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Conference Program

May 28-30, 2025

Wednesday, 28 May 2025, morning

COSPECS, Aula Magna, 1st floor

  • 9:00 am

    WELCOME DESK

    🕒 Secretariat hours: 9:00am–1:00pm / 2:30pm–6:30pm
  • 9:30 am
    Welcome 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 am
    Coffee break
  • 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

  • 1:00 pm

    Lunch

Wednesday, 28 May 2025, afternoon

COSPECS Department, Aula Magna, 1st floor

  • 2:30 pm

    INVITED SYMPOSIUM
    The Paleoaesthetics of Embodiment: From Tools to Symbols (Join on line)
    Vittorio Gallese and Michele Cometa

    Chair Martina Montalti
  • 3:30 pm
    Coffee break
  • 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

  • 6:30 pm
    Close of the first day

Thursday, 29 May 2025 / morning

DICAM, Aula Magna, Ground floor

  • 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 Myin

    Chair Valentina Cuccio
  • 10:30 am
    Coffee break
    Poster Presentation
  • 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 

  • 1:00 pm
    Lunch
    Poster 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

Embodied Cognition in Action: Dance Movement Therapy and Motion Capture for Mental Health and Well-being
Valentina Cazzato, Elena Mignosi, Stergios Makris
  • 3:30 pm

    PLENARY
    When is metaphor a cognitive tool in action? (Join online - FIXED)
    Gerard Steen

    Chair Valentina Cardella
  • 4:30 pm
    Coffee break
    Poster Presentation
  • 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 


Friday, 30 May 2024 / morning

DICAM, Aula Magna, Ground floor

  • 10:00 am

    PLENARY
    Language-mediated abstraction as a cognitive tool: research methods, challenges, and opportunities
    Marianna Bolognesi

    Chair Alessandra Falzone
  • 11:00 am
    Coffee break
    Poster Presentation
  • 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 

  • 1:30 pm
    Lunch

Friday, 30 May 2025 / afternoon

DICAM, Room 11, Third floor

  • 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 Wheeler

    Chair Laura Ieni
  • 4:00 pm

    PLENARY
    The Forgotten Body: The Co-Embodied Origins of the Human Mind
    Anna Ciaunica

    Chair Alberto Colombo
  • 5:00 pm
    Conference closure and concluding remarks
    Valentina Cuccio and Francesco Parisi
  • 5:30 pm

    Cocktail on the beach
    Lido Horcynus Orca

Posters

During all coffee breaks and lunches participants will have the possibility to expose and present their 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