Pascal Mark Gygax

Titular professor

pascal.gygax@unifr.ch
+41 26 300 7640
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4151-8255

Senior Researcher, Department of Psychology

RM 01 bu. C-4.109
Rue P.A. de Faucigny 2
1700 Fribourg

RM 01, C-4.109

+41 26 300 7640

Biography

I am an experimental psycholinguist and cognitive psychologist interested in the way we go beyond text and/or discourse to form mental representations. I have been particularly interested in the way background knowledge and explicit elements interact to form what we actually retain from reading or discourse. Although I mainly work on gender, emotion and health-related inferences, I have also been very much interested in the way gender stereotypes creep into the way we see the world.

Beside my work at the University of Fribourg (as a head of the Psycholinguistics and Applied Social Psychology Group, with Pascal Wagner-Egger), I am also involved in different forms of communication for the public understanding of science. I regularly speak on radio, give workshops on gender-fair language, and explain to children in schools how their perception of gender has been very much impacted by social conventions.

Research and publications

Publications

64 publications

Influencing Adolescents’ Gendered Aspirations for Nursing and Surgery
Lucie Escasain, Pascal Mark Gygax, Sayaka Sato, Ute Gabriel, Jane Oakhill, Open Psychology (2025) | Journal article

Beyond She and He : A Framework for Studying the Cognitive, Psychological and Social Effects of Gender-Neutral Pronouns
Journal of Language and Social Psychology (2025) | Journal article

The role of training and exposure to print for the mastery of connectives in French
Ekaterina Tskhovrebova, Mathis Wetzel, Pascal Gygax, Sandrine Zufferey, Applied Psycholinguistics (2025) | Journal article

Morphological productivity and neological intuition
Alizée Lombard, Richard Huyghe, Pascal Gygax, Glossa Psycholinguistics (2024) | Journal article

“The Authors” Make Me Think Equally of Women and Men: Exploring Mixed-Gender Representations in a Visual Categorisation Task
Jonathan D. Kim, Anton Öttl, Pascal Gygax, Dawn M. Behne, Jukka Hyönä, Ute Gabriel, Open Psychology (2023) | Journal article

The male bias can be attenuated in reading: on the resolution of anaphoric expressions following gender-fair forms in French
Julia Tibblin, Jonas Granfeldt, Joost van de Weijer, Pascal Gygax, Glossa Psycholinguistics (2023) | Journal article

Dealing with participant variability in experimental linguistics
Ute Gabriel, Pascal Gygax (2023) | Book chapter

Introduction
Sandrine Zufferey, Pascal Gygax (2023) | Book chapter

The Routledge Handbook of Experimental Linguistics
Sandrine Zufferey, Pascal Gygax (2023) | Book

Pragmatic and syntactic constraints on French causal connectives: An evaluation of native and non-native speakers’ sensitivity
Mathis Wetzel, Ekaterina Tskhovrebova, Pascal M. Gygax, Sandrine Zufferey, Journal of Pragmatics (2023) | Journal article

The masculine bias in fully gendered languages and ways to avoid it: A study on gender neutral forms in Québec and Swiss French
Jonathan Kim, Sarah Angst, Pascal Gygax, Ute Gabriel, Sandrine Zufferey, Journal of French Language Studies (2023) | Journal article

Exploring the comparative adequacy of a unimanual and a bimanual stimulus-response setup for use with three-alternative choice response time tasks.
Öttl A and Kim JD and Behne DM and Gygax P and Hyönä J and Gabriel U, PloS one (2023) | Journal article

Norms on the Gender Perception of Role Nouns: Gender Ratio Data for Chinese, Finnish, and Russian
Ute Gabriel, Jonathan Kim, Anton Öttl, Pascal Gygax, Lei Cui, Jukka Hyönä, Olga Nagel, Journal of Open Psychology Data (2023) | Journal article

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration.
Coles NA and March DS and Marmolejo-Ramos F and Larsen JT and Arinze NC and Ndukaihe ILG and Willis ML and Foroni F and Reggev N and Mokady A and Forscher PS and Hunter JF and Liuzza MT, Nature human behaviour (2022) | Journal article

Individual Variations in the Mastery of Discourse Connectives from Teenage Years to Adulthood
Ekaterina Tskhovrebova, Sandrine Zufferey, Pascal Gygax, Language Learning (2022) | Journal article

A Pragmatic Account of Rephrase in Argumentation
Marcin Koszowy, Steve Oswald, Katarzyna Budzynska, Barbara Konat, Pascal Gygax, Informal Logic (2022) | Journal article

A Pragmatic Account of Rephrase in Argumentation
Koszowy, Marcin and Oswald, Steve and Budzynska, Katarzyna and Konat, Barbara and Gygax, Pascal, Informal Logic (2022) | Journal article

How Robust Is Discourse Processing for Native Readers? The Role of Connectives and the Coherence Relations They Convey.
Wetzel M and Zufferey S and Gygax P, Frontiers in psychology (2022) | Journal article

Is the future near or far depending on the verb tense markers used? An experimental investigation into the effects of the grammaticalization of the future.
Jäggi T and Sato S and Gillioz C and Gygax PM, PloS one (2022) | Journal article

Do Non-Native Readers Rely on Connectives? The Processing of Coherence Relations in L2
(2022) | Book chapter

Individual Variations in the Mastery of Discourse Connectives from Teenage Years to Adulthood
(2022) | Journal article

Individual Differences in the Ability to Master Connectives: The Importance of Exposure to Print
(2022) | Book chapter

The leaky pipeline in research grant peer review and funding decisions: challenges and future directions
Sayaka Sato and Pascal Mark Gygax and Julian Randall and Marianne Schmid Mast, Higher Education (2021) | Journal article

Neological intuition in French: A study of formal novelty and lexical regularity as predictors
Alizée Lombard and Richard Huyghe and Pascal Gygax, Lingua (2021) | Journal article

The masculine form in grammatically gendered languages and its multiple interpretations: a challenge for our cognitive system
Pascal Gygax and Sayaka Sato and Anton Öttl and Ute Gabriel, Language Sciences (2021) | Journal article

The Masculine Form in Grammatically Gendered Languages and Its Multiple Interpretations: A Challenge for Our Cognitive System
(2021) | Journal article

Neological Intuition in French: A Study of Formal Novelty and Lexical Regularity as Predictors
(2021) | Journal article

An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Psychological Impact of Different Grammaticalizations of the Future.
Jäggi T and Sato S and Gillioz C and Gygax PM, Journal of cognition (2020) | Journal article

“Roger Broke His Tooth. However, He Went to the Dentist:” Why Some Readers Struggle to Evaluate Wrong (and Right) Uses of Connectives
(2020) | Journal article

Do Teenagers Know How to Use Connectives from the Written Mode?
(2020) | Journal article

Are Women Perceived as Worse Magicians Than Men? Gender Bias When Evaluating Magic Tricks
Pascal Gygax and Cyril Thomas and André Didierjean and Gustav Kuhn, Social Psychological Bulletin (2019) | Journal article

Testing the effectiveness of the Internet-based instrument PsyToolkit: A comparison between web-based (PsyToolkit) and lab-based (E-Prime 3.0) measurements of response choice and response time in a complex psycholinguistic task.
Kim J and Gabriel U and Gygax P, PloS one (2019) | Journal article

Back to the future? The role of temporal focus for mapping time onto space.
Bylund E and Gygax P and Samuel S and Athanasopoulos P, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) (2019) | Journal article

A Language Index of Grammatical Gender Dimensions to Study the Impact of Grammatical Gender on the Way We Perceive Women and Men.
Gygax PM and Elmiger D and Zufferey S and Garnham A and Sczesny S and von Stockhausen L and Braun F and Oakhill J, Frontiers in psychology (2019) | Journal article

Exploring the Onset of a Male-Biased Interpretation of Masculine Generics Among French Speaking Kindergarten Children.
Gygax PM and Schoenhals L and Lévy A and Luethold P and Gabriel U, Frontiers in psychology (2019) | Journal article

Embodied Semantics in a Second Language: Critical Review and Clinical Implications.
Monaco E and Jost LB and Gygax PM and Annoni JM, Frontiers in human neuroscience (2019) | Journal article

A Multi-Lab Test of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis by The Many Smiles Collaboration
Coles NA and March DS and Marmolejo-Ramos F and Larsen JT and Arinze NC and Ndukaihe ILG and Willis M and Foroni F and Reggev N and Mokady A and Forscher PS and Hunter JF and Marozzi M, (2019) | Preprint

Processing Connectives with a Complex Form-Function Mapping in L2: The Case of French "En Effet".
Zufferey S and Gygax PM, Frontiers in psychology (2017) | Journal article

Specificity of Emotion Inferences as a Function of Emotional Contextual Support
(2017) | Journal article

Sizing Up Objects: The Effect of Diminutive Forms on Positive Mood, Value, and Size Judgments.
Parzuchowski M and Bocian K and Gygax P, Frontiers in psychology (2016) | Journal article

What Do True Gender Ratios and Stereotype Norms Really Tell Us?
Gygax PM and Garnham A and Doehren S, Frontiers in psychology (2016) | Journal article

Gauging the Impact of Gender Grammaticization in Different Languages: Application of a Linguistic-Visual Paradigm.
Sato S and Gygax PM and Gabriel U, Frontiers in psychology (2016) | Journal article

The Role of Perspective Shifts for Processing and Translating Discourse Relations
(2016) | Journal article

Stereotype or Grammar? The Representation of Gender When Two-Year-Old and Three-Year-Old French-Speaking Toddlers Listen to Role Nouns
(2016) | Journal article

Altering Male-Dominant Representations: A Study on Nominalized Adjectives and Participles in First and Second Language German
(2016) | Journal article

Stereotype or grammar? The representation of gender when two-year-old and three-year-old French-speaking toddlers listen to role nouns.
Lévy A and Gygax P and Gabriel U and Zesiger P, Journal of child language (2015) | Journal article

Warm-hearted businessmen, competitive housewives? Effects of gender-fair language on adolescents' perceptions of occupations.
Vervecken D and Gygax PM and Gabriel U and Guillod M and Hannover B, Frontiers in psychology (2015) | Journal article

True gender ratios and stereotype rating norms.
Garnham A and Doehren S and Gygax P, Frontiers in psychology (2015) | Journal article

Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak.
Misersky J and Gygax PM and Canal P and Gabriel U and Garnham A and Braun F and Chiarini T and Englund K and Hanulikova A and Ottl A and Valdrova J and Von Stockhausen L and Sczesny S, Behavior research methods (2014) | Journal article

La Représentation mentale du genre pendant la lecture: État actuel de la recherche francophone en psycholinguistique
(2013) | Journal article

Gender Inferences: Grammatical Features and Their Impact on the Representation of Gender in Bilinguals
(2013) | Journal article

Individual differences and emotional inferences during reading comprehension.
Gillioz C and Gygax P and Tapiero I, Canadian journal of experimental psychology = Revue canadienne de psychologie experimentale (2012) | Journal article

Racism in soccer? Perception of challenges of black and white players by white referees, soccer players, and fans.
Wagner-Egger P and Gygax P and Ribordy F, Perceptual and motor skills (2012) | Journal article

Gender Representation in Different Languages and Grammatical Marking on Pronouns: When Beauticians, Musicians, and Mechanics Remain Men
(2012) | Journal article

Relevance of health warnings on cigarette packs: a psycholinguistic investigation.
Gygax PM and Bosson M and Gay C and Ribordy F, Health communication (2010) | Journal article

Reading between the Lines: The Activation of Background Knowledge during Text Comprehension
(2009) | Journal article

Can societal language amendments change gender representation? The case of Norway.
Gabriel U and Gygax P, Scandinavian journal of psychology (2008) | Journal article

Au pairs are rarely male: norms on the gender perception of role names across English, French, and German.
Gabriel U and Gygax P and Sarrasin O and Garnham A and Oakhill J, Behavior research methods (2008) | Journal article

Emotion Inferences during Reading Comprehension: What Evidence Can the Self-Pace Reading Paradigm Provide?
(2007) | Journal article

Inferring Characters' Emotional States: Can Readers Infer Specific Emotions?
(2004) | Journal article

The representation of characters' emotional responses: Do readers infer specific emotions?
Gygax P and Oakhill J and Garnham A, Cognition & emotion (2003) | Journal article

Pascal Gygax, Sandrine Zufferey et Ute Gabriel. 2021. Le cerveau pense-t-il au masculin ?
GLAD! | Journal article

L’inférence émotionnelle durant la lecture et sa composante comportementale
L’Année psychologique | Journal article

Pascal Gygax, Sandrine Zufferey et Ute Gabriel. 2021. Le cerveau pense-t-il au masculin ?
GLAD! | Journal article

Teaching and courses

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