Juan A. García Madruga (Leon, December, 18^th 1948) is a full professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology (UNED) and author of several works on cognition and development. He graduated in Psychology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1972. He defended his degree thesis in 1976 (“the role of Vygotsky in the study of the relation between thought and language”), and his doctorate thesis in 1981 (“Models of syllogistic reasoning”), both supervised by Juan Delval. He has collaborated with different scholars, from Spain as well as other European countries and the USA. After his stay at the University of Cambridge (1987), he has been collaborating with Phil Johnson-Laird and the research group on mental models. Currently, he works on the relations between working memory, executive processes and reading comprehension and reasoning from an experimental as well as educational applied perspective.

Academic career

•   1971-72: Research fellow at the Institute for Educational Sciences (ICE), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. 

•   1975-76: Auxiliary professor at the Institute for Educational Sciences (ICE), National University of Distance Education (UNED)

•   1982-85: Assistant professor, School of Psychology, UNED

•   1985: Professor, School of Psychology, UNED

•   1987:“Visiting Scholar” at the Medical Research Center, University of Cambridge, UK.

•   1987-88: Deputy Dean of Research, School of Psychology, UNED

•   1989: Full professor of Psychology, School of Psychology, UNED

•   From 1991, in several occasions: Head of Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, UNED

•   1992-93 y 1999: Visitant professor, School of Psychology, University of Princeton

•   1999-2000: Visitant professor, School of Psychology, Trinity College, University of Dublin

•   2012: Visitant professor, School of Psychology, University of Padua 

Distinctions, grants and awards:

• Second National Award of the Educational Research, Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture (1997)
• First Award as the author of Educational Materials of the Social Board, UNED (2002)
• Evaluator member of the Fulbright commission for research projects in USA (2000-2003)
• Member of the Evaluation Commission for research projects, Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (2004-2007)
• Evaluator of merits for the University professors’ accreditation. ACADEMIA- ANECA programme (2008-2010)
• Award for the best monography in Health Sciences, XV Edition of the National Awards of University Edition (2012), as co-author.
• Number of PhD dissertations supervised: 21
• Number of 6-year research periods: 6 (2012)

Research project evaluator for the “European Research Council”