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Presented by Prof. Andy Yonelinas, UC Davis, USA.

A growing body of research has indicated that emotion and acute stress can enhance episodic memory. However, why these effects occur and how they are related to different regions in the medial temporal lobes is still poorly understood. One dominant explanation of these effects is the ‘emotional consolidation’ account which assumes that over time the amygdala selectively enhances the consolidation of emotional and stressful episodic memories that are supported by the hippocampus. An alternative ‘emotional binding’ account is that the hippocampus supports memory for item-context bindings, whereas the amygdala supports complementary item-emotion bindings. Recent results from behavioral, lesion and neuroimaging studies examining the effects of emotion and acute stress on episodic memory are found to challenge the consolidation account and preferentially support the predictions of the emotional binding hypothesis.

Presented by Prof. Stijn Vandevelde, Ghent University & Federal Council of Mental Health Professions and Prof. Anne-Marie Etienne, University of Liège & Federal Council of Mental Health.

The Federal Council of Mental Health Professions (Ministry of Health) of Belgium has elaborated a scientific frame of reference that defines the competencies of the clinical psychologist and the clinician in orthopedagogy, in the context of the new law on clinical psychology and orthopedagogy. We will present the main content of the law and of the definition of competencies in both domains. A major focus will be the discussion of the possible implications of this new law on other psychological domains such as work and organizational psychology, social psychology, experimental psychology and neuropsychology. We will consider in detail the concern that has been raised about the overlap of professional activities carried out by clinical psychologists and clinicians in orthopedagogy, as defined by the new law, and those carried out by non-clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists and researchers in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Organized by Benoit Dardenne (ULiège) & Michel Hansenne (ULiège)

The symposium on « intergroup relationships: new research and perspectives » brings together experts in personality and social psychology. This symposium is a unique occasion to let the experts as well as the broader scientific community learn about recent developments in the study of terrorism and attitudes toward outgroups, racial bias in empathy, collective memory, and on the distinction between implicit and explicit compensation.

• Talk 1 : Attitudes towards outgroups before and after terror attacks (J. Van Assche & K. Dierckx; UGent)
• Talk 2: Racial bias in affective empathy (O. Bajouk & M. Hansenne; ULiège)
• Talk 3: The benefits and costs of mobilizing collective victimhood memories for claiming minority group’s recognition (S. Lastrego & L. Licata; ULB)
• Talk 4: Implicit and explicit compensation among observers and group members (M. Schmitz & V. Yzerbyt; UCLouvain)

Organized by Hans de Witte (KUL) & Isabelle Hansez (ULiège)

In Belgium, the long-term disability rate and the total number of persons on disability increased (INAMI-RIZIV, 2017, 2018). This is partly due to the increase of the mental disorder rate among active workers (35% in 2016). According to some sources, nearly 10% of workers suffer from burnout, even though exact prevalence rates of burnout are unknown at the moment. At the same time, the conceptualisation of burnout is debated, and a call to measure burnout in a contemporary manner has been advanced. This call is also made by the government, policy makers and practitioners.

To answer these calls, the symposium will present the results of four Belgian studies, related to: (a) the conceptualisation of burnout and validation of the newly developed Burnout Assessment Tool (KU Leuven), (b) the interest of a joint use of two diagnostic tools of burnout (clinical judgements from physicians and scores from a self-reported measure of burnout) (ULiège and UGent), (c) an analysis of moral demands at work as predictor for Burnout (UGent), (d) an assessment of the biological correlates of burnout (KU Leuven).

• Talk 1: The construction and psychometric qualities of the Burnout Assessment Tool (E. Desart, W. Schaufeli, & H. De Witte; KULeuven)
• Talk 2: Interest of a joint use of two diagnostic tools of burnout: comparison between clinical judgements from physicians and scores from a self-reported measure of burnout (C. Leclercq et al.; ULiège)
• Talk 3: Moral demands at work: a predictor for burnout? (C. A. Baele & J. Fontaine; UGent)
• Talk 4: Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor as a potential biomarker of burnout (Bakusic et al.; KULeuven)

Organized by Marie Geurten (ULiège)

During infancy and beyond, infants and children have to learn a massive amount of information and skills. Importantly, the way they will acquire new knowledge and/or new abilities will have a major impact on both their cognitive and social functioning. This probably explains why, despite decades of extensive research, learning is still a key theme in developmental psychology even today. In this context, the main goal of this symposium is to provide information about how infants and children acquire new abilities and how a better understanding of different learning mechanisms could help us to develop intervention programs aiming at supporting learning throughout childhood. Specifically, after exploring the ability to extract statistical regularities present in the environment as a central mechanism in infants’ learning, the role of metacognition as a key factor to understand individual differences in various cognitive domains such as arithmetic and spelling will be investigated. Finally, we will examine whether early cognitive intervention programs targeting either arithmetic skills or executive functions could have a positive effect on young children’s cognitive and social performance.

• Talk 1 : Learning of visual regularities in infancy (J. Bertels; ULB)
• Talk 2: Finger games to improve precursors of arithmetic learning in preschool children (L. Vossius et al. ; ULiège)
• Talk 3: Inhibition and social cognition training in preschoolers (A. Volckaert & M.P. Noël; UCLouvain)
• Talk 4: Online metacognition in children’s arithmetic (E Bellon et al.; KULeuven)

Organized by Wim Gevers (ULB), Tom Verguts (Ghent University) & Medhi Senoussi (Ghent University)

Cognitive control unfolds at a millisecond timescale, while subjects are performing cognitive tasks at home or in the lab. Due to their fast sampling rate, electrophysiological methods provide a unique opportunity to measure unfolding cognitive control processes while subjects perform such tasks. In this symposium, four speakers discuss recent advances in studying cognitive control using two electrophysiological measures, namely electroencephalography (EEG) and electromyography (EMG), and how they can be employed to inform cognitive theory.

• Talk 1 :Revealing cognitive control processes in normal impulsivity by electromyographic recordings (C. Roger et al. ; Université de Lille, France)
• Talk 2: Metacognitive reports in the context of conflict tasks: an electromygraphic study (C. Culot & W. Gevers ; ULB)
• Talk 3: A dynamic scenario towards mind wandering (C. Nakatani; KULeuven)
• Talk 4: Controlled by the beat: investigating the role of theta oscillations in cognitive control (M. Senoussi et al.; UGent)

Organized by Rob Hartsuiker (Ghent University) & Sarah Bernolet (UAntwerp)

• Talk 1 : Literacy improves short-term serial recall of spoken verbal but not visuospatial items – Evidence from illiterate and literate adults (A. Szmalec et al. ; UCLouvain)
• Talk 2: The contribution of explicit (declarative) and implicit (nondeclarative) memory to syntactic priming (K. Segaert; University of Birmingham, UK)
• Talk 3: Implicit and explicit memory effects in second language learning (S. Bernolet et al.; UAntwerp & UGent)
• Talk 4: Adaptive processing of syntactic structures by bilingual adults and children (G. J. Kootstra ; Radbout University Nijmegen, NL)

Organized by Olivier Luminet (UCLouvain) & Katharina S. Goerlich (University of Groningen, NL)

Alexithymia is a multi-factor construct that involves:

1. difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal,
2. difficulty describing feelings to other people,
3. a reduced capacity to engage in fantasy,
4. a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.

Together, these factors reflect a deficit in the cognitive processing and regulation of emotional states, which can then impact mental and physical health. In the past 20 years, there has been a burgeoning of research on the alexithymia construct. This symposium will highlight important developments in the field and illustrate some current approaches that are considered to better understand the emotional and cognitive deficits involved in alexithymia.

• Talk 1 : Autonomic reactivity in alexithymia: A meta-analysis (E. Vlemincx et al. ; Queen Mary University of London UK & UCLouvain)
• Talk 2: Neuroscientific evidence for different facets and dimensions of alexithymia (K. S. Goerlich; University of Groningen, NL)
• Talk 3: Are emotion identification and verbalization protective for heart rate variability in stress conditions? (E. Batselé & C. Fantini-Hauwel; ULB)
• Talk 4: Alexithymia as a moderator of affective modulation of symptom reporting in functional somatic syndromes (M. Van den Houte et al. ; UCLouvain)

Organized by Olivier Mairesse (VUB) & Christina Schmidt (ULiège)

Insufficient, unsatisfying, but also mistimed sleep has been associated with performance decrements in a series of cognitive domains. Importantly, the amplitude of performance loss depends on the investigated cognitive domain, the individual’s vulnerability to sleep loss but also the time of day at which performance is challenged. Moreover, sleep has been shown to play a key role in memory and specific sleep features have been associated with the consolidation of declarative but also procedural memories. In the same vein, targeted memory reactivation during sleep was found to improve subsequent recall performance. This symposium aims at presenting the most recent findings about the impact of different sleep parameters on cognitive performance.

• Talk 1 : The Dark Night Rises: sleep and performance in prolonged exposure to isolation, confinement and extreme environments (O. Mairesse et al.; VUB)
• Talk 2: Impact of sleep-wake regulation on cognitive performance and its cerebral correlates (C. Schmidt et al.; ULiège)
• Talk 3: Modulating the Neurophysiological Processes Supporting Sleep-Related Motor Memory Consolidation to Enhance Performance? (G. Albouy; KULeuven)
• Talk 4: Interpersonal brain synchronization with instructor compensates for learner’s sleep deprivation in interactive learning (Y. Pan et al. ; ULB)

Organized by Jessica Simon (ULiège) & Anne-Marie Etienne (ULiège)

An increasing number of researchers and clinicians consider to use virtual reality technology or immersive videos to understand complex behavior while ensuring a high level of experimental control, on the one hand, and to assess and to treat mental disorders such as anxiety, specific phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction or eating pathology, on the other hand. The purpose of this symposium is to illustrate the diversity of currently existing virtual reality applications for research and clinical psychology.

• Talk 1: Clinical usefulness of virtual reality: Illustration through case studies (A. Wagener; ULiège)
• Talk 2: Real enough: A virtual classroom can induce an increase in anxiety and speech disfluencies in adolescents (A.-L.. Leclercq et al. ; ULiège)
• Talk 3: Experimental investigation of decision-making processes in daily physically active behaviors using a virtual reality set-up (A. Ruffault et al. ; French Institute of Sports, France)
• Talk 4: Immersive virtual reality videos: A new tool to assess the impact of craving on motor inhibition in alcohol dependence?  (C. Quoilin & J. Duque.; UCLouvain)