Relational Reasoning Meeting, Ghent 2025

We are delighted to inform you of an upcoming scientific meeting on the topic of relational reasoning, to be held in Ghent, Belgium. The meeting will take place on the 11th and 12th of April 2025, in de Krook library in the heart of the beautiful city Ghent, Belgium.

Aims and Scope

The Relational Reasoning Meeting aims to provide 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?).

Talks

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 Johansson (Stockholm University, Sweden),
• Andrea 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),
• Claire Stevenson (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

Titles and abstracts for these talks are available at the 'Schedule' page.

Registrations

You can register for the meeting by filling in this registration form. We do ask for a small registration fee of 120 euros to pay for catering and logistics, to be paid before the start of the meeting (March 15th at the latest). Details for payment will be communicated to you after registering via the above link. You can also indicate whether you wish to present a talk (15+5 minutes) or a poster (details will be provided), and whether you would like to join the conference dinner at Multatuli on Friday (11th), at an additional cost of 55 euros (incl. three courses and drinks).

We hope to welcome you in Ghent!