Netherlands

This work provides an alternative account for deviations in human causal reasoning from normative predictions based on Causal Bayesian Networks (CBNs). We highlight violations of the Markov condition (Screening Off) and insufficient Explaining Away. Different from other accounts, our model does not assume that people fail to honor normative predictions due to reliance on heuristics, hidden nodes and links or cognitive limitations. Instead, we propose that people are rationally uncertain about the received causal model they are asked to reason with. We fitted the model to published data from two experiments where people were asked to make probability estimates on inferences of interest within a causal model. We find that the model is able to i) reproduce deviations from normative predictions, and ii) predict changes in the magnitude of these deviations across contexts. We conclude that assuming that people, in order to be rational, will always fully believe in the information they receive about a causal model may be too strong an assumption.

**Authors:**

Nicolas Marchant: Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez; Guillermo Puebla: Universidad de Tarapacá; Tadeg Quillien: University of Edinburgh; Sergio E. Chaigneau: Adolfo Ibanez University

CogSci 2024

Rationally uncertain: investigating deviations from Explaining Away and Screening Off in causal reasoning

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference.<br>
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

Join us!

<br>[**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/COgSci-PAAG-V2.pdf)
<br>[**The Detailed Program can be found here**](https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/mswz/)
<br><br>

#### **CogSci 2023 Program Book**
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<br>

CogSci 2023

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

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**<br>
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**<br>
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)<br>
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)<br>
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Friday, July 26**<br>
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)<br>
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration)<br>
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Saturday, July 27**<br>
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)<br>
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture)<br>


#### **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**<br>
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**<br>
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.

In an era in which people are bombarded by claims, often from unreliable sources (e.g., generative AI, click-bait headlines), understanding what leads people to believe such claims is imperative. Building on work demonstrating the role of explanation in learning, we test how the process of explaining a claim affects people’s beliefs in it (3 studies; N=476, 17,580 observations). In Study 1, participants read 30 scientific news headlines. For each, participants either: generated an explanation for the reported phenomenon, wrote down any thoughts they had about it, or retyped it word-for-word. Participants rated the likelihood that the headline was true. In Study 2, participants also provided baseline ratings one week before the manipulation. Study 3 added a control condition where participants simply read the headline. Across studies, participants believed claims of fact were more likely to be true after trying to explain them compared to any control condition.

**Authors:**

Isaac Handley-Miner: Boston College; Liane Young: Boston College

Does the process of explaining affect one's beliefs?

Classic base-rate neglect studies have been consistently criticised for lacking ecological validity. A study by Welsh & Navarro (2012) found this heuristic was significantly reduced when participants perceived the base rate as more relevant. The present study aims to study this phenomenon through a more realistic scenario while simultaneously capturing participants’ written reasoning. Using mixed-methods, participants (N = 2,052) read an engaging scenario regarding a person who committed infidelity and containing a base-rate and specific information where the contextual information regarding the base-rate was manipulated. They were then asked to provide an estimate of the person’s likelihood to cheat in the future. Results show that each of our three manipulations to the context of the base rate are significant in affecting participants’ estimates, supporting Welsh and Navarro’s findings. Analysis of participants’ written reasoning demonstrates the sophistication and nuance of participants’ engagement with the base-rate, challenging the original view of this supposed heuristic.

**Authors:**

Nine Adler: University College London; Stephen H Dewitt: University College London

Re-Examining Base-Rate Neglect: The Effect Of Context

“Episodes” in memory are formed by the experience of dynamic events that unfold over time. However, just because a series of events unfolds sequentially does not mean that its constituents are related. Sequences can have a high degree of causal coherence, each event connecting to the next through a cause-and-effect relationship, or be a fragmented series of unrelated occurrences. Are causally coherent events remembered better? We used dynamic stimuli showing unfamiliar events to test the effect of causal structure on episodic recall in a cued memory task. Experiment 1 found that the order of causally coherent sequences of events is better remembered than that of fragmented events. Experiment 2 showed that recall of causally relevant details of coherent stimuli is superior to recall of details in fragmented sequences. These findings demonstrate that the episodic memory system is sensitive to the causal structure of events and suggest coherence usually improves recall.

**Authors:**

Andreas Arslan: Central European University; Jonathan F. Kominsky: Central European University

Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events

The current research investigates if causal events such as collisions will attract our attention and make us notice other changes that might occur to these colliding objects. Participants were asked to report colour changes in two objects, one involved in a causal event (a collision) and the other independent of any collision. We observed a significant preference towards reporting the colliding colour changing object when colour changes happened during and before the collision, but the preference was less significant when the colour changes happened after the collision. We suggest that the preference stems from participants anticipating causal events and pay extra attention to objects that might involve in a collision. This focused attention makes participants more likely to notice color changes during the anticipation period, which means people are actively devoting more cognitive resources anticipating and confirming causal interactions. This finding suggests that people prioritise causal observations in visual tasks.

**Authors:**

Tianshu Chen: University College London; Christos Bechlivanidis: University College London; Henrik Singmann: UCL; David Lagnado: University College London

The Attraction of Anticipation: How Causal Interactions Draw People’s Attention in Visual Tasks

While narratives have shaped cognition and cultures for centuries, digital media and online social networks have introduced new narrative phenomena. With increased narrative agency, networked groups of individuals can directly contribute and steer narratives that center our collective discussions on politics, science and morality. We report the results of a social network experiment (N = 340; interactions = 6,800) on narrative processing and hashtag production, in which networked groups of participants interpreted a text-based narrative of a disaster event, and were incentivized to produce matching hashtags with their network neighbors. We found that a network's neighborhood structure influences the emergence of dominant beliefs through coordination with network neighbors. Using natural language processing, we showed that networked interaction shifts participants' representations of the narrative's causal information.

**Authors:**

Hunter Priniski: UCLA; Bryce Linford: UCLA; Sai Krishna: University of Southern California; Fred Morstatter: USC Information Sciences Institute; Jeff Brantingham: UCLA; Hongjing Lu: UCLA

Social network topology shapes narrative processing and hashtag production

How do people’s causal knowledge influence how they seek information? The current work tasks participants with choosing to observe disease symptoms in a setting where they know a disease’s etiology and related symptoms. We use causal graphical models (CGMs) to formalize their causal knowledge of the disease, and find that people tend to use their expected information gain, computed over their CGM-generated probability beliefs, to search for information in causal settings.

**Authors:**

Brian N Yin: New York University; Bob Rehder: New York University

Causal Information Seeking

Although space helps children to grasp time, comprehending temporal metaphors remains challenging. Particularly, Mandarin has different degree of ambiguity in sagittal time-space metaphors, where ‘qian’ (front/past) expresses both future-in-front and past-in-front mappings but ‘hou’ (back/future) predominately expresses future-at-back mappings. Temporal metaphors with a longer duration unit (e.g., year vs. hour) also increase this challenge. We investigated: 1) when children understand sagittal time-space metaphors; 2) whether different degree of ambiguity leads children to having an asymmetric understanding of the past and future; 3) how the unit of temporal duration affects time understanding. 138 Mandarin-speaking children (3-6 years) undertook an 8-item sagittal time-space metaphors test. The results showed that age 5 is a milestone to understand sagittal time-space metaphors, and a longer unit of time duration and more ambiguous space-time metaphors hinder children’s time comprehension. This study reveals the development of time cognition in non-western children and demonstrates how language impacts cognition.

**Authors:**

Jiayu Jiang: Syracuse University; Yan Gu: UCL

Asymmetry in Language, Asymmetry in Mind: The Effect of Sagittal Time-space Metaphors on Children’s Understanding of Time

Current literature suggests young children are poor innovators. However, this research has only assessed children’s capacity to create a novel solution, rather than to recognise when an existing solution has ongoing utility. We examined children’s capacity to retain and share a solution that would be useful again in the future. Across two rooms, 4- to 9-year-olds (N=83) were given a series of time-based tasks which could be solved by building and using a tool. When given the opportunity to transport a tool between the first and second rooms, only the 6- to 7-year-olds and 8- to 9-year-olds retained the tool that would be useful again above chance levels. When subsequently asked to secure a solution for another child, only 8- to 9-year-olds chose this tool above chance. Positive age-partialled correlations between children’s retaining and sharing behaviours suggest that these behaviours may reflect a common underlying capacity for recognising future utility.

**Authors:**

Zoe Ockerby: The University of Queensland; Thomas Suddendorf: University of Queensland; Jonathan Redshaw: University of Queensland

Recognising the future utility of a solution: When do children choose to retain and share an object to solve a future problem?

Very few if any studies address concept combination from a developmental perspective. Here we report a study of how concepts of integer number combine with those of mindreading. We used tasks that require explicit thought and verbal responses, and examined children between 6-10 years of age. We designed four experiments to look at the intersection of quantification and mindreading in development using two combination tasks: (i) visual perspective taking and number; (ii) false belief and number. In both, children needed to coordinate between simple mathematical operations (counting and addition), and reconstructing an agent's visual or mental perspective. Although all senior kindergarteners were proficient in counting, and the majority of them passed the false-belief task, the false belief and number task has proven surprisingly difficult, and was not mastered before age 8. We offer a performance-based explanation of this difficulty.

**Authors:**

Zoltan Jakab: Eötvös Loránd University; Szabolcs Kiss: University of Pécs

Number In Perspective: Why is it Hard for Preschoolers to Attribute False Belief About Numerosity?

Podcasts are unique unimodal modality because they include features like conversation, description, and sound effects to encourage audio engagement. Research shows that learners benefit from learning in two modalities (audio + visual) when information is complementary, not redundant. However, these studies use audio narration of text as auditory stimuli which differs from a podcast format. Do children learn from podcasts, and does providing supporting visual information affect their learning? Children listened (or listened and viewed related images) to an 11-minute science podcast and answered recall and transfer questions. There is no effect of modality on children’s learning, and children in both conditions perform above chance on transfer questions. Using a semantic textual similarity analysis, we show that children in the audiovisual condition do not incorporate visual information in their description of concepts. These results highlight the uniqueness of podcasts as a unimodal context that could benefit higher-order concept learning.

**Authors:**

Emily M Neer: University of California, Los Angeles; Raymond Shao: University of California, Los Angeles; Catherine Sandhofer: University of California, Los Angeles

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