ICACS

The Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Cognitive Studies (ICACS) is an internationally oriented research center recently established at Warsaw University of Social Sciences and Humanities aimed at basic and applied studies on cognitive functions.
Cognitive functions have become one of the most important topics in many areas of psychology, experimental biology or medicine, and cognitive sciences.
In the interdisciplinary research domains covered by ICACS, one might differentiate the basic research fostering our understanding of cognitive processes and several applied research fields that combine recent advances in cognitive psychology with the investigation into different types of individual or group differences:

• Basic research in cognitive functions. Among the most intensively studied by full and affiliated members of ICACS are functions of attention, inhibition and working memory as well as the so-called executive functions, or higher-level cognitive abilities (e.g., reasoning or mental models).
• Research in cognitive psychopathology examines emotional, mental and brain disorders in terms of the underlying basic cognitive mechanisms that are affected in these states
• Research in cognitive aging links the research lines on aging to those on cognitive processes
• Research in social cognition aims to identify the cognitive mechanisms of social processes

Surprisingly, international research in the abovementioned fields of applied cognitive studies tends to evolve and progress largely in separation of each other, although they share common concepts and objectives, and are tightly linked by their central interest in obtaining insights into the cognitive functions research. The members of ICACS attempt to tackle that problem by proposing international research projects, conferences, summer schools and workshops. Many of full and affiliated members of ICACS were involved in recently published volumes integrating basic research on cognitive processes with research on cognitive aging, cognitive psychopathology, and social cognition:

• Sedek, G., Verhaeghen, P., Martin, M. (Eds.). (in press). Social and compensatory mechanisms of age-related cognitive decline. Special Issue of Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
• Engle, R.W., Sedek, G., von Hecker, U., & McIntosh, D. N. (Eds.). (2005). Cognitive limitations in aging and psychopathology. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• von Hecker, U., Dutke, S., Sedek, G. (Eds.). (2000). Generative mental processes and cognitive resources: Integrative research on adaptation and control. Dordrecht (Netherlands): Kluwer.