Subject
VALENTINA PETROLINI
- Knowledge area
- Department
- Linguistics and Basque Studies
- Centre
- Faculty of Arts
- Electronic mail
- valentina.petrolini@ehu.eus
My area of specialization is philosophy of psychiatry and psychology. My research focuses on the boundary between normality and pathology, the notion of vulnerability, and the role played by cognitive and affective factors in mental conditions. My recent work mostly explores issues connected with autism, including the role of executive functions, methodological aspects in classification and diagnosis, and camouflaging.
I obtained my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati in 2017. In my dissertation I defend the idea that mental disorders should be conceived as extreme variations of non-pathological phenomena. Over the past few years I also conducted some work on the nature of delusions and on dimensional models of affective disorders. Since March 2020 I work as Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) where I am a member of the HiTT group and the LindyLab. Within the Lindy Lab I am in charge of two research lines. The first focuses on understanding the notion of rigidity, which is widely used in the literature to describe a range of behavior typical of autism. The second focuses on the still underexplored phenomenon of camouflaging, a coping strategy adopted by some autistic people to mask social difficulties by imitating others and selectively hiding behaviors associated with autism. Both research lines include theoretical and methodological aspects, such as conceptual analysis, development of semi-structured int