Beyond Averages – Individual Differences in Cognition – Report of Doctoral Symposium, Nov. 12-14, 2024, RPTU Kaiserslautern)
Report of the GKev-supported Doctoral Symposium on Individual Differences at the RPTU Kaiserslautern
Topic: Beyond Averages – Individual Differences in Cognition
Date: November 12–14, 2024
Organizers: Hannah Plueckebaum, Jan Petershans, Laís Muntini and Zhino Ebrahimi
Financially supported by the GK
From November 12th to 14th 2024, the Center for Cognitive Science at the RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau hosted the 2024 Doctoral Symposium on Cognitive Science at the Villa Denis in the Palatinate Forest, Frankenstein, Germany. The event brought together approximately 60 attendees, including 37 enthusiastic PhD candidates alongside professors and colleagues, from 17 institutions across Europe to explore the topic “Beyond Averages – Individual Differences in Cognition”.
The symposium offered insights from various disciplines within Cognitive Science, such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and neuroscientific methods. It provided a platform for young researchers to discuss their ongoing work in the field of Cognitive Science. The 18 oral and 23 poster contributions explored topics from emotion processing and regulation to cultural influences, visual and auditory perception, language acquisition, consciousness, mind wandering, neural development and aging, bilingual word processing, knowledge and intelligence, quantified learning, driving safety, human-robot interaction, and deep learning. Interactive workshops on scientific writing, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and experimental design using virtual reality offered hands-on methodological experience. Of course, no symposium is complete without social connections, and the evenings at Villa Denis featured lively gatherings with memorable connections.
The symposium concluded with an inspiring keynote lecture by Gregor Schöner on the Dynamic Field Theory and its implications for understanding higher cognition as the emergent product of neural population interactions. The 2024 Doctoral Symposium was a resounding success—scientifically stimulating, socially engaging, and a space for emerging scholars to learn and share ideas.