Sensing Self and Understanding Others by Jane Conway

​Navigating the social world requires humans to mentally represent their own internal states, others’ internal states, the relationship between them and its mediation through external signals, social context, and cultural norms. In this interactive workshop, we will explore two key topics in social cognition that facilitate such processes: Interoception and Double Empathy. Interoception is the sensation of internal signals in the body which provides us with information about our own emotional state. Feeling your heart palpitate and stomach somersault might indicate that you are experiencing love or perhaps fear. In social situations, we often have access to the same external information as others, but we can never sense directly what they feel inside or always know how such signals are intended or interpreted. The concept of Double Empathy acknowledges that understanding is a bi-directional process, and communication between people with vastly different ways of being in the world can be challenging. The contextual and complex way in which we understand ourselves and others means our culture and past experiences influence how we interpret what we feel. Together we will explore research insights, interactive experiments, and a discussion on the barriers to and benefits of human connection.

​Dr Jane Conway is a PI and Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Galway. She established the Scientific Arts Lab in 2023 as a mechanism for exploring the connection between art and science and co-directs Project RARE: Real Art and Research for Everyone. Jane completed her training as an experimental psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, & Neuroscience, King’s College London. She investigates the cognitive mechanisms behind how people mentally represent abstract aspects of the world and how these are influenced by cultural context and social environment. Her work concerns the socio-cognitive ability to represent others’ minds and their mental states, and she is especially interested in studying individual differences in this ability. An applied aspect of her research aims to improve accessibility in arts and cultural spaces for neurodivergent people.