keynote spEakers
Professor Robert Logie
Former Professor at University of Edinburgh, UK
Speaker Biography: Robert Logie obtained his PhD in 1981 from University College London, and 1980-1986 was postdoc at MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge. From 1987 he was at University of Aberdeen becoming Anderson Professor and Head of Psychology, and 1996-2006 was adjunct Professor of Cognitive Psychology at University of Bergen, Norway. From 2004 he was Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh. He retired in 2023 and remains active in research.
His research includes working memory in the healthy, ageing, and damaged brain, and design of digital memory systems and of patient monitoring in ICU. He has over 300 publications, in 2015 was chair ERC Advanced Grants panel SH4, and first non North-American Chair of the Psychonomic Society. He was awarded 2023 Bartlett prize for lifetime contributions to Experimental Psychology, is Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh, and British Psychological Society, and honorary lifetime member of European Society for Cognitive Psychology
Keynote Title: Working memory and the flexibility of cognition
Abstract: Working memory (WM) refers to the mental ability to keep track of rapid changes in our environment, to hold small amounts of information in mind when performing tasks or acquiring new knowledge, and rapidly to access and use existing knowledge. Its capacity can be overloaded, leading to errors and inefficiency in learning, actions, and remembering. Yet even when it seems at full capacity, under some circumstances, an additional task can be performed with little impact on performance of either task. Moreover, there is seemingly unlimited capacity for tasks that involve existing knowledge and skills. I will present data from a range of WM experiments to illustrate that WM comprises multiple cognitive functions with capacity limited by which specific combination of components is used by an individual for any given task. WM never works in isolation. Its components operate collectively in a dynamic interaction with what we know about ourselves, our hobbies, skills, interests, occupations or professions, accumulated knowledge of the world and information readily available from external sources.
Professor Amanda Waterman
University of Leeds, UK
Speaker Biography: Amanda Waterman obtained her PhD in 2000 from the University of Sheffield and is currently Professor of Cognitive Development at the University of Leeds. Waterman’s research predominantly focuses on working memory development with a particular interest in how we can support children with memory difficulties in the classroom. She regularly works alongside education practitioners in her research, including co-producing guidance for classroom teachers.
More recently, Waterman has been interested in how cognitive offloading can be explored within a working memory paradigm. She is also the Academic Lead for Cognitive Research in the Born in Bradford Study, which is following the lives of over 13,500 children and their families and is one of the largest cohort studies of its type in the world. Waterman sits on the Leadership Group for the N8 Child of the North initiative.
Keynote Title: Cognitive offloading: using the environment to support cognitive performance and learning
Abstract: The way in which individuals encounter information – and its interaction with the environment – has a significant impact on cognitive processes and learning outcomes. This concept is central to two key areas of research: Cognitive load theory and cognitive offloading. Both are grounded in working memory research and shaped by the well-established capacity limits of the working memory system. I will present data examining when and how individuals tend to offload information onto the environment to support task performance. Further, I will discuss how we can structure the environment, or create physical tools that facilitate offloading to the environment, to improve learning. Finally, I will outline ways in which we work in co-production with educational professionals to identify and support pupils with working memory difficulties.
Professor Nelson Cowan
University of Missouri, US
Speaker Biography: Nelson Cowan (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, 1980) is Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri. Since his graduate school years, he has published many studies and several books about working memory, selective attention, and their childhood and life-span development, based on research largely funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. His collaborative work has extended the concepts to an improved understanding of neuropsychological conditions including language disorders, dyslexia, autism, schizophrenia, amnesia, Parkinson’s Disease, and alcoholic intoxication. He is interested in integrating cognitive and neuroscientific research, recently publishing a broad review on the relation between attention and memory in the Annual Review of Psychology (2024) and on theories of consciousness based on an embedded processes approach in Psychological Review (2025). Cowan has served as Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and has presented various keynote addresses, recently at the 2024 Psychonomic Society meeting.
Keynote Title: Cognitive load, storage capacity limits, and capacity-sparing work-arounds
Abstract: The term cognitive load can refer to a burden on either (1) the time available for the maintenance of items in working memory or (2) the free space left to hold additional working memory items. I will outline ways in which the limits can be circumvented according to an embedded processes theoretical framework, through chunking and off-loading of information. I will then concentrate on evidence for capacity-based load effects, attempting to arrive at rules for when such effects do or do not apply. The theory has a lot of flexibility in predictions and therefore needs further refinement, as I strive for here. Some flexibility seems to be needed because the extant data do not support a simple rule as to when cognitive load effects will occur.