

David Whitney is professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, where he serves as the director of the Cognitive Science program. Dr Whitney received his PhD from Harvard in 2001 and has published in a broad range of areas in vision and auditory science, ranging from motion perception to object and scene recognition. Webpage

About the Collection

BMC Biology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Integrative and translational serial dependence. Serial dependence is a cognitive phenomenon where past experiences or stimuli influence the perception, judgment, or decision-making of current ones, causing a bias toward what was previously seen or experienced.

Over the past decade, extensive research has explored serial dependence in the realm of visual cognition, with effects across different levels of processing, from perception to memory and decision-making. Now, we would like to extend its study to broader interdisciplinary contexts.

This Collection welcomes studies exploring the implications of serial dependence in fields such as applied cognition, real-world applications, clinical settings, developmental psychology, sense of agency, social cognition, and economic decision-making.

We encourage submissions that will allow us to improve the understanding of sequential effects and serial dependence, marked by multidisciplinary collaboration, novel perspectives as well as integrative and translational approaches. The ultimate goal is to establish a unified concept of serial dependence across different domains.

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Integrative and translational serial dependence" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editor or Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.