Natassa Kyriakopoulou

Assistant professor
ankyriak@upatras.gr
Tel. :

Sector : Division of Cognitive and Differential Analysis

Natassa Kyriakopoulou is Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Developmental Psychology of Childhood. She holds a degree of Educational studies, Department of Primary Education, University of Patras (1997), and a master’s degree (2000) and a Ph.D. (2014) in Basic and Applied Cognitive Science from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Her professional career spans primary education, university teaching and research. She worked as a teacher in public primary education from 2001 to 2017 and subsequently, from 2017 to 2026, as a member of the Laboratory and Teaching Personnel in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, specialising in Cognitive Psychology and Education. She has taught in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Since 2021, she has also served as a member of the Teaching Staff at the Hellenic Open University, teaching the module “Cognitive Development and Learning” in the master’s programme in Applied Developmental Psychology. Her teaching focuses on major theoretical approaches to cognitive development, the mechanisms of learning and knowledge restructuring, and the application of theoretical concepts to the study of learning and cognitive development.

Her research lies within cognitive and developmental psychology and focuses on the mechanisms underlying the development, organisation and restructuring of knowledge. She studies conceptual change, epistemic cognition, theory of mind and cognitive engagement in learning, as well as the formation and revision of beliefs in childhood. She also investigates pre-service teachers’ epistemic and educational beliefs and their relationship with instructional choices. She participates in international research projects and has held leadership roles in Greek and international scientific associations. Since 2025, she has served as General Secretary of the Hellenic Cognitive Science Society, and since 2023 as Coordinator of the Special Interest Group SIG 3 “Conceptual Change” of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI). From 2019 to May 2025, she served as Coordinator of the Cognitive Psychology Section of the Hellenic Psychological Society.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=moSHE9gAAAAJ

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1282-6056

Scopus ID: 55933407100

AD Scientific Index ID: 5639651

Office hours: Thursday, 15:00–16:30, and Friday, 12:00–13:30, or by appointment via email at ankyriak@upatras.gr

• Cognitive development and organisation of mental representations in early and middle childhood

• Conceptual change, metacognitive awareness and knowledge restructuring

• Epistemic cognition and scientific reasoning

• Relationships between cognitive and epistemic beliefs, learning and cognitive processing

• Momentary engagement and cognitive mechanisms of learning

• Development of representations and beliefs about social, natural and supernatural phenomena.

• Contemporary methodological approaches to studying reasoning and the management of multiple representations, including eye-tracking, analysis of explanations using natural language processing tools, and approaches based on explainable artificial intelligence (XAI).

Research Projects and Collaborations

• Changing Minds: An International Study of How Children Form and Revise Beliefs 2025– | Co-Principal Investigator, Greek research team Participation in an international study examining how children form and revise their beliefs. The project is funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation through a grant to Boston University (TWCF-2024-33721), with Kathleen Corriveau, Rebekah Richert and Jocelyn Dautel as Principal Investigators.

• The Development and Diversity of Religious Cognition and Behavior 2023–Μάιος 2025 | Co-Principal Investigator, Greek research team Participation in the Developing Belief Network’s international research project examining the development and diversity of religious cognition and behaviour. The project was funded by the John Templeton Foundation (Project 61542), in collaboration with the University of California, Riverside and Boston University, with Rebekah Richert and Kathleen Corriveau as Principal Investigators.

• Integrated Model of Momentary Learning in Context IMMoLIC 2020–2024 | Member of the EARLI Emerging Field Group Participation in an international research group investigating momentary learning and engagement within the contexts in which they occur, led by Jennifer E. Symonds and Ricardo Böheim.

• Beliefs about Learning and Teaching 2020–2022 | Co-Principal Investigator, Greek research team Participation in an international research project at Flinders University examining beliefs about learning and teaching (Project 6767), with Mike Lawson and Stella Vosniadou as Principal Investigators.