Description

The Relational Reasoning Meeting provides a forum for the dissemination of new developments in the study of relational reasoning. Relational reasoning is a cornerstone of human cognition, enabling quintessentially human behavior and (as yet) unmatched intelligence. It is studied from various perspectives (behavior-analytic, cognitive-mechanistic, neurological) and across different systems (human, animal, AI systems). However, there is little interaction between researchers who study relational reasoning within different traditions. The meeting aims to bring together researchers investigating relational reasoning within different domains with the aim of energizing research in this area, fostering collaborations, and spurring conceptual, methodological, and empirical advances by addressing issues at the conceptual level (what is relational or symbolic behavior?), the empirical level (what is the evidence for the role of relational reasoning in cognition?), the theoretical level (what do those findings tell us about the nature of the mediating cognitive processes?), and the practical level (can we develop relational interventions to train intelligence, or implement theoretical insights in AI to create better models of human learning?). 

The meeting will include several keynote talks by leading researchers intermixed with submitted talks, moments of discussion and coffee breaks for meeting colleagues, a poster session and an optional conference dinner. We have invited several keynote speakers from different research fields to ensure the multidisciplinary nature of the meeting. These include: Marcel Binz (Helmholtz Institute for Human-Centered AI, Germany), Louisa Bogaerts (Ghent University, Belgium), Leonidas Doumas (University of Edinburgh, Scotland), Robert Johannson (Stockholm University and Linköping University, Sweden), Andrea E. Martin (Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, the Netherlands), Teresa Mulhern (South East Technological University, Ireland), Ivilin Peev Stoianov (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Techology, Italy), and Claire Stevenson (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands). 

For inquiries, please email relationalreasoning@ugent.be.