International Psychology Conference on Autism

Psychology of Religion 

The next  conference will be held on the 27th and 28th of April 2010. The subject will be Psychology of Religion. Check www.psychologyconference.nl for more information.

The 2008 Conference on Autism was a big succes! In total we had about 250 visitors. The organisers again thank all the visitors for coming, the lecturers for their amazing presentations, the sponsors for their support and everyone else who made this event possible. The VSPA will continue organising a new international psychology conference next year, so... to be continued!

The lecture of Kamran Nazeer has been cancelled! His lecture was scheduled on Thursday Nov 20 at 15:45. He is very sorry. We are very sorry. Because of this we have changed the program. At the time of Nazeer's presentation, 20 Nov 15:45-16:45, the ABA-institute will now give its workshop. The workshop is shordened, it will now fit in an hour, and it will be in English. We hope that this is a suiting solution for the regretful cancellation of Kamran Nazeer.

Online ticket sale has closed. Tickets can still be purchased on Monday 17/11 and Tuesday 18/11 from 11:00-15:00 in the main hall of the UvA psychology department (Location), and on the days of the conference, November 19&20.

The VSPA conference

We are students at the Psychology department of the University of Amsterdam. Every year our student association, the VSPA, organizes a scientific conference on a subject that we think should be presented to our audience of mostly undergraduate psychology students. In order to give our conferences a strong foundation, the aim is to present a subject from several Psychological fields, such as Cognitive, Developmental and Clinical Psychology, as well as from related disciplines, such as Neuroscience and Psychophysiology.

In the past few years we explored subjects as "Love and Sex", "Language", "the Self", and "Fear and Anxiety". Among the speakers who attended previous conferences were Geoffrey Miller, Ray Jackendoff, Daniel Dennett, Nico Frijda and Thomas Metzinger.

Autism

This year’s conference will be on Autism Spectrum Disorders, which we will refer to by using just the term autism. Autism is a developmental disorder that is characterized by impairments in the ability to interact normally with the social environment. Deficits range from a basic lack of interest in the human face to a deficit in understanding other people's goals, desires, and emotions. Autism is also often associated with an abnormal development of language.

Social and cognitive development that seems to occur effortlessly in typical children seem to be halted in children with autism. We think autism will make a diverse and interesting subject for the conference, both for students and researchers, but also for people who are dealing with autism in their daily lives.