Netherlands

Though it is well-understood that beliefs about future affect (affective forecasting) influence decision-making, less is known about where these forecasts come from. Here, we investigate how intuitive theories of cognition (cognitive forecasting) influence affective forecasts and, consequently, risk preferences. We found that forecasts of cognitive states—expectations, attention, and information-seeking—are linked to affective forecasts and risk preferences (Study 1). There was great diversity in people&#39;s intuitive theories of cognition: One subgroup associated attention and information-seeking with positive emotions for optimists but negative emotions for pessimists, and therefore predicted greater risk-seeking in optimists but not pessimists; the other large subgroup consistently perceived forecasted attention and information-seeking as affectively negative (Studies 2a-b). These results connect behavioral economics and cognitive science by exploring how metacognitive intuitions influence our preferences.

**Authors:**

dogukan demircioglu: University of Waterloo; Chris Dawson: University of Bath; Samuel Johnson: University of Waterloo

CogSci 2024

Intuitive Theories of Cognition on Affect and Risk Preferences

## Welcome!
"I am excited to welcome you to this year’s edition of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing! Importantly, it marks the 30th edition of EMNLP. With over 8,000 submissions, more than 3,000 accepted papers, and thousands of attendees, we have come a long way from that first
workshop, which had 14 accepted papers. As the field looks ahead, Suzhou is the fitting location for celebrating this milestone: rooted in a long literary tradition, yet modern and forward-looking, and home to a large share of the NLP community." 

*Message from the General Chair, Dirk Hovy*

EMNLP 2025

Celebrate 30 Years of EMNLP! 
EMNLP 2025 will be held in Suzhou, China from November 5th to November 9th, 2025.

Though it is well-understood that beliefs about future affect (affective forecasting) influence decision-making, less is known about where these forecasts come from. Here, we investigate how intuitive theories of cognition (cognitive forecasting) influence affective forecasts and, consequently, risk preferences. We found that forecasts of cognitive states—expectations, attention, and information-seeking—are linked to affective forecasts and risk preferences (Study 1). There was great diversity in people's intuitive theories of cognition: One subgroup associated attention and information-seeking with positive emotions for optimists but negative emotions for pessimists, and therefore predicted greater risk-seeking in optimists but not pessimists; the other large subgroup consistently perceived forecasted attention and information-seeking as affectively negative (Studies 2a-b). These results connect behavioral economics and cognitive science by exploring how metacognitive intuitions influence our preferences.

**Authors:**

dogukan demircioglu: University of Waterloo; Chris Dawson: University of Bath; Samuel Johnson: University of Waterloo

poster

The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was an in-person meeting held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands at the Postillion Hotel & Conference Centre.

**ON-DEMAND PROGRAM ACCESS AFTER THE CONFERENCE** 
Recordings of the invited program are now available. You can access them by clicking on the 'Schedule' icon on the left. Select view by week and navigate to the day and time slot of the recording you wish to view. Click on the time slot to access the recording.

Recordings available (click on each recording to view):

**Thursday, July 25** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Morgan Barense on Enhancing real-world event memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/17997/lecture/99084-dynamics-between-minds-and-the-environment) 
1000: [Gleitman Award Winner Isabelle Dautriche on Language Foundations: Insights from acquisition, communication, cognition, and more](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18000/lecture/99085-gleitman-talk) 
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture) 
1700: [Rumelhart Prize Presentation Speaker Alison Gopnik on Exploit, explore, empower: Three ages and three intelligences](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18028/lecture/99161-rp1-rumelhart-prize-presentation) 

**Friday, July 26** 
0900: [C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize Keynote Speaker Kia Nobre on Focusing in memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18035/lecture/99162-hp1-c-l-de-carvalho-heineken-prize-keynote-address) 
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration) 
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture) 
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture) 
1745: [Keynote Speaker Andrea E. Martin on Neural dynamics encode the structure and statistics of language](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18077/lecture/99271-neural-dynamics-encode-the-structure-and-statistics-of-language) 

**Saturday, July 27** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Gregor Schöner on How higher cognition emerges from the dynamics of strongly interacting neural populations](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18083/lecture/99273-dynamics-within-the-mind) 
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture) 
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture) 


#### **CogSci 2024 Program Book**
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**The Program Book can be downloaded [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yRVp1cBqRnAbdYi4GXWV_pZeyWNsRquv/view?usp=sharing).**

#### **Letter from the President**

Welcome to the 2024 Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Rotterdam! CogSci 2024 brings together a large community of cognitive scientists who have traveled here from around the world, as well as a smaller group of remote presenters. I would like to extend an especially warm welcome to our first-time CogSci meeting attendees, and hope that 
their experience inspires them to join our future meetings for many years to come.

I want to thank this year’s conference co-chairs, Larissa K Samuelson, Stefan Frank, Mariya Toneva, Allyson Mackey, and Eliot Hazeltine, for putting together an amazing series of invited talks and symposia around the theme of Dynamics of Cognition. The co-chairs also deserve credit for handling a record-breaking number of submissions and producing a truly exciting conference program 

Beyond the invited talks and symposia dedicated to this year’s conference theme, I would like to highlight the presentations and events honoring the 
Rumelhart, Elman, Gleitman and C .L . de Carvalho Heineken prize winners, including the Rumelhart reception on Thursday. As you may know, we are recording all of the invited talks and symposia, and all prize-winners’ talks, and will be making this content available after the conference. 

The Cognitive Science Society relies on the volunteer efforts of our Governing Board members who work on matters related to our membership; conference policies; diversity and inclusion, international, and outreach initiatives; prizes and much more. We welcome interest from Society members who would like to become more involved in what we do. The 
Society is deeply grateful to Rick Dale and Andrea Bender, who serve as editors of the two Society journals, Cognitive Science and Topics in Cognitive Science respectively. We especially acknowledge our editors’ generosity in donating their stipends each year to D&I and outreach efforts. 

This year’s Annual Meeting depends critically on the support of Marischal De Armond and his team at Podium Conference Specialists: Sharon Zwack, Cendrine De Vis, Sarah-Kate Burke, and Rachel Waller worked tirelessly to secure the venue and handled a multitude of logistical and organizational issues, from arranging coffee breaks and receptions to making sure that a huge number of posters fits comfortably into the available space. Finally, and importantly, I would like to acknowledge the Cognitive Science Society Executive Officer, Erica Wojcik, for managing the complex and ever expanding sphere of our Society’s activities.

I hope you enjoy this year’s meeting and the many different opportunities to engage with the vibrant community of cognitive scientists gathered here. I also hope you get a chance to explore the great city of Rotterdam with its many attractions, museums, restaurants and scenic views. If you’d like to talk more about our Society, or simply want to say hello, please stop by!

![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/3c66d0e21fff30e204df1138ffd15173.jpeg)

**Anna Papafragou** 
President, Cognitive Science 
Society 2023-2024

**CODE OF CONDUCT** 
By attending the CogSci 2024 Conference, you are required to adhere to the society’s [Code of Conduct](https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-6KkptF0Gn3ZYGJDlpqpwTdImw45Ng0/view?usp=drive_link).

**ABOUT THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SOCIETY** 
The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education.

The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.

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The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Most recent research on human planning attempts to adjudicate between a small set of hypothesized models based on their ability to predict participants' choices, using carefully designed experiments and/or model comparison. Here, we propose an alternative approach. We designed a task in which gaze is highly indicative of participants' planning operations, allowing us to discover properties of human planning from eye-tracking data in a data-driven way. Our results reveal ways that people's planning strategies have both similarities and differences with classical planning algorithms like best-first search and Monte Carlo tree search. They also provide a more nuanced perspective on established properties of human planning like pruning and depth limits. We conclude that planning research would benefit greatly from an increased use of rich sources of data that provide more direct evidence about the internal processes underlying sequential decision-making.

**Authors:**

Frederick Callaway: New York University; Miaomiao Yu: New York University ; Marcelo G Mattar: New York University

Revealing human planning strategies with eye-tracking

The recent surge in online learning demands better ways to monitor students’ mind wandering (MW) episodes. We examined whether different eye movement measures were associated with MW in tasks with different cognitive demands. We found that a reduced number of fixations was associated with MW in tasks involving searching for information without clearly defined strategies. A larger variance in pupil diameter, as well as reduced eye movement consistency, were associated with MW when imagining a scenario with a central fixation. Reduced eye movement consistency, as well as reduced joint attention with another participant, were both associated with MW in tasks involving a clearly defined strategy. Interestingly, none of these eye movement measures was associated with MW in tasks involving well-learned visual routines such as face and scene identification, suggesting idiosyncrasy in eye movement behavior in these tasks. These findings have important implications for developing effective methods for detecting MW.

**Authors:**

Xiaoru Teng: The University of Hong Kong; Hui Lan: Beijing University of Technology; Gloria Wong: University of Reading; Antoni B. Chan: City University of Hong Kong; Janet Hsiao: Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Eye Movement Behavior during Mind Wandering across Different Tasks in Interactive Online Learning

A considerable number of non-central nervous system (non-CNS) cancer survivors face long-term cognitive impairments after successful treatment, which affects various domains of cognition. Two tests used to measure working memory and attention are the digit span forward and digit span backwards, which were computerized to assess cognitive deficits in cancer survivors. We aim to investigate which cognitive processes are impaired in cancer survivors, by separating the various processes measured in the digit span tests. To this end, we formulate a hierarchical Bayesian cognitive process model which uses raw input data from the digit span and identifies metrics of working memory capacity, attentional control, and executive control. We compare these outcomes between non-CNS cancer survivors and healthy controls, to better localize which processes are affected by cancer and its treatment. Formal modeling allows for the extraction of more precise information in describing the cognitive deficits faced by patients.

**Authors:**

Ruben Potthoff: Netherlands Cancer Institute; Sanne Schagen: Netherlands Cancer Institute; Joost Agelink van Rentergem: Netherlands Cancer Institute

Process Modelling for Digit Span Tasks: Attention, Working Memory, and Executive Functioning in Cancer Survivors

Serial dependence is a phenomenon in which perception of the current stimulus is influenced by that of past stimulus. Previous studies have shown that serial dependence does not occur between modalities, however, it has only been validated with limited types of tasks. We examined the cross-modal serial dependence in numerical estimation task. Participants were asked to estimate the number of flashes presented sequentially for visual stimuli and the number of white noises presented sequentially for auditory stimuli. We observed significant serial dependence from visual to auditory, but not in the reverse direction. The reason we observed serial dependence between modalities may be due to the high-order processing required to perform the numerical estimation task. We need to further investigate the nature of the visual stimuli (sequential or simultaneous) as well as their temporal properties to determine why only serial dependence from visual to auditory was observed in this experiment.

**Authors:**

Takuma Hashimoto: Osaka Metropolitan University; Yukihiro Morimoto: Osaka Prefecture University; Shogo Makioka: Osaka Metropolitan University

Cross-modal serial dependence between visual and auditory stimuli in numerical estimation task

Research that has investigated the psychological foundations of mentalism (a specific branch of illusionism that involves manipulating or predicting thoughts, and actions) has highlighted a strong tendency to believe in the pseudo-explanations provided by its practitioners (specifically, advanced psychological skills). In three experiments, we investigated the strength of this belief by comparing apparently impossible effects relating to mental phenomena with physical phenomena. We observed that the former compared to the latter are explained in terms of advanced psychological skills: i) even when alternative feasible explanations are explicitly presented; ii) when they are presented solely as mentalism effects but the effects themselves are classical card tricks (both manipulation-based and automatic); iii) regardless of the context in which the effects are observed (a research laboratory vs. a theater). We interpreted the tendency to appeal to this pseudo-explanation (and the changes in narratives employed by mentalists across the decades) in terms of the community of knowledge framework.

**Authors:**

Giorgio Gronchi: University of Florence; Axel Perini: University of Florence; Jeffrey Zemla: Syracuse University; Franco bagnoli: University of Florence; Maria Pia Viggiano: University of Florence

Explaining apparently impossible phenomena: difference between physical and mental effects

Cognitive search processes are generally affected by the number of available items. We investigated if this also applies to long-term memory retrieval. Specifically, we explored the effect of set size on retrieval times of cued memories from long-term memory. Participants learned lists of word pairs that varied in the number and the semantic similarity of the pairs. An increase in set size resulted in slower retrieval times, indicating the influence of set size on memory retrieval efficiency. However, participants were faster in retrieving more semantically similar word pairs. These findings are consistent with a search-based model of retrieval, illustrating its sensitivity to the number of memory candidates, while highlighting the role of the quality of the cue in optimizing search performance. Furthermore, we established the validity of using similarity values based on Word2Vec embeddings by showing a high correlation with human similarity ratings and similar model results.

**Authors:**

Susanne Haridi: Max Planck School of Cognition; Mirko Thalmann: Helmholtz Institute; Eric Schulz: Helmholtz Institute

The Effect of Set Size on Long-Term-Memory Retrieval Times in Cued Recall

This study explores the influence of social contexts on the efficiency of information search in children (6-14 years), adolescents (15-17 years), and adults. Participants were told they were competing in a sporting event. When the championship trophy goes missing, the participant’s team has either won or lost. Participants are then tasked with playing a 20-Questions game to try to find the trophy. Beyond the developmental trajectory in their ability to select the most informative questions, we found, as hypothesized, that all participants actively biased their search strategies, choosing more or less efficient questions as they accounted for the potential consequences of their information-search behavior. In particular, they were more likely to select the most efficient question when they were winning and were more motivated to identify the target. Overall, our findings suggest that social contexts play a strong role in modulating the efficiency of information search across age groups.

**Authors:**

Ohan Hominis: Central European University; Azzurra Ruggeri: Central European University

Motivated Information Search

This study examines individual differences in broadcasters’ use of multimodal (e.g., words; prosody; gestures) child-directed language. Particularly, we investigated the impact of individual styles on broadcasters’ multimodal adjustments in language production, and focused on the role of empathy and the Big Five personality traits. Forty-two female future broadcasters participated in the study, simulating live broadcasts for both adults and children. An analysis of participants’ multimodal production showed that there is a stable individual style across different contexts in prosody, linguistic features and gestures. However, not all participants adjusted the same way between programmes. Empathy and personality traits could predict multimodal adjustments, and they shape different degrees of adjustments between child-directed and adult-directed programmes. For example, higher-empathetic and more extrovert participants produced more salient referential gestures. In short, the results highlight the roles of individual differences in tailoring multimodal communicative strategies, with implications for broadcaster training.

**Authors:**

Yanran Zhang: Tilburg university; Yan Gu: University of Essex

Individual differences in multimodal child-directed language: Unraveling individual style, empathy and the Big Five personality traits

Conformity refers to phenomena where people match their behaviors to those of others. Existing research has focused on cases where people can observe others in the same situation, saying little about its potential depth or generalizability. When conforming, do people revise behaviors only in that specific situation or update deeper so that they can produce consistent behaviors across similar situations? Through simulation, we first demonstrate that deep and shallow conformity shape contrasting dynamics in groups; only with deep conformity, groups can accumulate improvements longer than individual lifespans. We further conduct an experiment to examine the depths of conformity in humans. People did extend conformist influence to situations without direct reference to others, while those who were just averaging the answers with direct reference showed a notable failure in this generalization. Collectively, our research highlights the importance of distinguishing different depths in conformity when investigating social influence and resultant group outcomes.

**Authors:**

Ryutaro Mori: The University of Tokyo; Hidezo Suganuma: The University of Tokyo; Tatsuya Kameda: Meiji Gakuin University

Generalizability of Conformist Social Influence Beyond Direct Reference

People systematically deviate from the rational Bayesian updating of beliefs, as notably evidenced by conservatism and base-rate neglect. The primary cognitive models that explain these biases include simple heuristics (Woike et al., 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2023.101564) and stochastic sampling approximations of the Bayesian solution, like the Bayesian Sampler (Zhu et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000190). However, neither type of explanation appears entirely complete, as the data fall between the two; only about half of participants’ responses align with heuristics. Could these results be explained by a new class of models that blend heuristics with Bayesian models? We test both simple mixtures of heuristics and the Bayesian Sampler, as well as a hybrid model in which heuristics are used to set a prior that improves estimates based on stochastic samples. Our analysis indicates that neither heuristics nor the Bayesian Sampler alone are sufficient to explain the data.

**Authors:**

Yitong Lin: University of Warwick; Jian-Qiao Zhu: Princeton University; Adam Sanborn: University of Warwick

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