Dr Denis Tatone

Research Summary 

I am broadly interested in how minds make societies. Specifically, I study how humans represent the social world in terms of its constituent interactions, relations, and groups. In my work, I use behavioural and EEG methods to explore how infants, children, and adults spontaneously use these concepts to build coherent representations of social networks. In the past, I examined how preverbal infants reason about third-party interactions based on resource transfer, dominance, and helping, and what kinds of relational inferences they draw from their occurrence. My work draws heavily on insights from comparative and evolutionary psychology, cognitive linguistics, and anthropology, and thrives on a large collaboration network. 

Professional Experience 

• Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Plymouth (UK), 2024-present
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Central European University (Austria), 2021-2023
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Central European University (Hungary), 2018-2020

Education

• PhD in Cognitive Science, Central European University (Hungary), 2017
• PhD in Social Neuroscience, University of Bologna (Italy), interrupted 
• MA in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Bologna (Italy), 2011
• BA in Philosophy, University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy), 2009 

Completed PhD supervision

• Dr Laura Schlingloff-Nemecz, now postdoc at TUM (Germany)

Teaching interests