The "Rethinking ToM and ASD" student conference aims to bring together students and researchers in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, linguistics, social cognition, developmental psychology, in order to advance our understanding of the role that theory of mind (ToM) plays in explaining social interaction difficulties in autism (if any). Our goal is to explore new approaches to ToM and analyze the ways in which these might bear on the theoretical and methodological paradigms for autism.

The conference is part of "The effects of LLM interaction in digital and virtual environments on TOM" ICUB grant in enhancing institutional performance at the University of Bucharest, gathering a research team from Philosophy, Linguistics, Cognitive Psychology and Evolutionary Biology.

The conference is organized with the support of undergraduate students in the Bachelor’s programme in cognitive science within the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science at the University of Bucharest and with the support of graduate students in the doctoral school of theoretical philosophy within the Department for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bucharest.

The conference will take place on 22-23 March 2025, between 9 AM- 9 PM, local time for Bucharest, Romania. Regular presentations will be 20 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes long Q&A.

It will have a mixed format, in that speakers may choose whether they present online only or face to face at the event's location (if so, their session will enjoy a live audience, but it will also be streamed to remote participants).

Program

Saturday, March 22nd 2025

*The time slots correspond to Bucharest time zone, CET +1

Chair: Lorin Isac

10:00 -10:30 Radu Nedescu (KU Leuven alumnus). Conceptualising the double empathy problem through the lens of enactivism and intercorporeality.

10:30-11:00 Mauro Lenti (Università di Torino). An Atmosphere of Affordances: Rethinking ASD beyond Theory of Mind

11:00-12:00 Keynote address: Daniel Hutto (University of Wollongong). Understanding Autistic Individuals: What’s ToM got to do with it?

12:00-12:30 Afra M. Montero Ríos (Institute Jean Nicod, ENS-PSL). Read the room!

12:30-15:00 Lunch Break

Chair: Maria Tudoroiu

15:00-15:30 Chiara Dankl (University of Vienna). Beyond Empathy: Exploring the Epistemological Potential of ASD Cognition in Understanding Self and Other.

15:30-16:00 Joe Gough (University of Oxford). The Theory of Mind Theory of Autism.

16:00-16:30 Elena Georgiana Roşu(University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science).Who’s Failing to Understand? Rethinking Social Cognition in Autism

16:30-17:00 Nicolas Huline (Université Libre de Bruxelles). False belief tasks and contextualised mental states talks

17:00-17:30 Break

17:30-18:00 Emily Kotow (University of Ottawa). Embracing the Continuum; A Critique of Simulation Theory via Autism Spectrum Disorders.

18:00-18:30 Anna Alessandra Nicoletta Cruz Yu and Hannah Hao (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, USA). Perceived Control in Uncontrollable Social Contexts: Contributions of Cognitive Empathy, Social Skills, and Affiliative Behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorder (co-authored with Jennifer Foss-Feig, Xiaosi Gu, Daniela Schiller).

Sunday, March 23rd

Chair:Teodora-Maria Neagoe

09:30-10:00 Mihaela Drăgoi (University of Bucharest, Faculty of Philosophy). ”Virtual autism” – a new problem in the digital age.

10:00-10:30 Ivo Valkov (Sofia University). Is Time an Axiom? Rethinking Its Foundations in Metaphysics and Physics

10:30-11:00 Luca Di Vincenzo (Sapienza University of Rome). Theory of Mind and Autism Spectrum Disorder: Toward a Multimodal Constraint Hypothesis

11:00-11:30 Volodymyr Tymoshenko (University of Bucharest, Faculty of Philosophy). Autistic experiences with deception in everyday life and games.

11:30- 12:00 Round table and concluding remarks (moderated by Teodora-Maria Neagoe, Maria Tudoroiu and Lorin Isac)