Introduction to <i>topiCS</i> Volume 14, Issue 3

A diverse set of topics is assembled in the current issue of Topics in Cognitive Science: An overview of award-winning research in the Fellows topic, a content topic on rationality, and a contribution to a debate that has engaged many in and beyond cognitive science. The topic devoted to the Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society was initiated in 2021 to provide all Fellows of the Society with an opportunity to showcase their scientific work, outline what they consider to be their major contributions to cognitive science, and elaborate on their visions for greater integration of the field (Bender, 2022). After Cleotilde “Coty” Gonzalez and Steven Sloman, who inaugurated this topic (Gonzalez, 2022; Sloman, 2022), we are doubly proud to present now the third scholar to answer this call: Jenny R. Saffran from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, not only was elected Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society in 2020 but also became the inaugural recipient of the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building in that same year. Together with her co-authors, Ashley L. Ruba and Seth D. Pollak, she presents in this issue an exemplary overview of her work, which investigates infants’ acquisition of foundational aspects of language and emotion through the lens of statistical learning. The topiCS team wishes to take this opportunity to thank Jenny and her co-authors for a wonderful paper and to congratulate her on her awards. The second topic in this issue, edited by Emmanuel M. Pothos (City University of London, UK) and Timothy J. Pleskac (University of Kansas, US), calls for rethinking rationality. It brings together contributions from various theoretical approaches with their respective views on rationality to discuss and evaluate the progress made regarding fundamental questions such as whether a rational standard in decision making can be defined and whether it can be achieved. Finally, many of you will recall the debate that caught fire after the publication of “What happened to Cognitive Science?” by Núñez et al. (2019). Perceived by many in the field as provocative, the question of to what extent cognitive science actually had achieved interdisciplinary integration induced so many reactions that the editor of topiCS at that time, Wayne Gray, devoted a topic of its own to them (see the commentaries in topiCS 11(4), introduced by Gray, 2019; for a response in topiCS by the original authors, see Núñez et al., 2020). In the most recent follow-up to this controversy, Pablo Contreras Kallens, Rick Dale, and Morten H. Christiansen aim to take the discussion one step further, not only by proposing co-author publication history as an alternative measure of interdisciplinarity but also by arguing for a revision of what they consider outdated concepts of interdisciplinarity and theoretical unity. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, as well as proposals for new topics. Letters are not longer than two published pages (ca. 400–1000 words). Commentaries (between 1000 and 2000 words) are often solicited by topiCS editors prior to the publication of their topic, but they may also be considered after publication. Letters and commentaries typically come without an abstract and with few references, if any. The executive editor and the senior editorial board (SEB) are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to the executive editor (Andrea.Bender@uib.no) or a member of the SEB (for a list, see the publisher's homepage for topiCS: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).