Conference Program
May 28-30, 2025
Program - Messina 2025 Cognitive Tools in Action
Wednesday, 28 May 2025, morning
COSPECS, Aula Magna, 1st floor
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9:00 am
WELCOME DESK
🕒 Secretariat hours: 9:00am–1:00pm / 2:30pm–6:30pm -
9:30 amWelcome and Introductory Remarks
Carmelo Porto (Head of Department)
Alessandra Falzone (PhD Program Coordinator)
Valentina Cuccio and Francesco Parisi (organizers) -
10:00 am
PLENARY
People are STRANGE (Join on line)Lambros Malafouris
Chair Francesco Parisi -
11:00 amCoffee break
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11:30 am - 1:00 pm
PARALLEL PANELS
ROOM A214
Arts and Literature as Symbolic Tools for Cognition 1
Chair V. Cuccio
A. Cook - ‘Do thou stand for my father’: cognitive tools in action in the language and performance of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. |
D. Baryshnikova - The Dynamic Plurality of Lived Consciousness: Cognition, Representation, and Interpretation in Pavel Ulitin’s Writings |
R. Shaughnessy - Cognitive economies of errors |
Room A203
Material and embodied creativity
Chair R. Gambino
P. Garratt - Difficult Style and Embodied Cognition: Victorians and the 4Es |
M.-D. Koukouti - Making Mirrors: Artistic Creation as Self-reflection |
T. Kubikowski - Categorisations Clashing: The Overlooked Tool of the Emblem |
Room A200
Beyond human Cognition: Extension and Prosthetics
Chair J. Bodini
M. Auvray, A. de Lagarde, F.B. Escobar - Hearing social touch: Sensory conversion technologies and their effect on cognition |
C. Evangelista, M. Tanaka, M. Carrozzino, M. Bergamasco - Sound Caption in Virtual Environments as a resource for enhancing presence: an analysis from 2017 to 2023 |
A. Constant, A. Clark - Supertooling the supersized mind: A complete solution to the recruitment puzzle of the extended mind |
Room A202
Performative Arts, Cognition and the Body - 1
Chair L. Ieni
A. Diaz Barriga - Occluded Puppeteers and Self-Aware Spectators: Strategic Distancing as a Tool of Embodied Cognition |
D. Leberg, S. Sauer- Dancing with Skeksis: Immersive Materiality and Distributed Cognition in Puppet-Based Television |
J. Hautsch, R. Alexander - Media Fandom’s Impact on Image Viewing Behaviors: A Neural Network Analysis |
Room A201
Narratives and Computational Thinking
Chair F. Parisi
N. Chiappucci - Reframing Creative Writing: How Computational Models Overdefine Narrative Frames in Screenplays |
M. Barbera, A. Re - Enactivism and cognition: exploring the link between spatial navigation and computational thinking |
G. Città, A. Chifari, S. Ottaviano, S. Perna, A. Re, C. Tosto, M. Gentile - The body as a cognitive resource: new directions for computational thinking at school |
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1:00 pm
Lunch
Wednesday, 28 May 2025, afternoon
COSPECS Department, Aula Magna, 1st floor
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2:30 pm
INVITED SYMPOSIUM
The Paleoaesthetics of Embodiment: From Tools to Symbols (Join on line)
Vittorio Gallese and Michele CometaChair Martina Montalti -
3:30 pmCoffee break
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4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
PARALLEL PANELS
Room A200
Embodiment, Space, and Artifacts
Chair S. Sartori
J. Fingerhut - Urban Aesthetics and 4E Cognition |
M. Bernini - Metaleptic Tourism: Permeability Practices Between Fiction and Reality |
G.F. Artese, M.O. Casper - Cognition at Work: Toward a Hands-on Science of the Mind |
D. Anastasi - Architecture as a Cognitive Tool: Biomorphism and the Embodied Nature of Space |
Room A214
Performative Arts, Cognition and the Body - 2
Chair G. Pulvirenti
E. Raiterová - Reconsidering Narcissism: Prosocial Learning in Contemporary Participant-Oriented Performances |
G. Stankiewicz - Quatralia. The Conscious Way to the Onstage Unconsciousness |
C. Minasi - Embodied Landscape. Affective and cognitive refiguration of the landscape |
E. McDowell - Participatory sense-making in theatre-making and marketing: from transaction to enaction in arts and cultural management and policy |
Room 201
Metaphorical Cognition
Chair M. Montalti
A. Holm - Mediating Authenticity: Multilingualism and Metaphoric Gestures as Communicative Resources in Spoken Word Poetry |
P. Errington - “Getting” poetry: How reading tasks modulate the processing and aesthetic experience of poems |
N. Langiulli, M. Coëgnarts - Embodied Visual Meaning in Cinema: From Dynamic Patterns to Metaphors |
G. Gauche - Setting boundaries: a critique of the concept of “container” in Conceptual Metaphor Theory |
Room A203
Paleocogntion and Phenomenology in the Embodied Framework
Chair E. Leone
E. Prezioso - Time Future in Time Past: Memory, Material Culture, and the Phenomenology of Temporal Experience |
M. Pizzato - From Paleo-Performances to Cognitive Stages and Dangerous Screen Melodramas |
E. Fugali - The Inherently Embodied and Extended Nature of Cognition: From Motor Intentionality to Symbolic Function Through Sensory Organs and Artifacts |
L. De Stefano - What AI Still Can’t Do: Rethinking Artificial Cognition Through Embodied and Enactive Paradigms |
Room A202
Performative Arts, Cognition and the Body - 3
Chair M. Murphy
E. Warburton - Fugitive intersubjectivity: Dance as cognitive tool |
A.E. Ferruzza Marchetta - An Embodied Learning Experience through Dance Movement Therapy for the students of Primary Education Science |
E. Mignosi, F. Battista - Learning, creating and recognizing oneself through the body and art: the role of Dance movement therapy |
T. Cavallo - The Body that Thinks, Feels, and Heals: From Performative Improvisation to Enactive Metaphor in Educational and Therapeutic Contexts |
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6:30 pmClose of the first day
Thursday, 29 May 2025 / morning
DICAM, Aula Magna, Ground floor
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9:00 am
Registration
🕒 Secretariat hours: 9:00am–1:00pm / 2:30pm–6:30pm -
9:00 am
Opening
Giuseppe Ucciardello (Head of Department) -
9:30 am
PLENARY
Cultural evolution favours extensive minds (Join online)
Erik MyinChair Valentina Cuccio -
10:30 amCoffee breakPoster Presentation
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11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Room D (1st floor)
Embodiment and Multimodality
Chair P. Campione
F. Walker - Art through the eyes of children: Enhancing children’s museum experience |
D. Barusevičius - On Relational Memory through Counting Objects and Milieu |
L. Vandelanotte, B. Dancygier - Embodied emotion and interaction in a multimodal genre: The case of stance expression in internet memes |
Room E (1st floor)
Performative Arts, Cognition and the Body - 3
Chair D. Tomasello
R. Kemp - The Situational Self: using somatosensory training, proprioception and kinesthesia as tools to transform the actor’s sense of self |
C. Penna - Co(g)scenography- more-than-material tools of performance design |
M. Murphy - Distributing Cognition for Devised Performance |
J. Arp-Dunham - To Hold or Not to Hold: The Question of How a Script becomes Action in the Actor’s Body |
Room F (1st floor)
Arts and Literature as Symbolic Tools for Cognition - 2
Chair A. Colombo
A. M. Abrantes - Comics as a cognitive tool for cultural memory A reading of Nora Krug’s Heimat. Ein deutsches Familienalbum |
I. Jaén Portillo - Film as a Tool for Empathy: Body to World |
V. Grispo - Literature and the writing process as tolls for Self-healing: The Shaking Woman or a History of my Nerves by Siri Hustvedt |
J. Simon - Amplifying Empathy Through Animated Narratives: The Undocumented Experience in Home Is Somewhere Else (2022) |
Room G (1st floor)
Technology an Cognitive Artifacts
Chair E. Prezioso
L. Mojica - The concrete life of artifacts: Enactive environments beyond immediate action |
J. Condemi, C. Ferrigno - Between empowerment and human enhancement: the Neuralink case |
P. Mantello - Environments of Actuation: Subjectivity in the Age of Neurosomatic Technology |
S. Vasta - Tools, language and music in the evolution of the human brain |
Room M (3rd floor)
Visual Studies and Cognition
Chair G. Mafali
I. Roth - The cognitive tools of aphantasic visual artists |
L. Ieni - How Artistic Representations can generate Fear in the Viewer. |
M. Trybulec, H. Greif - Making sense of non-representational cognitive artifacts |
M. Pace - Fabrics of interaction: art-based inquiry for cognition |
Room N (3rd floor)
Ethics of Cognitive Tools
Chair A. De Cesaris
M. van Calcar - Sailing with a speedometer: a case study of tools that teach |
M. Prokop - Sensorimotor Norms and Social Norms in the Context of Motor and Craft Skill |
A. Re, G. Città, M. Gentile, C. Tosto, S. Perna - The impact of technological artifacts on cognition and learning |
M. Pérez-Verdugo, X. E. Barandiaran - The equilibration of technical objects: exploring normative layers of technological use |
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1:00 pmLunchPoster Presentation
Thursday, 29 May 2025 / afternoon
DICAM, Parallel Workshops
Room D (1st floor), 2:00 pm
WORKSHOP 1
Creativity and digitalization: A mediapharmacological approach
Jacopo Bodini and Alessandro De Cesaris
Room E (1st floor), 2:00 pm
WORKSHOP 2
Valentina Cazzato, Elena Mignosi, Stergios Makris
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3:30 pm
PLENARY
When is metaphor a cognitive tool in action? (Join online - FIXED)
Gerard SteenChair Valentina Cardella -
4:30 pmCoffee breakPoster Presentation
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5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
Room D (1st floor)
Ecology and Literature
Chair R. Gambino
K. Kukkonen - Stacked Ecologies on the Beach |
T. Eder - Ideomotor theory, predictive processing and literature: Reading Franz Kafka |
F. Ferrara - Visualizing the Imaginary of the Strait of Messina: Cognitive Processes and Symbolic Aspects in the Novel Horcynus Orca |
Room E (1st floor)
Pre-formed panel - Creative Processes as Cognitive Tools: Participatory Arts as Living Labs
Chair M. Calbi
R. Herbert - Alternate worlds: Multisensory participatory arts initiatives, situated cognition and consciousness |
J. Walduck, R. Herbert - Arts-based Practices, Modes of Performativity and Embodied Cognition: Introducing the Participatory Arts Play Framework |
N. Shaughnessy - World to Mind: 4E Cognition and 4P creativity as tools for mental health research |
Room F (1st floor)
Embodiment and Multimodality in Linguistic Cognition
Chair V. Cuccio
S. Pani - Imagining the question: the epistemic role of non-linguistic inquisitiveness |
H. Tan - A “Push” by any other name: Translanguaging Chekhov’s Psychological Gesture |
S. Fontana - Embodied Simulation in Sign Language Poetry: a cognitive approach to meaning making in LIS and Visual Vernacular |
Room G (1st floor)
Psychedelics and Cognitive Epistemic Tools
Chair A. Colombo
L. Brunet - Cognitive semiotics applied to psychedelics heterogeneous uses and interpretations. |
D. Monasterio Lopez, J. Oyarzo Alvarado - Conceptual metaphors as epistemic tools in the narrative construction of psychedelic experience |
R. Walsh - Narrative Cognition, the Implicit, and Semiotic Environments |
Room M (3rd floor)
Visual Studies and Cognition - 2
Chair J. Fingerhut
B. Nebesio - What Makes Cinema Poetic? A Cognitive Study |
M. Quadrato - Enframing Reality: The blurring line of image and reality in drone operations |
P. Piccirillo - Cognitive scaffolding and artistic creation. Interfacing material enaction and digital generativity |
Room N (3 rd floor)
Pre-formed panel - Training Virtue: Early Modern Cognitive Tools
Chair J. Condemi
G. Versteegen - Performing Courtly Love: Conversation and Literature in Fifteenth Century Spain |
L. Delaini - The Body Remembers: Habit and Virtue in Renaissance Memory and Martial Arts |
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7:00 pmClose of the second day
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8:30 pm
Friday, 30 May 2024 / morning
DICAM, Aula Magna, Ground floor
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10:00 am
PLENARY
Language-mediated abstraction as a cognitive tool: research methods, challenges, and opportunities
Marianna BolognesiChair Alessandra Falzone -
11:00 amCoffee breakPoster Presentation
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11:30 am 1:30 pm
PARALLEL PANELS
Room D (1st floor)
Affordance and Reading
Chair A. Abrantes
E. Suoranta - Affordances of “Algorithmic” Reading: What Hannu Rajaniemi’s Quantum Thief Trilogy Can Teach Us About Democracy |
R. Gambino, G. Pulvirenti - The Suspicious Reader: a Neurohermeneutical Approach to Literature |
R. Zavoianu Petrovici - Affordances in action – from intertextuality to aesthetic distance |
Room E (1st floor)
Performative Arts, Cognition and the Body
Chair I. Roth
M. Musilová - Conductive Corporeal Tension. The ʻinvisibleʼ quality of the actor |
M. Adamova - Body as a Vehicle: Performers Body as a Mosaic of Idea Representations |
S. Havlíčková Kysová - Restoring VERTICALITY. Image Schemas as a Tool for Analysis of Contemporary Productions of Baroque Opera |
Room G (1st floor)
Music and Cognition
Chair J. Bodini
V. Kostka - Multimodality, Conceptual Blending and Image Schema in Music |
S. Allegra - (De)scribed performances: a techno-aesthetic approach to musical notation |
B. Genco - Clanghenology: Introduction, Proposals, Perspectives |
E. Danzì - Em-Body Music: Body Percussion as a Crossmodal Cognitive Tool |
Room M (3rd floor)
Faces, Masks, and Emotions
Chair M. Montalti
G. Pennisi - Disembodied Faces: Aesthetics and Psychopathology of the Uncanny through Artaud’s Portraits |
M. Calbi - The Material Agency of Face Masks: Face Masks and Facial Expressions. Shifting from the Gaze of the Onlooker to the Wearer's Experience |
S. Sartori, M. Calbi - The Material Agency of Face Masks: Mediating Body Ownership and Sense of Agency |
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1:30 pmLunch
Friday, 30 May 2025 / afternoon
DICAM, Room 11, Third floor
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3:00 pm
SPECIAL PANEL
Cognitive tools, wayfinding, and place memory: artistic and technological tensions
John Sutton
The Grid and the Groove: Process Narrativity and Situated Sense-Making
Michael WheelerChair Laura Ieni -
4:00 pm
PLENARY
The Forgotten Body: The Co-Embodied Origins of the Human Mind
Anna CiaunicaChair Alberto Colombo -
5:00 pmConference closure and concluding remarksValentina Cuccio and Francesco Parisi
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5:30 pm
Cocktail on the beach
Lido Horcynus Orca
Posters
Marzia Magnanini
Effects of Classical and Groove Music on Capsaicin-Induced Pain: Investigating Nociception and Corticospinal Excitability Modulation
Fabrizio Serrao
The expression of six primary emotions through abstract images generated by Artificial Intelligence
Rajat Ravi Rao
Disentangling Ambiguity in Aesthetic Experience: The Interplay of Visual Features, Interpretation, and Individual Differences
Hamide Beyza Muhtaroğlu
Recall of Information Learned Through Visual and Tactile
Eliana Danzì
CooperAction. The Intersection of Body Music and Embodied Theories for Educational Innovation
Giulia Fiore
TragEmA - Tragic Emotions in the Anthropocene. The Ethical Urgency of Rethinking Ancient and Modern Pity through Citizen Humanities
Debora Pizzimenti, Assunta Penna
Computational motherhood and the digital body: towards a new way of dwelling with Artificial Intelligences
Fabrizio Di Giovanni
Spatial semantics is grounded in visuospatial perception: evidence from tDCS modulation of the right posterior parietal cortex during a lexical decision task in a virtual reality environment