Submissions

Symposium submissions should include 3 presentations and 1 discussant or 4 presentations.

The chair or co-chair of the proposed symposium must be a CDS member in good standing at the time of submission. If you are unsure of your membership status, please contact us.

To become a member, please click HERE

IMPORTANT – Each person may be first author for no more than one presentation (including the role of discussant) or poster at CDS 2026. There is no limit on the number of non-presenting (i.e., co-author) roles one can have at the conference.

• Include all presenters exactly as you wish them to appear on published material and in the correct order.  If the submission is successful, a second submission for each individual presentation with relevant authors will be required.
  
• Prepare a symposium title (max 255 character limit).  Please use sentence case for the title (capitalize the first letter of the title and lower case for all other letters unless required) and do not include a period (.) at the end of the title.
• Include an abstract (max 3500 characters – approximately 500 words) for each speaker in the symposium.  Please note, if successful, this information will be added again with the relevant contributing authors. An abstract does not need to be included for the discussant.
• Prepare the overall symposium abstract (max 1800 character limit – approximately 200 words), including information about how your symposium strengthens the quality of cognitive developmental science.  You could, for example, highlight the use of diverse participant samples, varied methodological approaches, or differing theoretical perspectives, research traditions, and lab groups.  However, leave up to you, the cognitive developmental science community, the specific aspects you wish to include.
• Submit the abstract via CDS’s online abstract management system.  Please note, when submitting the abstract cut and paste it from a plain text editor (e.g. Notepad, Wordpad) to ensure it does not include underlying formatting that may cause errors. Do not copy/paste from a Word document as additional hidden formatting could be inserted into the submission.
• Ensure the submission has been approved by all authors

By submitting an abstract, you agree to present at the CDS Meeting should your abstract be selected for the program. Please note that all presenters must be registered for CDS at the time of the meeting.

Please note the deadline is October 9, 2025 at 23:59 PST. 

At least one of the authors on an oral paper submission must be a CDS member in good standing at the time of submission. If you are unsure of your membership status, please contact us.  The presenting (and first) author must be a member at the time of presentation.

To become a member, please click HERE

IMPORTANT – Each person may be first author for no more than one talk or poster at CDS 2026. There is no limit on the number of non-presenting (i.e., co-author) roles one can have at the conference.

• Include all authors (primary and secondary) exactly as you wish them to appear on published material and in the correct order
• Prepare an abstract title (max 255 character limit).  Please use sentence case for the title (capitalize the first letter of the title and lower case for all other letters unless required) and do not include a period (.) at the end of the title
• Prepare the abstract (max 3500 character limit – approximately 500 words)
• Submit the abstract via CDS’s online abstract management system. Please note, when submitting the abstract cut and paste it from a text editor (e.g. Notepad, Wordpad) to ensure it does not include underlying formatting that may cause errors. Do not copy/paste from a Word document as additional hidden formatting could be inserted into the submission.
• Ensure the submission has been approved by all authors

By submitting an abstract, you agree to present at the CDS Meeting should your abstract be selected for the program.  Please note all presenters must be registered to attend the CDS meeting in advance of their presentation.

Should the submission not be accepted for an individual paper presentation, it will be considered for a poster presentation.  Submitters will receive confirmation if accepted as a poster when final decisions are sent late-January 2026.

Please note the deadline is October 9 at 23:59 PST.