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In the mid-West of the US there's a cognitive psychology conference called
"Hoosier Mental Life", "Hoosier" being the nickname for Indianans like
"Croweater" is for South Australians. Unusually, the name is
self-deprecating, the idea being that Hoosiers aren't generally considered
to have any mental life. It brings together cognitive psychologists from
Indiana University, Purdue, Ohio State and a few others.
The conference usually consists of a number of short talks, mostly by younger faculty,
post-docs and post-grad students. The atmosphere is generally relaxed and
informal, the idea being to encourage student participation and the discussion of new ideas.
In many ways, it is one of the most vibrant and useful get togethers around, precisely
because of this atmosphere. One of the best features is that
it involves semi-refereed proceedings, which forces students to write-up
their work, potentially for more serious conference publication (e.g.,
Cognitive Science). Between us, we've been to a number of these meetings (actually, Dan organised the last
one), and enjoyed them a lot. So, the three of us are proposing
to hold something similar here every 6 months, with the shamelessly
plagiarised name of "Adelaide Mental Life". We leave it to you as to
whether the self-deprecation generalises.
Michael Lee, Dan Navarro, & Simon Dennis
September, 2004
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