PROGRAM
Conference Programme
EWIC 2026
The 19th European Workshop on Imagery and Cognition
24–26 June 2026 · Leiden, The Netherlands
All times are shown in local Leiden time.
Wednesday 24 June 2026
09:00–09:45Opening
Opening of EWIC 2026
09:45–10:45Keynote
Roland Benoit
The mechanisms and functions of episodic simulation
10:45–11:00Coffee Break
11:00–12:00Imagery
Visual Mental Imagery Enhances Sensory Processing of High and Low Spatial Frequency Information
Same performance, different process: Mental rotation across the imagery spectrum
Improving peripheral visual discrimination by mental imagery
12:00–13:20Lunch Break
13:20–15:00VR and Methods
GeoGami: An Open-Source Platform for Spatial Navigation Studies in Real and Virtual Environments
A Visuospatial Complexity Framework for Analysing Anticipation in Naturalistic Active Vision
Headfirst into VR: Teaching Brain Anatomy Through Immersive Technology
Toward More Comfortable VR: The Effects of Music and Locomotion on Visually Induced Motion Sickness in Interactive Virtual Reality
Modeling Sustainability: How Virtual Agents Influence Pro-Environmental Behavior in Virtual and Real Contexts
15:00–16:00Coffee Break & Poster Session
Neural Correlates of Method of Loci Training: Connectivity Changes Associated With Learning Success in Aging
Novelty-Enhanced Extinction Learning in Healthy Adults: Behavioral, Psychophysiological, and fMRI-based Amygdala Mechanisms in Fear Reduction
SketchMapia: A Qualitative Method for Systematic Sketch Map Analysis
Different Associations Between Self Confidence and Mental Rotation Performance in Men and Women
Empowering Spatial Thinking with Virtual Teamwork (SPaCe-VT): A didactic experience involving University of Padova and Leiden University
The effect of symbolic speed on temporal cognition: distinguishing duration perception and passage of time judgment
Semantic Learning in VR and AR: Effects on Long-Term Memory
When Nature Lightens the Mind: Virtual Natural Environments Reduce Cognitive Workload
Spatial Memory and Emotional Experience in Immersive Multisensory Environments: A Comparison Between Young and Older Adults
Effect of Aphantasia on the Reliance on Egocentric and Allocentric Reference Frames: Preliminary Evidence
Emotional Influence on Perceptual Judgments: How Mood Impacts the Perception of Ambiguous Images
From sensory processing to embodied experience: the interplay between mental imagery and interoception
The effect of interindividual differences in mental representations in a reasoning task on ambiguous spatial problems – a behavioral and oculomotor study (Sima et al. 2013 replication and extension)
A Happy Place: Emotional Valence in Incidental Episodic and Navigational Memory
16:00–17:40Spatial Cognition
Influence of postural constraints on the upper and lower limbs on our memory of near and far spaces
Environmental representation in Action: exploring the relationship between environment knowledge and motor representation
The Role of Semantic Information and Temporal Dynamics on Egocentric and Allocentric Spatial Representation Processes
Switching Between Egocentric and Allocentric Reference Frames: A Multimodal Study of Behavioural, Physiological, and Neural Mechanisms
From Objects to Environments: Exploring the Link Between Small-Scale and Large-Scale Spatial Abilities and the role of spatial anxiety in Children
Thursday 25 June 2026
09:00–10:00Individual Differences
The orienteering practice and spatial abilities: To be elite and expert orienteers can make the differences?
Human spatial exploration behavior: Individual and intra-individual differences
Age-Related Differences in Map Reading for Wayfinding: Cognitive Decline or Preservation of Skill?
10:00–11:00Keynote
Margaret Tarampi
Seeing space differently: How we think, move, and imagine in space
11:00–11:30Coffee Break
11:30–12:30Papers Session
Imagining Climate Change Promotes Pro-Environmental Motivation and Donation Behavior
How you encode is how you remember: Center-to-surround inhibition during encoding underlies repulsion bias in working memory
12:30–13:30Lunch Break
13:30–15:10Clinical
Spatial abilities as a key component of freezing of gait problems in Parkinson’s disease
Modelling forgetting: Understanding forgetting mechanisms in Korsakoff’s syndrome
Musical and motor imagery in Parkinson's care
Exploring the boundary extension effect in memory drawings from dementia patients
A novel tool for assessing individual wayfinding preferences of people with various types of visual impairments
Friday 26 June 2026
09:00–10:00Attention
Investigating Visual Imagery in Aphantasia: A Multi-Method Approach
Distraction Masks but Does Not Disrupt Across-Trial Learning in Older Adults
The transfer of learned distractor suppression: on the role of spatial configurations
10:00–11:00Coffee Break & Poster Session
A-MAZE-ing Navigation? Using a maze activity to understand differences in navigation ability in children
The development of Episodic Autobiographical Memory in preschool age: evidence from a longitudinal study
What Is Simulation Good For? Mental Imagery and the Functional Role of Embodiment in Language
Neural underpinnings of Déjà Vu and its phenomenological properties: evidence from behavioural and resting state fMRI studies
Do spontaneous eye movements reveal the representational structure underlying a virtual museum experience?
A room within a room: Global and local spatial context effects on episodic memory
Shaping memory through perspective: lifelogging research for amnesic patients
The Geometry of Autobiographical Memory: Coordinated Temporal Compression and Importance Fading across the Lifespan
The Past Shrinks: Weber’s Law Governs Autobiographical Time
Determinants of Individual Navigation Ability
Musical emotion blobs: A spatial indicator of emotional ambiguity
The Role of Visual Experience and Sensory Modality in Spatial Language Processing
11:00–12:30Perception
Eye movements reveal the dynamics of conceptual search in high-dimensional semantic space
Multimodal assessment of visuospatial abilities in digital anatomy learning
Embodied Navigation: The Role of Multisensory Information on Spatial Learning
How visual experience shapes peripersonal space boundaries: evidence from blindness
12:30–13:30Lunch Break
13:30–14:30Keynote
Christian Doeller
Structuring experience in cognitive space
14:30–14:50Break Session
14:50–15:30Papers Session
Investigation of the role of stress in human spatial exploration: Stress increases the complexity of exploratory behavior
Emotion and Spatial Memory: A Stage- and Role-Dependent Model of Egocentric and Allocentric Processing