CEN Colloquium: Laura di Paolo, XSCAPE- Material Minds: Artefacts, Prediction, and the Cognitive Life of Things

In this talk, I introduce the ERC Synergy project XSCAPE – Material Minds, an interdisciplinary effort to understand how artefacts actively participate in cognitive processes and in the formation of mental models. The project brings together philosophers, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, and—most importantly—archaeologists, with the shared aim of moving beyond individualistic and brain-centred views of cognition.

Our approach combines theoretical and empirical tools across disciplines. We analyse eye-tracking data collected while participants observe and interact with handcrafted Neolithic pottery, interpreting these data within an Active Inference and Predictive Processing framework. Archaeological evidence is used not merely as background context, but as a core component in building and constraining our models, contributing to what we call computational cognitive archaeology. Additionally, we consider how artefacts build attentional salience and shape environmental scaffolds for future generations.

The project also extends cognitive-science methodologies to anthropological fieldwork, collecting data on contemporary craftmaking practices in South American and Indian contexts. While pottery functions as a paradigmatic case study, XSCAPE is not limited to material culture in the past. We also investigate schools, ambient smart environments, AI technologies, and psychiatric disorders, exploring how material environments structure, support, and sometimes disrupt cognition across historical, cultural, and technological domains.

Speaker bio:

Laura Desirée di Paolo earned her first PhD at Sapienza University of Rome in Philosophy of Biology and Cognitive Sciences, working on the evolution of social cognition in humans and other primates. Her research was primarily interdisciplinary, spanning primatology, comparative psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. She also served as editor-in-chief of a Springer volume with a closely related focus, which was published in 2018. After completing her PhD, she moved to Germany, where she worked as a postdoctoral researcher on a primate cognition project across several institutions, including the Lichtenberg-Kolleg Institute (now the Moriz Stern Institute), the DPZ (Deutsches Primatenzentrum, German Primate Centre), and the Behavioural Ecology Department at the Leibniz ScienceCampus in Göttingen.

Following a break from academic research, she is now a researcher on the XSCAPE – Material Minds ERC project, under the leadership of Andy Clark at the University of Sussex. She is also pursuing a second PhD in Cognitive Sciences at the University of Sussex, jointly across the Schools of Engineering and Informatics and Psychology.

Her main research interests range from archaeology and anthropology, which currently constitute the core of her work within the XSCAPE project, to investigations into the role of education in development and cognition. More broadly, her primary focus is on the role of artefactual and built environments in the construction of cognitive competencies and mental models, across both evolutionary and developmental timescales.

Join in person at the MPIB or remotely via WebEx: https://mpib-berlin.webex.com/mpib-berlin/j.php?MTID=maff3dee0ad54cb921191ff33d0b92347

Meeting number: 2744 645 6180

Password: ArpQMePJ352