Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Cognitive scientists spend much of their professional training learning how to explain empirical research to one another: in talks, papers, posters, grant proposals, and conference discussions. An integral part of our training is the communication and dissemination of scientific ideas at an expert level. Far less attention is given to translating that same work for communities beyond academia. This gap matters because cognitive science produces findings about learning, reasoning, attention, memory, communication, development, decision making, and human-technology interaction—topics that many members of the public already encounter in everyday life. Cognitive research is fascinating, relevant, and often meets urgent needs. Yet when research findings circulate without context, they can be misunderstood, oversimplified, or mistrusted. People may not trust what they cannot understand, and many misunderstandings begin at a basic level: what empirical research is or looks like, what evidence can show, and crucially, why scientific claims are often conditional and open to revision.