[Apologies for cross-posting, please distribute it widely!]
Dear colleague!
We are pleased to invite you to the fourteenth edition of the Cognitive Science Arena (CSA), which will be held in Brixen on February 5-7 2026.
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 #1: “stand by me!”
This year, we’d like to keep poster and talk presenters more involved. Poster presenters will be asked to chair one of the talks. This means introducing the speaker, coordinating the discussion after the talk, and being ready with some sharp questions if the debate runs dry.
Talk presenters, in turn, will be asked to introduce the mini-talk accompanying a poster, to enthusiastically announce the name of the poster presenter and the title of the poster at the beginning of the poster session, and—most importantly—to visit the poster they are introducing during the session. No excuses!
*New this year #2: “ApEuregio” [only for students and researchers from EUREGIO-Universities]
ApEuregio: Connecting Minds, Exploring Opportunities (only for students and researchers from EUREGIO-Universities; i.e., Trento, Bolzano and Innsbruck). Join us for ApEuregio, a special session designed to bring Euregio students and researchers together! We will start with a brief overview of what Euregio is all about and the research opportunities it offers across its universities. After that, we will shift into an informal aperitivo where you can chat with faculty members and fellow students. This is your chance to network, share ideas, and explore potential research collaborations in a relaxed setting. Feel free to stay and connect as long as the conversations flow! ApEuregio is scheduled Friday at 6:30 pm (onward).
*This year’s smart talk*
This year, Zoltan Dienes (University of Sussex) will give the smart talk. The talk is scheduled for Saturday afternoon, when the scientific session is over.
Buy one, get one (almost) free! Psicostat seminar
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 5 we will host a hands-on methodology seminar organised by Psicostat:
https://psicostat.dpss.psy.unipd.it/The title of the seminar will be “Generalized Linear Models for Psychology: Understanding, Simulating, and Planning Your Analyses”. The instructors will be Dr. Filippo Gambarota and Dr. Margherita Calderan. 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., about 25 talks and 25 posters), the scientific committee will operate a selection among the received contributions according to the following criteria: (i) priority boarding for PhD students over post-docs and students (ii) priority for pre-registered studies, registered reports studies and/or studies that have an accessible repository with data, analysis scripts, digital materials shared in a FAIR format (iii) limit the overrepresentation of one (or more) research group/institution (iii) increase diversity in the research topics (iv) "random lottery selection"*** (see below for further instructions). 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 17/11/2025 12:00 to the 05/12/2025 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).
***The random lottery selection
In cases where a single university or research group submits an excessive number of contributions, the scientific committee will apply a random lottery to determine which contributions are accepted. How the lottery works. Each submission from the same university/research unit will be assigned a random integer using the R function sample() (see code below). The random seed will be determined by the first number extracted from the Italian national lottery for the city of Napoli the day after the abstract submission deadline that is Saturday, December 6, 2025, around 8:00 pm (CET). You can find the results here:
https://www.lotto-italia.it/lotto/estratti-ruote . You can then run the following R code to replicate the process:
set.seed(first_number_extracted_by_the_italian_lotto_for_the_city_of_Napoli)
sample(1:20, 20, replace = FALSE)
This will generate the randomized order for the submissions. Contributions will then be selected following this order until the available slots are filled.
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 2026
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 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:
Irene Alfarone (University of Innsbruck)
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)
Matthias Gondan-Rochon (University of Innsbruck)
Giovanni Mento (University of Padova)
Zoltan Dienes (University of Sussex)
Mariagrazia Ranzini (University of Padova)
Barbara Treccani (University of Trento)
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
- Europa Region EUREGIO
See you in Brixen!
The CSA team