University of Bari

Content
Persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities tend to be passive and fail to control environmental events. This condition has far-reaching negative implications in terms of development, occupational opportunities, and social image. One possibility to improve their situation is the use of technology-based programs relying on micro-switches and Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCAs) combined with preferred environmental stimuli and positive social contact. This tutorial would cover a range of practical situations in which the use of such technology-based programs may be applied. For each of those situations, different types of patients will be envisaged so as to expand the range of intervention opportunities contemplated.
Target audience
Clinical psychologists, neuroscientists, electronic engineers and computer scientists, rehabilitation therapists, assistive technology experts.

Stanford University, USA

Content and Objectives
Spaces of Thought. People inhabit many different spaces, the space of the body, the space around the body, the space of navigation, and the spaces people create to enhance their well-being. Thought about each of these spaces differs, and depends on perception and action. The tutorial will discuss research on these spaces, with special emphasis on the spaces we create.

Audience
Psychologists, linguists, brain scientists, educators, and others interested in spatial thinking and its applications.

1. The first objective is to describe structure-mapping theory (Gentner, 1983; Gentner & Markman, 1997) as an approach to spatial cognition and learning. Structure-mapping allows us to capture abstract similarity relations, such as the relation between a map and a landscape, or between a diagram and the device it represents. The use of structure-mapping will be illustrated with examples.
2. The second objective is to describe applications of structure-mapping in teaching and learning. I will illustrate with studies showing how comparison and contrast can help learners acquire spatial insights.

Target audience: Psychologists, educators, and others interested in spatial cognition and learning

University of Granada

Objectives
First considered as two ways of orienting the same attentional mechanisms or attentional “spotlight”, exogenous and endogenous spatial orienting are now considered as two different mechanisms, which can be perfectly dissociated in different ways. I will discuss two different approaches to dissociate exogenous and endogenous attention, a) by crossing in a factorial design variables triggering independently effects of exogenous and endogenous attentional orienting, and b) by showing that exogenous and endogenous attention do modulate attention in different ways. Different examples of paradigms suitable to investigate the independence and interdependence of exogenous and endogenous attention will be discussed.

Content

• Attentional capture
• Exogenous orienting
• Endogenous orienting
• Inhibition of Return
• Attentional modulation of Spatial Stroop

Target audience
Psychologists or any researcher from other disciplines interested on the study and research spatial attention.

Temple University

Objectives
To understand how the perceptual and conceptual grouping and segmentation processes result in “unitification” of both objects and events, and how these processes influences language, concepts, and memory for events and objects. To understand the two basic approaches, top-down and bottom-up, to spatial and spatiotemporal grouping.

Content
Review top-down and bottom-up approaches to objects and event segmentation. We will review some of the classic works on object perception. Then consider how these models might be applied to event perception. Finally, we will discuss potential extensions of existing models to understand spatial segmentation and action segmentation.

Target audience
Researchers interested in understanding the psychology of spatiotemporal information processing. The unit formation processes that influence object and event perception have implications in a variety of disciplines including psycholinguistics, memory, perception, motor control, and action recognition, and automated event recognition. Discussion will focus on areas of interests of the audience.