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Cognitive science is itself a cognitive activity. Yet, computational cognitive science tools are seldom used to study (limits of) cognitive scientists&#39; thinking. Here, we do so using computational-level modeling and complexity analysis. We present an idealized formal model of a core inference problem faced by cognitive scientists: Given observations of a system&#39;s behaviors, infer cognitive processes that could plausibly produce the behavior. We consider variants of this problem at different levels of explanation and prove that at each level, the inference problem is intractable, or even uncomputable. We discuss the implications for cognitive science.

CogSci 2021

How hard is cognitive science?

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**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

We hope that you enjoy the conference this year!<br><br>

**Your Program Chairs,**
![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/99984908caba5e6453e5fc5ba34f3507.jpg)

**Learn more about the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub at the University of Vienna, hosts of CogSci 2021**

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To review the proceedings for the conference or review the searchable program, please visit the [website](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/program/).


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.

Cognitive science is itself a cognitive activity. Yet, computational cognitive science tools are seldom used to study (limits of) cognitive scientists' thinking. Here, we do so using computational-level modeling and complexity analysis. We present an idealized formal model of a core inference problem faced by cognitive scientists: Given observations of a system's behaviors, infer cognitive processes that could plausibly produce the behavior. We consider variants of this problem at different levels of explanation and prove that at each level, the inference problem is intractable, or even uncomputable. We discuss the implications for cognitive science.

poster

Biological motion perception is supported by a network of regions in the occipito-temporal areas, primarily in superior temporal sulcus (STS), and premotor cortex (PMC). How biological motion is processed outside the focus of attention and whether it is modulated by attentional load remain unknown. We investigated the bottom-up processing of biological motion under different levels of attentional load (high vs. low) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (N=13). In line with previous work, we found that fronto-parietal attention regions were significantly more activated when the attentional load was high than when it was low. Importantly, biological motion under low attentional load yielded activity in STS and PMC, whereas biological motion under high load was restricted only to the low-level motion sensitive areas. These results show that biological motion is processed outside the focus of attention and it is modulated by attentional load.

Biological Motion Perception under Attentional Load

Hippocampal replay is not a simple recapitulation of recent experience, with awake replay often unrolling in reverse temporal order upon receipt of reward, in a manner dependent on reward magnitude. These findings have led to the proposal that replay serves to update values in accordance with reinforcement learning theories. We argue that there may be a more parsimonious account of these observations involving simple associations between contexts and experiences: During wakefulness, animals associate experiences with the contexts in which they are encoded, in a manner modulated by the salience of each experience. During periods of quiescence, replay emerges when contextual cues trigger a cascade of reactivations driven by the reinstatement of each memory’s encoding context, which in turn facilitates memory consolidation. Our theory unifies numerous replay phenomena, including findings that reinforcement learning models fail to account for.

Hippocampal replay as context-driven memory reactivation

The Remote Associates Test is a creativity task that consists in finding a word that connects three unrelated words. We examined EEG power in healthy participants performing an adaptation of this task that allowed us to explore two mechanisms: remote semantic combination by varying the associative strength between the cue words and the solution, and the insight phenomenon reported by the subjects. Time-frequency analyses revealed that associative remoteness was associated with early synchronization in alpha and beta bands in laterotemporal and temporoparietal clusters and late frontal activity in the theta band just before the participants found the solution. Insight was associated with synchronization in alpha and gamma bands in inferotemporal clusters and a frontal synchronization in the theta band just preceded the response. Our findings provide new insights on the dynamic mechanisms involved in this verbal creativity task.

Time course of EEG oscillations during creative problem solving

There is a growing interest in alternative explanations to the dual-system account of how people learn category structures varying in their optimal decision bounds (unidimensional and information-integration structures). Recognition memory performance and hippocampal activation patterns in these tasks are two interesting findings, which have not been formally explained. Here, we carry out a formal simulation with SUSTAIN (Love, Medin, & Gureckis, 2004), an adaptive model of category learning, which had great success in accounting for recognition memory performance and fMRI activity patterns. We show, for the first time, that a formal single-system model of category learning can accommodate recognition performance after learning and is consistent with fMRI data obtained while participants learned these structures.

SUSTAIN captures category learning, recognition, and hippocampal activation in a unidimensional vs information-integration task

Primate inferotemporal cortex (ITC) neurons respond with declining strength to repeated presentations of large natural images. This phenomenon - repetition suppression - has been assumed to arise at the level of ITC because ITC neurons possess the large receptive fields and sophisticated selectivity to recognize images as repetitions. It was recently discovered that V2 neurons exhibit repetition suppression under identical conditions. How do V2 neurons, with classical receptive fields encompassing only a small fraction of the image, recognize it as a repetition? One possibility is that they are sensitive to repetition of content outside the classical receptive field, in the surround. To assess this, we recorded neuronal responses to displays while independently controlling repetition of elements in the classical receptive field and the surround. We found that content in the surround contributed to repetition suppression and that this occurred relatively late in the response, consistent with being mediated by feedback.

Contribution of receptive field center and surround to repetition suppression in macaque visual area V2

Normal aging is associated with an increase in word finding problems. Competing explanations posit that age impairs access to phonological representations (transmission deficit) or leads to a deterioration of semantic representations (under-activation). Because these accounts are difficult to disentangle in a highly interactive language system, we employed a neuro-biologically grounded spiking network model which was lesioned to reflect transmission deficits or under-activation. Results of three simulated picture naming paradigms were in line with the transmission deficit account that normal aging impairs access to representations during word production. These initial findings suggest that this is a promising approach for understanding age-related changes to language ability in an interactive system.

AgeNet: A Neurobiological Model of Age-related Word Retrieval Deficits

Information in speech appears in bursts. To optimize speech perception, the brain aligns these bursts of information with slow rhythms in neural excitability (<10 Hz). How does the brain track the timing of external events? Here we tested whether neural stimulus-tracking depends on participants’ expertise, or on a language-specific mechanism. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) in participants who were experts in either ballet or in sign language, while they watched videos of ballet or sign language. We show that stimulus-tracking depends on expertise: Dancers' brain activity more closely tracked videos of dance, whereas signers' brain activity more closely tracked videos of sign language. This effect of expertise emerged at frontal channels, but not at occipital channels. These results suggest that frontal cortex forms temporal predictions based on expert knowledge. The brain may use the same predictive mechanisms to optimize perception of temporally-predictable stimuli such as speech, music, sign language, and dance.

Expertise modulates neural tracking of dance and sign language

How does scientific knowledge grow? Some argue that science advances by developing a set of core concepts, while others argue complementary or competing core/periphery structures allow for scientific progress. We conducted a large-scale analysis of abstracts from the American Physical Society, spanning 58 years. For each year, we created a network of concepts, where single- and multi-word noun phrases were linked if they appeared in the same abstract. Our results suggest that a single core––rather than multiple cores––best explains the structure of our concept networks. We also see that only a small subset of core concepts (around 10%) remain within the core. Finally, we see a decline in the relative size of the core, driven by the growth of scientific production. The decline in core size is negatively associated with discoveries that push the scientific frontier, which suggests that strong core/periphery structures may be important for innovation.

Network Dynamics of Scientific Knowledge Reveal a Single Conceptual Core that Declines Over Time

People from Western and East Asian cultures exhibit systematic differences in perception, attention, and cognition. Why do people from these cultures think differently? According to an influential proposal, psychological differences between Westerners and East Asians reflect, and may derive from, differences between ancient Greek and ancient Chinese philosophies. Here, we critique this proposal in two ways. First, we argue that the way ancient Greek philosophy is represented in the cultural psychology literature is skewed, highlighting differences between ancient Greek and Chinese beliefs, and obscuring similarities. Second, we argue that no causal mechanism has been offered by which ancient philosophies could give rise to modern cross-cultural differences.

Do Ancient Philosophies Help Us Understand Modern Psychologies?

This paper proposes a formalized approach to the specification of experimental tasks in cognitive science. Put briefly, the proposal is to represent the structure of a task by a logic program that accepts only valid experimental event logs for the chosen paradigm. It is argued that the proposed approach stands to benefit the research process at various stages as it involves the creation of executable documentation for experimental tasks, which may facilitate the communication, validation, implementation, and analysis of experimental tasks. A worked example is presented in detail and some potential new directions of research at the intersection of psychology and computer science are discussed.

How hard is cognitive science?

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