About the Comparative Cognition Society

Founded in 1999, the Comparative Cognition Society (CCS) is a scientific society dedicated to gaining a broad scientific understanding of the nature and evolution of cognition in human and nonhuman animals. The Comparative Cognition Society is a nonprofit scientific society with no doctrine or philosophy, except the scientific method as it is commonly understood in all natural sciences. Anyone who studies perception, learning, memory, or any other cognitive or representational process in animals is welcome. Our members include faculty, animal behavior professionals, and students in psychology, biology, anthropology, applied animal behavior science, and related fields.

A brief history of the society is available here.

A primary activity of CCS is sponsorship of the annual International Conference on Comparative Cognition (CO3), which has been held annually since 1994. From 1994 to 2023 the conference was held in Melbourne, Florida. Both Faculty/Professional Scientist members and Student members of CCS receive a discount on conference fees. To promote student interest in comparative cognition, student conference fees are kept at a minimum.

More information about the conference is available here.

CCS has been a leader in electronic publishing in an effort to provide the products of our science to scientists, students, and the general public at no cost and in a format that allows dynamic illustrations of the behavior of animals and the analytic techniques used to understand it. The society publishes a journal offering reviews of research in comparative cognition, Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews.

Read the journal here.

CCS is committed to making our society and annual conference welcoming to all. Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) committee has been working tirelessly to ensure this. The committee's work has produced the following documents:

CCS Code of Conduct and Diversity Statement (December 2023)
Letter of introduction to the EDI committee (January 2023)
CCS EDI Pronouns Information (January 2023)
CCS EDI Optional Resources (December 2023)
CCS Ally Training

Learn more about the committee and its work here.

CCS gives out a range of awards to students and faculty, mostly at our annual conference:

The Research Award honors scientists who have made major contributions to our understanding of animal cognition during their career. Recipients of the award give a Master Lecture at the Conference on Comparative Cognition and are honored at the conference banquet. Videos of most Master Lectures are provided on the CCS YouTube Channel. Nominations for this award are made by the CCS Executive Committee. A list of past Research Award winners can be found here.

The Early Career Award honors scientists within the first 5 years of their first position who have made a significant contribution to the study of animal cognition. The award includes the opportunity to deliver a 15 min talk at CO3 and a $1000 USD prize. More information here.

CCS also gives out graduate student awards for best publication, as well as best talk and best poster awards sponsored by the Psychonomic Society, and two travel awards (to CO3), one sponsored by the Psychonomic Society and the other the Ron Weisman Travel Award (prior to 2025, this was an award for best presentation at CO3). Finally, the Stan Kuczaj Memorial Travel Grant is also given out to students attending CO3. Application procedures for all of these can be found here.

President: Noam Miller (contact)
President-elect: Jessica Bodily (contact)
Secretary: M. Ali Qadri (contact)
Treasurer: Suzanne Gray (contact)
CO3 Organizers: Jenna Congdon, Caroline Strang (contact)
Awards Chair: Jennifer Vonk (contact)
Members-at-Large: Ben Basile (contact)

A list of previous presidents and founding committee members can be found here

A list of founding members of the society can be found here

This website was designed by John Magnotti, Maggie-Rose Johnston, Noam Miller, and M. Ali Qadri,