In this series of interviews, we will present the keynote speakers at the IGEL Conference 2018.
Dr. Raymond A. Mar is an associate professor at York University.
Which topics will you address at the IGEL Conference 2018?
At IGEL I’m always sure to have plenty of fascinating conversations with my colleagues about a wide range of topics. But for my talk, I plan on discussing the possibility that our engagement with stories might help us to develop out capacity to understand other people, and how we might go about gathering evidence as to whether this is plausible or not.
In your keynote, you’ll be talking about literary reading and social cognition. Could you explain what “social cognition” entails?
Absolutely. Social cognition is a bit of an umbrella term, referring to a suite of cognitive processes that help us to successfully interact with our peers in the social world. This means everything from inferring what people are thinking and feeling, to building up models or representations of our close friends and their unique personalities.