[Apologies for cross-posting, please distribute it widely!]
Dear colleague!
We are pleased to invite you to the thirteenth edition of the Cognitive Science Arena (CSA), which will be held in Brixen on February 13-15th, 2025.
Spirit and mood
The aim of the CSA is to set up a conference where young scientists can disseminate their scientific contributions in a friendly and cooperative environment, and challenge the senior scientists in a fruitful debate. In particular, highly innovative research ideas as well as research-in-progress are encouraged. The idea of the CSA is to reverse the usual format of scientific conferences. Young researchers first: they play the starring role (no talks or posters from senior researchers are allowed), they compete for a prize for the best talk and poster voted by the audience. We would like to bring together young and promising minds now working in cognitive science and provide them with a fruitful and cooperative environment.
Topics include (but are not limited to) all areas (and surroundings) of cognitive science: developmental cognition and education, language, memory, perception, psychometrics, anthropology, economics and social sciences, neuroscience, clinical psychology, and animal cognition, just to mention a few.
*New this year: more room for talks!*
Every year CSA is receiving very good feedback from participants and attendees. We are also very selective, and each year we are forced (because of time constraints) to drop several interesting contributions. This year we will extend the time for talks to Thursday afternoon. In other words, we will be able to accommodate five more talks to our program. Hurrah!
*This year smart talk*
This year, we are honoured that Michèle Nuijten (Tilburg University) will give the smart talk entitled: "Checking Robustness in 4 Steps". The talk is scheduled for Saturday afternoon, when the scientific session is over.
Buy one, get one (almost) free!
CSA has always been a conference oriented to early career researchers. In the past two years we had the chance to organise a few hands-on, methodological seminars. Feedbacks were very positive and we would like to carry on this experience. The morning of Thursday 13 we will host a hands-on methodology seminar organised by Psicostat:
https://psicostat.dpss.psy.unipd.it/The title of the seminar will be “Multiverse analysis in R: Exploratory and Inferential Approaches”. The instructors will be Dr Giulia Calignano and Dr. Filippo Gambarota. Fluency in R is not mandatory (although it may help in the application of the concepts explained in the seminar). If you want to take part in the seminar, take your laptop with you! At the registration on the website, remember to flag the seminar option.
The key-ideas of the CSA are the following:
[1] works by young scientists only (master students, PhD and post-doc students, and researchers with a fixed-term contract...);
[2] long time for each speaker: 15 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion;
[3] "You will never talk alone" poster-session with dedicated time for each poster;
[4] "Short-talks for posters": poster presenters are also asked to prepare a three-minutes talk (with PowerPoint-like presentations) that summarizes and introduces the audience to the content of the poster;
[5] “One minute for you!” At the end of each talk, the discussion stops and the audience is asked to write down (either via paper or Padlet) one or more comments to the presenter.
[5a] "Verba volant, scripta manent" (aka, several anonymous reviewers):
attendees can write comments, criticisms and suggestions to the speaker via paper and pencil. Comments are delivered to the speaker at the end of the talk (or poster) session;
[5b] PADLET: we use padlet. Padlet (
https://padlet.com/) is a virtual blackboard where you can write (anonymously or not: you decide!) questions, comments, criticisms, hurray, etc. while the speaker is giving his/her talk;
[6] In progress and high-risk research are welcome!
[7] New and fresh! Submitted abstracts can span from simple ideas to “in press”. Works with a DOI cannot be accepted (unless the DOI was assigned in the time window spanning from abstract submission to the dates of the conference).
“Everything is cool when you are part of a team!”
CSA is very much a peer to peer congress: Young scientists that present and talk about their own research to young scientists. For this reason, we kindly ask all presenters to attend the whole congress from day one till the end. It is a sign of respect to your colleagues.
Type of contribution: talk and poster
CSA is accepting two types of contributions: talks and posters. Talks consist of a 15 minute-presentation, followed by a 10-minute discussion. The poster session is divided in two moments. In the first one, poster presenters are asked to give a three minute talk that introduces the audience to the content of the talk. On Saturday, the “You will never talk alone” poster session will take place, with regular posters and dedicated time and discussion for each poster presented on the previous days. A note for participants: this type of poster session (i.e., short talk plus regular poster) is strongly recommended if you are willing to present in progress or research ideas (i.e., research that has no data yet).
Abstracts submission and selection
Participants must submit an abstract through the conference website (please, specify "talk" or "poster" when submitting). First, abstracts are screened (i.e., in/out) for basic scientific soundness. In case the number of submissions exceeds the availability (i.e., 25 talks and 20 posters), the scientific committee will operate a selection among the received contributions according to the following criteria: (i) priority boarding for PhD students over students and post-doc (ii) priority for pre-registered and registered reports studies (iii) limit the overrepresentation of one (or more) research group/institution (iii) increase diversity in the research topics (iv) "first come first served". In addition, the scientific committee may change the type of submission (e.g., from talk to a poster) in the case the research submitted is more suitable for the other format. This is often suggested for studies with no data yet that we think are more suitable for the poster format. Authors are also asked to declare that the submitted work has not been published yet, meaning that a digital object identifier (DOI) has not been obtained by the publisher at the time of submission. *Abstract can be submitted starting from the 18/11/2024 12:00 to the 06/12/2024 12:00 (i.e., noon) CET*. The authors of the selected abstracts will be email-notified within one week after submission deadline, and will be asked to confirm their participation by replying to our email (those who will not reply on time will be excluded from the final program).
Registration fees
- 30 euros*** registration fee for participants presenting talks or posters. The fee has to be paid as soon as the participant is informed about the selection of his/her contribution. This fee is a deposit and a commitment to participate at CSA. Note: the fee is not returned if the participant withdraws the contribution.
- 70 euro*** is asked to tenured researchers;
- no fee for students, doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers that attend the conference without presenting any contribution.
- 20 euro*** for the methodology seminar by Psicostat that is held in the afternoon the day before the conference. Participants can be presenters of talks and posters but also attendees. Participants cannot be on a tenure track. The seminar accepts max 30 participants. Note: the fee is not returned if the participant withdraws the participation. In the case requests for participation will exceed the max availability, a waiting list will be created. Participants will be selected on the “first come, first served” basis. The admitted participants will be notified through email. The seminar will take place only with a minimum of 5 participants.
***Fees will be used to partly (or fully) cover the expenses of the conference (lunches at the canteen, coffee breaks and “Cheers, cheese & wine” buffet, to pay the staff to keep open the building till late in the evening of Saturday).
“Valiant" and "Painter" awards 2025
During the conference, the audience will vote for the best CSA talk and poster. At the end of the conference, the best speaker and the best poster presenter will receive a certificate and a monetary award.
Language
The official language of CSA is English.
Social events
CSA includes two worldwide famous social events: the “Friday night sleigh ride” (not included in the registration fee) and the “Cheers, cheese & wine" buffet (included in the registration fee). As the name suggests, the “Friday night sleigh ride” is usually held Friday night (if the local service will offer it***). Contact
massimo.grassi@xxxxxxxx for further information. The "Cheers, cheese & wine" buffet is held Saturday, at the end of the conference.
*** In the last two years we could not organise the sleigh ride, partly because of the lack of snow, partly because the local administration decided to open the ski slope only one Friday per month and this Friday did not coincide with CSA. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for this year.
How to get to CSA:
The closest airports are Bolzano (BZO, Italy), Innsbruck (INN, Austria), and Verona (VRN, Italy). They are all medium-small airports. The city of Brixen-Bressanone is along the railway line connecting Innsbruck and Verona. This railway includes one stop in Bolzano (see maps here:
https://cogsci.unibz.it/cityinfo.html). The two train companies that run along this railway are Trenitalia (
https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html) and ÖBB (
https://www.oebb.at/en/)
Conference website
More information, abstract submission and registration forms can be found here:
https://cogsci.unibz.itThe organising/scientific committee:
Demis Basso (Free University of Bolzano)
Chiara Begliomini (University of Padova)
Milvia Cottini (Free University of Bolzano)
Nicol Ellecosta (Free University of Bolzano)
Massimo Grassi (University of Padova)
Giovanni Mento (University of Padova)
Michèle Nuijten (Tilburg University)
Daniele Villa (Politecnico di Milano)
Supporting institutions:
- Faculty of Education, Free University of Bolzano
- Department of General Psychology, University of Padova
- Associazione Italiana di Psicologia
- IMG Network APS
See you in Brixen!
The CSA team