Introduction to Volume 8, Issue 1 of topiCS

Abstract

We begin our eighth year of publication with three themes. One is new to us, but the other two are variations on a theme introduced in our inaugural issue. Our new theme, “Global Challenges and Human Cognition,” was organized, proposed, and assembled by Topic Editor Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol, UK). This theme is a first for this journal in several ways. It is the first topic devoted to an applied problem. Hence, many of its 11 papers have a Pasteur's Quadrant (Stokes, 1997) flavor of basic research in pursuit of understanding a significant applied problem. It is the first topic to address the problem of Science Denial (Lewandowsky, Mann, Bauld, Hastings, & Loftus, 2013). This problem would be bad enough if it were simply denial, but, as the APS Observer article (Lewandowsky et al., 2013) makes clear, it often turns into personal attacks on the scientists, their universities, and journals. And it is the first to address any aspect of climate science from a cognitive science perspective. The gap between the facts of the case and public perception creates an interesting cognitive and behavioral science research issue. This gap requires that the tools of cognitive science be brought to bear to understand problems of this nature; namely, the failure by a large part of the public to understand or accept the facts, the outright denial of established facts, and the demonization of science and scientists, which for different topics runs high among different segments of the population. Such gaps present an interesting challenge for cognitive scientists to grow our science and apply it in the form of policy recommendations, education initiatives, and so on to climate change and other issues (see van Linden, Maibach, and Leiserowitz 2015 for a related paper from the psychological science community). Our other two themes present two variations of our Best Of topic. First, Topic Editor Niels Taatgen presents us with the six best papers from the 2015 meeting of the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling. Second, we have one Best Of paper from this past year's Cognitive Science Conference. This one, “Attention modulates spatial precision in multiple object tracking” by Nisheeth Srivastava and Ed Vul, won the annual Higher-Level Cognition award. Not all prize-winning conference papers make good stand-alone journal papers. Indeed, members of the topiCS Senior Editorial Board read each paper to recommend to the Editor which one we should pursue. As is usually the case, many of the authors whose papers that pass that bar tell me that they are planning on significantly expanding their paper beyond that which was presented at the conference and decline our offer. Nevertheless, some conference papers become perfect journal papers with a bit more editing and a modest increase in word length—this definitely describes the Srivastava and Vul paper. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not require an abstract nor include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me (grayw@rpi.edu) or an SEB member. SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).