Invited Symposia
CogSci 2011 Governing Board Symposium
The Governing Board is pleased to announce the CogSci 2011 Governing Board
Symposium, designed to showcase timeless and foundational issues in
Cognitive Science, including distinguished speakers who represent a wide
variety of disciplines within Cognitive Science. Our hope is to engage as
broad a constituency as possible in the issues spanning our field.
The Biology of Language
Human language is considered by many scientists to be a biological system,
analogous to other perceptual and cognitive systems that are highly
specialized, emerge early in life under informal conditions of learning, and
have a specific neural substrate. This symposium will include three
distinguished speakers who come from quite different traditions in Cognitive
Science, and who will discuss the sense in which language is a biological
system, the challenges that this view holds, and the nature of research that
can shed further light on this issue. Noam Chomsky will provide the
perspective of a linguist who has long argued for the idea of language as a
mental organ; David Poeppel will provide the perspective of a neurolinguist
who focuses on the neural instantiation of language; and Patricia Churchland
will provide the perspective of a philosopher who has long considered the
relationship between human knowledge and its neural representation. Elissa
Newport will serve as discussant.
Invited Symposia
Finding your way: The cognitive science of navigation
One overarching research question in cognitive science concerns how information from perception and memory is processed and integrated in order to achieve robust, efficient, and adaptive behavior in space, as is necessary in wayfinding. Examining this integration is quite complicated, entailing an understanding of learning strategies, spatial memory representations of static and dynamic relations, perceptual and attentional processes that direct the encoding and maintenance of select information, reasoning and planning processes, communication of spatial information via language or other representational media, the influence of background knowledge, and the development of navigation plans. Due to the complexity of the problem, research in navigation cuts across a diverse set of disciplines, including cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, robotics, environmental psychology, developmental psychology, and geography, and ranges from basic research questions to practical applications. Because of the diversity of the approaches, there are relatively few opportunities for researchers to meet across disciplines, and provide a diversified overview of the range of issues involved. In this symposium speakers focus on navigation from a broad range of perspectives: animal models, neuronal models, spatial and temporal learning, robotics, and neuroscience.
Speakers:
Neil Burgess
Ben Kuipers
Russ Epstein
Verner Bingman
Francesca Pazzaglia
Everyday Cognitive Science: Using the methods of cognitive science to explore spatial thinking in related disciplines
This symposium will address how the breadth of investigation within the cognitive sciences can be brought to bear on applied everyday common problems, such as difficulties with reading charts and maps, and difficulties in using an in-car navigation device. Research with a problem-based focus often requires a systems approach that requires assimilation of work from many different disciplines. Such problems thus constitute ideal domains for illustrating the benefits of such multi-discipline and multi-method approaches. Speakers focus on the use of spatial thinking in the context of examining these applied problems. This symposium will illustrate the giving away of cognitive science.
Speakers:
Ruth Conroy Dalton: Spatial cognition of architecture
Madeleine Kehner: Medical visualization training
Sara Fabrikant: Cartography
Dan Montello: Geography
Eric Riggs: Spatial cognition related to geoscience expertise
