Speech title:
Cognitive developmental psychology 40 years after Jean Piaget (1980-2020)

Olivier Houdé received his Ph.D. in psychology in 1991 from the University of Paris, La Sorbonne, where he has been a professor since 1995. He was also a guest professor at the University of Geneva from 1992 to 1995 and a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) from 1997 to 2002. He received his M.Sc. in neuroscience in 1998 from the University of Claude Bernard (Lyon). Using experimental psychology and brain imaging techniques, he studies cognitive development and learning in children and adults, specifically, the role of cognitive inhibition in strategy selection.

He has published over 120 scientific journal articles and book chapters. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Dictionary of Cognitive Science (Routledge, 2004), the author of 3-System Theory of the Cognitive Brain. A Post-Piagetian Approach (Routledge, 2019), and the co-Editor-in-Chief of The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Development (Cambridge University Press, to appear in 2021). He is an exceptional professor at the University of Paris since 2007 and an honorary senior member of the IUF since 2018. He is currently the honorary Director of the Laboratory for the Psychology of Child Development and Education (LaPsyDÉ, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS) at the Sorbonne in Paris and the Administrator of the IUF at the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.  

Olivier Houdé was awarded the Dagnan-Bouveret Prize of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences in 2002, the International Roberval Prize in 2013, the Binoux-Henri-de-Parville-Jean-Jacques-Berger-Remlinger Prize of the French Academy of Sciences in 2014, and the Grand Prix (in philosophy) of the French Academy in 2015. He also received a doctor honoris causa degree from the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) in 2015. He is member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences at the Institut de France since 2018, and member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium since 2019. He is also Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur since 2013 and Officier des Palmes académiques since 2017.