It is our pleasure to invite you to the XVII. Dubrovnik Conference on Cognitive Science. The conference is going to take place on 21-24 May 2026, in the Center for Advanced Studies of Dubrovnik, Croatia, located by the Adriatic sea at the foot of the old city of Dubrovnik (Croatia), a UNESCO world heritage site.
Adaptation is a defining feature of living systems, from immediate adjustments to long-term developmental and societal changes. Here, we will explore adaptation and its limits across multiple scales, asking how individuals, groups, and societies adjust to shifting internal and external demands, and what this means for personality and mental health. We will be interested in how cognition is adjusted to cope with more immediate challenges like scarcity, threat, or turmoil. On top of that, effects of the environment during sensitive developmental periods can leave enduring marks on information processing and behavioural tendencies. In this vein, we will consider whether cognitive correlates of personality traits and psychopathology can be seen as generalized adaptations to the past, or as obstacles to meeting challenges in the present. In this conference, we will bring together researchers who address this broad question from various angles such as experimental psychology, genetics and neuroscience, or clinical & personality psychology, and use diverse tools such as computational cognitive modelling and time series analysis of daily life data.
