Submissions
The Cognitive Development Society continues to offer a variety of presentation types, including Contributed Symposia, Individual Papers and Posters. Please note that you do not have to be a member to submit an abstract, but you must be a member in order to present an individual paper, poster or a paper in a symposium.
Submitted abstracts should reflect original work and be substantively different from data or analyses that have been previously published or submitted to other conferences (including SRCD).
Please note, in an effort to support researchers from other nations, individuals who require a visa to attend CDS 2026, can request a visa letter during the submission period. Should you require a letter prior to the submission deadlines, please contact us as soon as possible. More information regarding visa requirements can be found on the Destination page.
Submission Deadlines
Symposia and Oral Paper
Opens –September 10, 2025
Closes – October 9, 2025
Notifications of acceptance/rejection will be shared in mid-November
Poster Submissions
Opens – November 1, 2025
Closes – January 8, 2026
Notifications of acceptance/rejection will be shared at the end of January
Guidelines for submission
Symposia
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. Note, the chair role is NOT considered a presenting role unless the chair is also presenting a paper during the symposium. If you are unsure of your membership status, please contact us.
To become a member, please click HERE
IMPORTANT – Each person may be presenting author for no more than one presentation (including the role of discussant) at CDS 2026. Similarly, each person may be presenting author for no more than one poster. There is no limit on the number of non-presenting roles one can have at the conference. Note that you will be asked to indicate in the system who the presenting author is for each presentation and poster. Any author can be a presenting author, regardless of their position in the author list. Note that the chair role is NOT considered a presenting role unless the chair is also presenting a paper during the symposium.
- 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.
- Figures and tables are welcome but not required, and will only be used in the review process. The figures/tables must be uploaded as one file in pdf format with no identifying author information.
- 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 via the button below.
- Click the submission button below to access
- Login or create an account (note you may have an account if you have attended, submitted, or have a membership with another society that uses the Conference Manager software, including ICIS, FIT’NG, CogSci)
- Once you have created your account, or logged in, you will be brought to the Dashboard
- To submit an abstract, use the tile titled “Abstract Submissions” and click the hyperlinked preferred abstract type (symposium) and be prepared to provide the requested information
- 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.
Individual Paper Submission
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 presenting author for no more than one presentation (including the role of discussant) at CDS 2026. Similarly, each person may be presenting author for no more than one poster. There is no limit on the number of non-presenting roles one can have at the conference. Note that you will be asked to indicate in the system who the presenting author is for each presentation and poster. Any author can be a presenting author, regardless of their position in the author list.
- 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)
- Figures and tables are welcome but not required, and will only be used in the review process. The figures/tables must be uploaded as one file in pdf format with no identifying author information.
- Submit the abstract via CDS’s online abstract management system via the button below.
- Click the submission button below to access
- Login or create an account (note you may have an account if you have attended, submitted, or have a membership with another society that uses the Conference Manager software, including ICIS, FIT’NG, CogSci)
- Once you have created your account, or logged in, you will be brought to the Dashboard
- To submit an abstract, use the tile titled “Abstract Submissions” and click the hyperlinked preferred abstract type (oral paper) and be prepared to provide the requested information
- 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.
Poster
Each person may be presenting author for no more than one presentation (including the role of discussant) at CDS 2026. Similarly, each person may be presenting author for no more than one poster. There is no limit on the number of non-presenting roles one can have at the conference. Note that you will be asked to indicate in the system who the presenting author is for each presentation and poster. Any author can be a presenting author, regardless of their position in the author list.
To become a member, please click HERE
- 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 3000 character limit – approximately 300 words)
- Submit the abstract via CDS’s online abstract management system via the button below.
- Click the submission button below to access
- Login or create an account (note you may have an account if you have attended, submitted, or have a membership with another society that uses the Conference Manager software, including ICIS, FIT’NG, CogSci)
- Once you have created your account, or logged in, you will be brought to the Dashboard
- To submit an abstract, use the tile titled “Abstract Submissions” and click the hyperlinked preferred abstract type (poster) and be prepared to provide the requested information
- 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 at CDS must be registered to attend the meeting before their presentation.
Submissions will open on November 1, 2025. Please note the deadline is at 23:59 PST on January 8, 2026.
Review Criteria for symposia and individual paper submissions
Submitted abstracts should reflect original work and be substantively different from data or analyses that have been previously published or submitted to other conferences (including SRCD). Successful abstracts for symposia and individual papers typically describe projects that include at least one completed study. They must include sufficient empirical data to provide a basis for evaluation. If possible, please specify the number of participants tested and summarize your key statistical results. Submissions that reflect no or only pilot data, or that include only previously published/presented data will not be accepted.
Submissions will be reviewed on the following criteria:
- Theoretical Significance
- Methodological soundness
- Data Heft
- Relevance to CDS
Review Criteria for posters
Submissions will be reviewed on the following criteria:
- Inclusion of empirical data
- Relevance to CDS
Panels
Panel 1: Action, attention, perception, executive functioning, memory, and metacognition
Chair – Natasha Kirkham, Birkbeck, University of London
Reviewers
Carina DeKlerk, University of Essex
Sarah Gerson, University of Cardiff
Simona Ghetti, University of California, Davis
Denis Mareschal, Birkbeck, University of London
Julie Markant, Tulane University
Ori Ossmy, Birkbeck, University of London
Gaia Scerif, Oxford University
Giulia Serino, Birkbeck, University of London
Maheen Siddiqui, Birkbeck, University of London
Rachel White, Hamilton College
Panel 2: Causal, counterfactual, and temporal reasoning; imagination, possibility, prospection and simulation
Chair: Patricia Ganea, University of Toronto
Reviewers
Sarah Beck, University of Birmingham
Deon Benton, Vanderbilt University
Nicolo Cesana-Arlotti, Yale University
Shalini Gautam, Harvard University
Brandon Goulding, University of Winnipeg
Ioana Grosu, University of Toronto
Jamie Jirout, University of Virginia
Melissa Kibbe, Boston University
Teresa McCormack, Queen’s University Belfast
Mary Beth Neff, University of Oslo
Angela Nyhout, University of Kent
Fei Xu, University of California, Berkeley
Panel 3: Logic, number, relational reasoning, and space
Chair: Mahesh Srinivasan, University of California, Berkeley
Reviewers
Lauren Aulet, University of Massachusetts Amherst
David Barner, University of California, San Diego
Hilary Barth, Wesleyan University
Roman Feiman, Brown University
Brian Leahy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Sang Ah Lee, Seoul National University
Koleen McCrink, Barnard University
Nora Newcombe, Temple University
Darko Odic, University of British Columbia
Shannon Pruden, Florida International University
Alex Silver, University of Pittsburgh
Ariel Starr, University of Washington
Panel 4: Language, communication, and gesture
Chair: Meredith Rowe, Harvard University
Reviewers
Sudha Arunanhalam, New York University
Elika Bergelson, Harvard University
Krista Byers-Heinlein, Concordia University
Molly Flaherty, Davidson
Ruthe Foushee, New School
Kathryn Leech, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Casey Lew-Williams, Princeton University
Diana Leyva, University of Pittsburgh
Gigi Luk, McGill University
Rufan Luo, Arizona State University
Gigliana Melzi, New York University
Rachel Romeo, University of Maryland
Adriana Weisleder, Northwestern University
Panel 5: Concepts and categorization; folk biology and folk physics; scientific reasoning
Chairs: Andrew Shtulman, Occidental College
Reviewers
Florencia Angorro, College of the Holy Cross
Igor Bascandziev, Harvard University
Ben Jee, Worcester University
Jennifer Jipson, CalPoly
Deborah Kelemen, Boston University
Sam McHugh, Brown University
John Opfer, The Ohio State University
Ayse Payir, Union College
Sam Ronfard, University of Toronto
Karl Rosengren, University of Rochester
Laura Schulz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Caren Walker, University of California, San Diego
Andrew Young, Northeastern Illinois University
Panel 6: Moral and normative reasoning, pro- and anti-sociality, theory of mind
Chairs: Tamar Kushnir, Duke University
Reviewers
Peter Blake, Boston University
Amanda Brandone, Lehigh University
Lucas Butler, University of Maryland
Nadia Chernyak, Boston College
Yarrow Dunham, Yale University
Pearl Han Li, Duke University
Isobel Heck, University of Rochester
Larissa Heiphetz Solomon, Columbia University
Marjorie Rhodes, New York University
Joshua Rottman, Franklin & Marshall College
Mark Sabbagh, Queen’s University
Amrisha Vaish, University of Virginia
Panel 7: Achievement motivation and persistence; cultural transfer, imitation, and selective learning
Chair: Kathleen Corriveau, Boston University
Reviewers
Dorsa Amir, University of California, Berkeley
Maureen Callanan, University of California, Santa Cruz
Eva Chen, National Tsing Hua University
Jennifer Clegg, Texas State University
Judith Danovitch, University of Louisville
Frankie Fong, Victoria University of Wellington
Amanda Haber, Fairfield University
Jacqueline Woolley, University of Texas Austin
Melissa Koenig, University of Minnesota
Ryan Lei, Haverford College
Julia Leonard, Yale University
Kelsey Lucca, Arizona State University
Candice Mills, University of Texas at Dallas
Mark Nielsen, University of Queensland
Jenny Nissel, Boston University
Rebekah Richert, University of California, Riverside
David Sobel, Brown University
Xin Zhao, East China Normal University
Panel 8: Social categories and groups; attitudes, preferences, stereotypes, and social relations
Chair: Lin Bian, University of Chicago
Reviewers
Jamie Amemiya, Occidental College
Sara Cordes, Boston College
Arianna Eason, University of California, Berkeley
Elizabeth Gunderson, Indiana University
Cai Guo, Stanford University
Grace Hwang, University of California, Santa Cruz
Kyong-sun Jim, Sungshin Women’s University
Ashley Jordan, University of Wisconsin – Madison
Rachel Leshin, Princeton University
Rongzhi Liu, University of Chicago
Lori Markson, Washington University St. Louis
Mike Rizzo, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Ashley Thomas, Harvard University
Brandon Woo, University of California, Santa Barbara
