The 31st Annual Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference (EPC'04) was held at the University of Otago, the first time the conference has been held outside Australia. Approximately 180 registrants from New Zealand, Australia, USA, Canada, UK, The Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, China, and India attended the conference, making it the biggest so far. There were 166 papers presented in six parallel streams including nine specialist symposia. Topics included perception, memory, face processing, cognition, reading, neuropsychology, eye movements, attention, biological psychology, language, learning, schizophrenia, motor control, and social cognition. The keynote address, open to the public, was given by Professor Michael Corballis from University of Auckland. About 40% of the papers were presented by students. John Cass from University of New South Wales won the EPC'04 Young Scholar Award for the best student presentation. The major innovation of EPC'04 was the provision of Grants-in-Aid to assist 31 students to attend the conference.
Sponsors of EPC'04 were the Department of Psychology (whose members donated time and infrastructure), the Australasian Experimental Psychology (whose members donated funds to support student Grants-in-Aid), the Assistant Vice Chancellor of the Division of Sciences (who donated the conference rooms), the School of Business (whose members donated their staff room and atrium), the Memory Research Theme (whose members supported the student helpers), the Ministry of Education (that supported the Keynote Address), and the Dunedin City Council.
The success of EPC'04 was due to the hard work, the good will, and the enthusiasm of everyone involved, including the Committee Members, the student assistants (organised by Karen Tustin), John Wilden and Charlie Gilligan (technicians), Norma Bartlett (secretary), Mike Miller and William van der Vleit (computer support), and Donovan Govan (photography).