ESCoP: The European Society for Cognitive Psychology

The 24th International Attention and Performance Symposium on “Space, Time & Number” is calling for a limited number of Postdocs, advanced Graduate Students and confirmed young researchers (for instance newly appointed assistant professors) who meet their criteria for acceptance at the meeting. All expenses will be paid.

DATE: July 6 to July 10, 2010
LOCATION: Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay, France (http://www.unicog.org)
ORGANISERS:
- Elizabeth Brannon (Duke University)
- Stanislas Dehaene (INSERM and Collège de France)
SPONSORS:
- Fondation Bettencourt-Schueller,
- Ecole des Neurosciences Paris/Ile de France (ENP),
- European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP),
- Fondation HUGO,
- Fondation IPSEN,
- McDonnell Foundation (Grants to Elisabeth Brannon and Stanislas Dehaene)

OVERVIEW

Understanding how representations of space, time and number are encoded in brain circuitry has become a fundamental issue for neuroscience. Furthermore, how these representations differ across cultures and are changed by education is a key question that has a great many practical implications for psychology and neuropsychology. The topic is ripe for an interdisciplinary meeting with contributions from a variety of disciplines, from basic neuroscience to psychology, developmental science, neuroimaging, neuropsychology and theoretical biology.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM (all speakers are confirmed, titles are tentative)

Association Lecture

Randy Gallistel (USA): Laws that govern space, time and number in humans and other animals

Human perception and psychophysics

David Eagleman (USA): Human time perception
Patrick Cavanagh (France): Illusory misperceptions of space, time and number
David Burr (Italy): Cerebral relativity theory? Illusions of space and time
Jennifer Coull (France): Attention to time and its brain mechanisms

Developmental foundations

Lisa Feigenson (USA): Interactions between memory and number representation over development
Stella Lourenco (USA): Spatial cognitive development
Brian Butterworth (UK): Numerical development and dyscalculia
Véronique Izard (France): Intuitions of number and space prior to education

Space, time and number in animals

Liz Brannon (USA): Adding, ordering, and cross-modally matching number in primates.
Nicola Clayton (UK): Memory for space -- food caching in scrub jays
Giorgio Vallortigara (Italy): The origins of the sense of space in animals

Neural mechanisms and models

Edvard Moser (Norway): The neural encoding of spatial coordinate systems
Andreas Nieder (Germany): The neural code for number
Dean Buonomano (USA): Models of time perception: Encoding time in neural network states
Ehud Zohary (Israel): Space coding in ventral and dorsal visual areas

Cross-modal interactions and cross-dimensional metaphors

Yves Rossetti (France): Neglect in the numerical, spatial and time domains
Manuela Piazza (Italy): Cortical representation of symbolic and non-symbolic information
Wim Fias (Netherlands): The SNARC effect as a marker of number-space interactions
Roy Cohen-Kadosh (UK): Synesthesia: Cross-dimensional interactions in the human brain?

Linguistic and cultural dimensions

Elizabeth Spelke (USA): How language transforms early representations of space and number
Robert Siegler (USA): Education and the development of number-space mappings
Lera Boroditsky (USA): Using space to think about time
Daniel Haun (Netherlands): Comparative studies of hominid spatial cognition

PARTICIPANTS

The meeting will bring together 65 participants including contributors, observers and discussants in a broad variety of areas of cognitive psychology and neuroscience. We are now inviting advanced graduate students, post docs and young researchers (for instance newly appointed assistant professors) to apply for 12 slots that have been kept open.

WHO MAY APPLY

Applicants must be Post-docs, advanced PhD students or young researchers who have an excellent knowledge of written and spoken English. Successful applicants will be expected to have publications or submitted papers in the area. We will be especially attentive to submissions from developing or under-represented countries.

HOW TO APPLY

Applications should be submitted to Susana Franck at attperf@yahoo.fr

Applications should contain:

A one-page curriculum vitae including a list of publications
A one-page motivation letter, with a paragraph outlining a proposed poster
The email address of one or two researchers who can recommend the candidate

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS

December 30, 2009

ESCoP Early Career Stimulus

The ESCoP Early Career Stimulus is a grant of €1000 aimed at supporting European graduate students. Multiple such grants will be awarded each year to support the following career development activities:

specific research projects (e.g., completing an experiment)
active participation to conferences or workshops
short-term visits to another lab in a different country

The grants will preferentially (but not exclusively) be awarded to students from Eastern European countries. PhD students from all areas of cognitive psychology are invited to apply.

Interested applicants should send a two-page presentation of their project in .pdf format. The document should contain the following:

a short scientific description of the project
an itemized budget indicating clearly how the money will be spent
a support letter by an ESCoP full member
the applicant's CV

Materials should be sent to the ESCoP secretary, Dr. Diane Pecher.

Deadlines are December 1st and June 1st of each year. A jury of three members nominated by the ESCoP Committee will examine the proposals within two months of the deadline.

Bertelson award

Beginning in 2001, the Paul Bertelson Award is granted every two years to an outstanding young scientist for making a significant contribution to European Cognitive Psychology. Candidates should normally have completed their doctoral thesis no more than 8 years before nomination, and be under 35 years of age. However, the committee does not wish to discriminate against researchers who have, for example, taken maternity leave or made career switches. The committee also recognizes that differences exist across Europe in research training procedures. Therefore, a case may be made to the jury if there are reasons why the criteria should be interpreted flexibly.

A committee of peers rates each candidate on four criteria: (1) the candidate's general scientific achievements, (2) the international character of the candidate's work, (3) the range and (4) the outstanding character of the candidate's contribution. The winner receives his/her award at the next ESCoP Conference. On this occasion he/she will give a lecture. The winner is also invited to write an article that will be published in the European Journal of Cognitive Psychology.

You are invited to nominate persons for the Bertelson award. Please send your proposal together with a copy of the nominee's curriculum vitae to Dr Diane Pecher (as Society Secretary), to arrive no later than April 1st, 2010. Your letter of nomination should cover several issues concerning the nominee, including:

A supporting statement of no more than 100 words indicating why you think they should receive the award.
The general themes of their research.
Their most significant research findings, and most important theoretical contributions. Please identify 3 representative publications.
The degree to which the nominee's work has stimulated research among others.
A comparison of the nominee with others in their field(s).

The committee assessing the nominations will consider the general scientific qualifications (e.g. the productivity and the quality of research of the candidate and the degree to which they have been responsible for work in multi-authored papers) the range or breadth of scientific contributions, and the international nature of their work (have they worked with and do they collaborate with international researchers, and shown evidence of influence and work beyond national boundaries?).

ESCoP Early Career Publication Award

The ESCoP Early Career Publication Award (1000 Euro) is offered to a member of ESCoP who was the first author of their best article accepted for publication in 2008. The article must have been accepted for publication while the applicant was a PhD student or within a year after the date on which the applicant received his or her PhD. The author should send a copy of the publication, the date of acceptance, and the date on which they got their PhD (if applicable) to the ESCoP Secretary, Dr Diane Pecher. Applications should be sent before May 1st 2009. A jury of three members nominated by the ESCoP Committee will decide before July 31st 2009. Only one submission per person will be considered.

ESCoP Summer School

ESCoP is offering partial funding for summer schools with a maximum of 20.000 Euro. The Committee aims at organizing a bi-annual summer school, in the even-numbered years. Potential organizers are invited to send a proposal to the ESCoP Secretary, Dr Diane Pecher. The deadline for proposals for a summer school in 2010 is December 1st 2009. The ESCoP Committee will select the most appropriate candidate.

ESCoP Activity Funding

ESCoP is offering partial funding for activities such as meetings, colloquia, etc. that are organized by ESCoP members, for an amount of up to 2000 Euro. Proposals should be sent by email to the ESCoP Secretary, Dr Diane Pecher. The committee will take a maximum of two months from the date of submission to evaluate the proposal and communicate the final decision.

Proposals should not exceed 1500 words and should specify:

Place and Date of activity
Organisers
Topic of the activity, including relevance for ESCoP
Program, including names of speakers
Intended audience (number of people, students or senior researchers, from which field)
Detailed budget

Broadbent Lecturers

Lisbon 1994 - A. Baddeley
Rome 1995 - W Prinz
Wurzburg 1996 - M.I. Posner
Jerusalem 1998 - A.M. Treisman
Gent 1999 - W.J.M. Levelt
Edinburgh 2001 - I. Biederman
Granada 2003 - P. Johnson-Laird
Leiden 2005 - D.L. Schacter
Marseille 2007 - C. Bundesen

Bertelson Lecturers - previously called The Young Psychologist Lecturer.

1995, R. Kolinsky
1996, A. Buchner
1999, M. Brandimonte
2001, J. Theeuwes
2003, C. Spence
2005, K. Graham
2007, E.J. Wagenmakers

Escop Early Career Stimulus

2005: Roi Kadosh, Israel; Mikolaj Hernik, Poland; Chiara delle Libera, Italy
2008: Alexandra Touroutoglou, Greece

Escop Early Career Publication Award

2005: Maria Ruz, Spain, with:
Ruz, M., Worden, M. S., Tudela, P., & McCandliss, B. D. (2005). Inattentional amnesia to words in a high attentional load task. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 768-776.
2006: Angel Correa, Spain, with:
Correa, A., Lupianez, J., & Tudela, P. (2005). Attentional preparation based on temporal expectancy modulates processing at the perceptual level, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 12, 328-334.
2007: Nieuwland, M. S., Van Berkum, J. J. A. with:
When peanuts fall in love: N400 evidence for the power of discourse. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 1098-1111.
2008: Zara Bergström with:
Bergström, Z.M, Velmans, M, de Fockert, J, & Richardson-Klavehn, A (2007). ERP evidence for successful voluntary avoidance of conscious recollection. Brain Research, 1151, 119-133

Previously funded activities

The Summer School on the topic of "Neuroscience of Number Processing" organized by Carlo Umilta in cooperation with an EU network that took place in Erice, Sicily, July 2005, ESCOP provided travel grants for 2 students.

The 12th International Summer School in Cognitive Science, organised by Boicho Kokinov in Sofia (Bulgaria) July, 2005. ESCOP provided travel grants for 3 students.

The Women in Cognitive Science meeting (held at the 2005 ESCoP meeting in Leiden).

Third European Workshop on Working Memory (EWOMS) and its relationship with long-term memory and attention in Genova (Italy) June, 2006.

Summer School on Executive Functions. Bernried (Germany), August 2006. ESCoP supported two students.

Workshop on Cognitive and Social perspectives on (Un)consciousness. Organized by Robert Balas, July 2007, Gdansk, Poland.

The 14th International Summer School in Cognitive Science, organized by Boicho Kokinov in Sofia (Bulgaria) July, 2007. ESCOP provided travel grants for 2 students.

The Women in Cognitive Science meeting held prior to 2007 ESCoP meeting in Marseille, organized by Janet van Hell, Teresa Bajo, and Judy Kroll.

Workshop on Action monitoring and behavior adjustment in Aachen (Germany), March 2008, organized by Andrea Philipp and Marco Steinhauser.

Workshop on Neurocognitive approaches to control and working memory in Leiden (Netherlands), May 2008, organized by Guido Band, Merel Pannebakker, and Nelleke van Wouwe. 2000 Euros

A 3-day research workshop on lifespan development of memory and language, a workshop intended to celebrate the career of Philip Smith. July 2008, organized by Phil Beaman and Pat Rabbitt.

4th European Working Memory Workshop, Bristol (UK) September 2008. Organized by Klaus Oberaur.

The 15th Annual Summer School in Cognitive Science held in Sofia (Bulgaria). June-July 2008, by Boicho Kokinov.

Workshop Embodied and Situated Language Processing, to be held in Rotterdam (Netherlands), July 28-29, 2009, by Rolf Zwaan, Katinka Dijkstra, Diane Pecher, and Anique de Bruin.

Workshop on mental imagery, spatial cognition and language in honor of Michel Denis, Padova (Italy) June 2009, organized by Cesare Cornoldi, Rossana de Beni, Valérie Gyselinck, and Francesca Pazzaglia.

The 12th European Workshop on Imagery and Cognition" to be held in Helsinki (Finland) in June 2010 organized by Virpi Kalakoski, Christina Krause, and Lauri Oksama.

Workshop on Cultural effects on the mental number line in York (UK) in July 2009, organized by Martin Fischer, Silke Goebel, and Sam Shaki.

Summer School on Self-consciousness and consciousness of others to be held in Cargèse, Corsica (France), May 25-June 4, 2009, organized by Frédérique de Vignemont.

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