Profile of the Spatial Cognition conference series

The Spatial Cognition conference series (SC) was designed as a forum for interdisciplinary work and transdisciplinary discussion involving varieties of research questions, research methodologies, and research cultures related to spatial cognition. A typical mix of disciplines participating in the conferences has been 1/3 cognitive psychology; 1/3 computer science/AI; and 1/3 linguistics + geography + biology + neurosciences + anthropology + cybernetics + philosophy + architecture + education.

The core of the conference is organized as single-track plenary presentations featuring keynote talks and fully reviewed paper presentations. The forum is particularly intended to promote discussion within and across the disciplines and fields involved in spatial cognition research. Plenary presentations therefore should be targeted at a multidisciplinary spatial cognition audience; they should emphasize qualitative results, concepts, theoretical or experimental paradigms, cognitive architectures, etc. The plenary presentations are less well suited to discuss discipline-specific quantitative data; for this, the poster sessions can be used.

Paper submissions for the plenary presentations - including keynotes to be published - undergo full paper peer reviews and - if accepted - often become much cited landmark papers. The Spatial Cognition proceeding volumes have become valuable reference volumes for interdisciplinary research in the field. In addition to the plenary sessions with archival publication, SC provides a forum for more preliminary work that can be thoroughly discussed on a one-to-few basis in poster sessions; usually SC also offers tutorials, workshops, and a doctoral consortium.

Spatial Cognition conferences typically include a slot for an excursion to some local venues of interest and a nice conference dinner; both have proven to be valuable occasions for informal exchanges on topics related to the participants and their fields of interest and thus have contributed to strengthen the spatial cognition research network.

Ideal conference organizer teams / PC co-chairs

  • consist of researchers from different disciplines or research fields who solicit and attract contributions from multiple disciplines;
  • may target specific focus topics of interdisciplinary interest for their conference besides requesting submissions on other spatial cognition research of inter-disciplinary interest; and
  • may consider new forms of workshops / tutorials / etc. associated for the non-plenary part of the conference.

The Spatial Cognition steering committee consists of seven members each representing one or more of the research areas cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, cognitive anthropology, philosophy of mind, geoinformation science, cybernetics, design, and architecture. The task of the steering committee is to solicit and review proposals from potential conference chairs, to decide on conference dates and venues, and to advice the conference organizers on questions they may have or on decisions they may have to take.