Background and Goals
Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft ( German Cognitive Science Society )

Cognitive science - despite its now more than thirty-year-old tradition - is still a young science.

The styles of thinking and research of cognitive science have their origins in several older scientific disciplines: psychology, the neurosciences, linguistics, philosophy, and computer science.

The common emphasis on the modeling of cognitive systems - even though conducted with differing methods and objectives - gave rise to a new name: cognitive science.

Whereas research and teaching on cognitive systems at first remained largely within the boundaries of the parent disciplines, the interdiscipline of cognitive science soon acquired its own identity. As its practical implications have become apparent since the mid-80s, cross-disciplinary basic research in cognitive science has acquired its own technology component. From adaptive user interfaces through expert systems to natural language processing and virtual reality, results from cognitive science research have been applied practically in the context of application-specific objectives.

The German Cognitive Science Society - Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft (GK) - was founded in 1994 with the aim of fostering scientific advancement in cognitive science research and of building an organizational framework for the disciplines involved. Within this framework, synergies among the different research approaches are supported effectively and comprehensively, both in the development of university teaching programs and research projects and in the identification of practical applications and professional opportunities for cognitive scientists.