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. 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 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 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 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 first author (which is also the presenter role) 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.

    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
    Ori Ossmy, Birkbeck, University of London
    Gaia Scerif, Oxford University
    Giulia Serino, Birkbeck, University of London
    Maheen Siddiqui, Birkbeck, University of London

    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
    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