Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science

Abstract

. Submissions to the conference were reviewed by the Program Committee, who came up with an excellent program of 106 presented papers (in three parallel-track sessions, and including eight submitted symposia) and 20 posters (on show throughout the conference, but highlighted in an enjoyable poster session over drinks on day 2). The full program, along with other information about the conference, remains online at http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/ascs09. The Australasian Society for Cognitive Science has had an intermittent formal existence, driven mainly by the organization of its string of enjoyable, successful, and highly sociable conferences, which have taken place roughly every two years since the inaugural conference, organized by Peter Slezak, at the University of New South Wales in 1990 (a full list of past conferences is appended below).At the 9 th conference at Macquarie, 163 people attended, including substantial numbers from overseas and interstate, enjoying both the sweet Sydney spring weather and three stimulating days of talks and talk. There was no specific theme, but in addition to specialist research papers within specific sub/disciplines, we encouraged integrative papers which forge connections between sub/disciplines. This integrative ideal also informed invitations to our five excellent keynote speakers: Stephen Crain (Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science), Jakob Hohwy (Philosophy, Monash University), Jason Mattingley (Psychology & Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland), Thomas Metzinger (Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz; & Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, Germany, and Barbara Tversky (Psychology, Stanford University; & Columbia University, USA). Versions of three of these keynote talks appear in these proceedings: the papers by Jason Mattingley and Thomas Metzinger have been published elsewhere.Perhaps because the cognitive science community in Australasia is relatively small, compared at least with our counterparts in Asia, Europe, and North America, it retains a thoroughly multidisciplinary atmosphere. The programme confirmed the striking pluralism of the contemporary cognitive sciences, drawing on many distinctive disciplines as researchers on cognition are looking both down into the brain and out into the environment. Most contributions were from psychologists, with sizable numbers from philosophy and linguistics: but many other areas were also represented, including computational neuroscience, neuropsychiatry, clinical psychology, computer science, human-computer interaction, anthropology, education, history and philosophy of science, cognitive archaeology, cognitive ethology, English literature, and cultural history.All those who had presented papers and posters were invited to submit revised versions, following the conference, as full contributions to the published Proceedings. All submissions were reviewed afresh, and revisions were submitted in early 2010: we are delighted to thank our team of reviewers for their hard and effective work.Fifty-seven p...