This year’s International Society for Intelligence Research meeting 12-14 December will be in Austria, and it is anyone’s guess what the influx of intelligence researchers will do, however briefly, for the intellectual levels of that nation. At the very least the need to congregate in the same place and at the same time will test some basic skills, and embarrassing lapses will be gleefully published, assuming I make it to the correct place in time to record them.
There will be much to report on, and I hope to be able to do that on your behalf. On past performance it is almost impossible to cover a conference whilst also taking part. It is a once-a-year chance to meet researchers and find out what they are working on, to hear argument and counter argument, and to watch scholars of entirely contrary positions chat over coffee. Given the very high demands on my limited channel capacity, I will probably report twice: once very briefly from the conference, and then at a more length subsequently when authors have sent me their papers.
In a welcome nod to modernity the organisers have agreed a Twitter tag
#IQ2014
I will try to get this noticed by giving you Twitter highlights, and hope you will assist me in this project so as to spread the word about the conference.
The program is shown below. The main topics are: Memory and cognitive bias; genetics; methods and psychometrics; intelligence and life outcomes; intellectual growth; neuroscience; education; creativity.
http://www.isironline.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/ISIR2014-Conference-program-overview.pdf
If some topics are of particular interest to you, please let me know and I will mark them for special attention.
You will see many familiar names (familiar to loyal readers anyway) and also new names of researchers who are presenting for the first time. If you have students who would like to find fame and fortune they should apply for the ISIR best graduate student presentation award given to the graduate student who gives the best presentation and includes a $500 cash award.
In the best traditions of transparency, I am sometimes on the assessment panel, and sometimes not, so a coffee and an Austrian pastry could be a good investment, or not.
Unfortunately, their bizarre way of handling submissions that are conditional on getting a travel grant, means that I don't have money to attend for.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear it.
Delete"Methods and Psychometrics" is of particular interest to me. Multiple personality dimensions have been successfully measured using short inventories requiring less than five minutes to administer, but intelligence is thus far more difficult to accurately test in short order. There's a need there to be filled, and I'm especially keen on implementations involving neutrinos, magnetic fields, and gigantic computers which speak in monotone.
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