CogSci 2006

The 28th Annual Conference 

of the Cognitive Science Society 

Edited by Ron Sun

Introduction to CogSci 2006

The 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Vancouver, Canada, at the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre, July 26-29, 2006. These proceedings hold the papers for the talks, the posters, and the symposia, as well as the tutorials and the workshops, presented at this conference.

Each year, the Cognitive Science conference highlights a particular area of cognitive science. This year, the theme of "Learning: Tackling Both Implicit and Explicit Processes" was chosen. This is reflected in the choice of the plenary speakers, as well as the plenary symposia. The rest of the program was determined by the submissions received, and by the reviewers' and the program committee's decisions on them. However, it is good to note that quite a few of the submissions seem to have been inspired by this theme.

In total, 575 submissions were received. Of these, 152 were scheduled for oral presentation, and 260 for poster presentation. 9 symposia and 14 publication based talks were also scheduled. 215 member abstract submissions were received, which, by design, were only lightly reviewed, and most of which (209) were accepted. In addition, 6 tutorials and 3 workshops were scheduled for the day right before the main conference.

Organizing the conference involves a tremendous amount of work for an extended period of time. It could not have been done without the help from many people. I would especially like to thank the following people: the members of the Organizing Committee, for managing various aspects of the conference; the members of the Program Committee, for their work in the review process; the almost 700 reviewers, for providing thorough and helpful reviews; the members of the Local Organization Committee, for managing local arrangements. Please see the listings of these committees on subsequent pages.

In addition, I would like to thank Wayne Gray, for helpful discussions on many aspects of conference organization; James Stewart, for quickly diagnosing and fixing any problem arising from the submission/reviewing software; Tom Ward, for sending out many announcements to the membership of the Society; and Brittney Oppermann, for miscellaneous help.

I would also like to acknowledge all the sponsors (which are listed on a subsequent page). And above all, thanks are due to all the authors, the presenters, and the attendees of CogSci 2006 for making it a success.

Ron Sun