• Dr. Ilenia Falcinelli

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• 2022-2025. PhD in Psychology and Social Neuroscience at Sapienza University of Rome, Supervisor: Professor Anna M. Borghi

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• 2024. Visiting PhD student at University College Cork, Ireland, Supervisors: Professor Annalisa Setti & Professor Jason Chan

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• 2025-2026. Post-Doctoral Researcher at Sapienza University of Rome, P.I.: Professor Anna M. Borghi

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• Now. 2-year Post-Doc position in the FIS LINKAGES project (WP2 - WP3)

Ilenia.falcinelli@uniroma1.it

My Academic Path

• Investigating how people and different generations (older, younger adults) conceptualize climate change and technological progress.

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• Comparison of Ecological (e.g., pollution) and Technological (e.g., Internet) with more Abstract (e.g., democracy) and Concrete (e.g., table) concepts.

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→ Behavioral paradigms: semantic fluency tasks (free-listing, feature generation), rating, categorization, feature verification tasks.

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→ EEG methodology for Event-Related Potentials.

My Research Interest

My Recent Research Interest

• Possibility to use the hyperscanning methodology (mobile EEGs) to study abstract concepts’ acquisition and use during social interactions.

• Aim: investigating the importance of social interactions for more abstract and vague concepts’ acquisition (WP2) and use (WP3).

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• Tasks: interactive, conversational → pairs of participants conversate in order to teach/learn (WP2 – asymmetric situation) or negotiate (WP3 – symmetric situation) a definition for a concept.

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• Experimental stimuli: Abstract/Concrete and Vague/Determinate concepts

• Setting: Face-to-face interactions, normotypic adults

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• Follow-ups:

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• Face-to-face vs. Online interactions
• Normotypic vs. Autistic people

• Measures:

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• Synchronization

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• Ratings on the quality of the conversation (e.g., conversation pleasantness, intimacy, and fluency, feeling of learning, and confidence)

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• Content of the conversation

Revised picture from De Felice et al., 2025

• Falcinelli, I., Fini, C., Mazzuca, C., & Borghi, A. (2026). Age Cohort Variability in Conceptual Complexity and Concreteness: The Case of Ecological and Technological Concepts. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 48. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5px9p1w0

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• Falcinelli, I., Fini, C., & Borghi, A. M. (2025a) Abstractness and Social Interaction Through a New Lens: The Potentialities of Hyperscanning in Naturalistic Settings. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 19, 1724845. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2025.1724845

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• Falcinelli, I., Fini, C., Mazzuca, C., Alessandri, G., Alivernini, F., Baiocco, R., Chirico, A., Filosa, L., Palombi, T., Pistella, J., Tavolucci, S., Lucidi, F., & Borghi, A.M. (2025b). Thinking climate change through the lens of abstractness: a multi-task and multi-setting investigation into generational differences in the conceptualization of ecology. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 10(1), 79. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-025-00689-4

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• Fini, C., Era, V., Cuomo, G., Falcinelli, I., Gervasi, A. M., Candidi, M., Mazzuca, C., Liuzza, M. T., Winter, B., & Borghi, A. M. (2025). Digital connection, real bonding: Brief online chats boost interpersonal closeness regardless of the conversational topic. Heliyon, 11(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2025.e42526

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• Falcinelli, I., Fini, C., Mazzuca, C., & Borghi, A. M. (2024a). The TECo Database: Ecological and Technological Concepts at the Interface Between Abstractness and Concreteness. Collabra: Psychology, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.120327

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• Falcinelli, I., Fini, C., Mazzuca, C., Alessandri, G., Alivernini, F., Baiocco, R., Chirico, A., Filosa, L., Palombi, T., Pistella, J., Tavolucci, S., Lucidi, F., & Borghi, A.M. (2024b). What does “Internet” mean to us as we age? A multi-task investigation on the conceptualization of the technological domain across generations. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 16, 100531. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100531

My Key Recent and Related Publications