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The primary phenomenon within the field of collaborative memory is collaborative inhibition: the tendency for collaborative groups to underperform in free recall tasks compared to nominal groups of comparable size. Previously, we adapted the Search of Associative Memory (SAM; Raaijmakers &amp; Shiffrin, 1981) model to collaborative free recall and found support for the retrieval disruption hypothesis (Mannering, Rajaram, Shiffrin, &amp; Jones, 2022). In this paper, we investigate another possible cause of collaborative inhibition: memory homogenization. Previous modeling attempts have shown that memory homogenization may contribute to collaborative inhibition (Luhmann &amp; Rajaram, 2015). In this paper, we prevent SAM models from learning during collaborative retrieval which subsequently prevents memory homogenization. We found that even when SAM model memories remained diversified, collaborative inhibition persisted—though the strength of the effect was diminished. These results suggest that both retrieval disruption and memory homogenization may contribute to collaborative inhibition in SAM.

CogSci 2022

Modeling the Effect of Learning During Retrieval on Collaborative Inhibition

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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,**
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**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/).


CogSci 2021

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.

The primary phenomenon within the field of collaborative memory is collaborative inhibition: the tendency for collaborative groups to underperform in free recall tasks compared to nominal groups of comparable size. Previously, we adapted the Search of Associative Memory (SAM; Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981) model to collaborative free recall and found support for the retrieval disruption hypothesis (Mannering, Rajaram, Shiffrin, & Jones, 2022). In this paper, we investigate another possible cause of collaborative inhibition: memory homogenization. Previous modeling attempts have shown that memory homogenization may contribute to collaborative inhibition (Luhmann & Rajaram, 2015). In this paper, we prevent SAM models from learning during collaborative retrieval which subsequently prevents memory homogenization. We found that even when SAM model memories remained diversified, collaborative inhibition persisted—though the strength of the effect was diminished. These results suggest that both retrieval disruption and memory homogenization may contribute to collaborative inhibition in SAM.

poster

Join us for CogSci2022! Our 44th Annual Conference will be centered around the theme of diversity, with an accompanying range of keynotes and invited speakers who themselves highlight the diversity of our field. Our three symposia are Cognition across Diverse Populations, Cognition within Diverse Societies, and Global Challenges for Cognitive Science. The conference is being offered in a fully hybrid environment for onsite and online attendees.
<br>
<br>[**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Cogsci-2022-PAAG-Detailed-July-12final-1.pdf)
<br>[**The Detailed Program can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/DeArmond-CogSci2022-program-v113-final.pdf)
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This conference requires a registration to attend. Please use the link below to secure your ticket. The website will be available to all registered attendees on July 25th. 

[Register to Attend](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/registration/)

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The 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society highlighted research on the theme Cognitive Diversity in addition to the full breadth and diversity of research topics offered by the society’s membership. 





Metacognition ("thinking about thinking") depends on representations and metarepresentations, which are usually treated as internal knowledge structures, rather than as external-oriented processes. We explore how multimodal patterns of external semiotic activity (not monomodal and internal symbolic-based processes) can provide a more accurate description of metacognition. To develop our ideas, we examine the act of marking-for-self in theatrical dance. To mark is to perform a dance phrase in a simplified, schematic, or abstract way. When marking, dancers use their bodies in motion to represent some aspects (properties, dynamics, or structures) of the complete dance-phrase they are thinking on. Marking-for-self occurs when dancers mark in their own idiosyncratic manner, a process that potentializes real-time reflection on its own dancing sequences and structures. According to our view, these representations are metacognitive embodied and externalized diagrammatic structures. We detail this phenomenon in light of recent developments in Cognitive Semiotics and diagrammatic reasoning approach.

Metacognition and marking-for-self in theatrical dance as a multimodal pattern of semiotic activity

Post-error slowing describes a delayed response in action after error commission. PES is a key metric of error monitoring that individuals possess self-reflective information processing, which is crucial for adaptive behaviour in learning. Studies seeking to ascertain the relationship between learning, feedback and PES remain rare. The current study aims to investigate the role task and feedback played in the magnitude of PES. Participants (N = 487, Mage = 23.77 years, SD = 5.8) performed three cognitive tasks: Flanker, Numeric and Science knowledge task. A 2 (Type of trial) × 3 (Task) × 2 (Feedback) mixed ANOVA estimated by REML was conducted; participant was treated as a random effect. We found a significant PES effect where the post-error RT is slower than the post-correct RT. We also found a significant effect of task, feedback, and Task × Feedback interaction.

Feedback-related and Task-dependent Post-error Slowing

While population-level models often provide a good fit to the data, they may mask meaningful individual differences. Exploring individual differences can also be beneficial for gaining a better understanding of the processes that underlie pragmatic phenomena. In this study, we investigate whether the substantial differences in performance on a pragmatic reference game can be traced back to cognitive or socio-pragmatic traits. We observe a significant effect of the ability to inhibit an intuitive response and of abstract reasoning ability. In contrast, we do not find evidence that socio-pragmatic abilities or working memory capacity influence pragmatic responding.

Individual Differences in a Pragmatic Reference Game

Fundamental concepts in biology are often challenging to understand. More strikingly, studies also report incorrect or incomplete understanding of such concepts for undergraduate natural science students even after instruction. Recent research suggests that embedding conceptual information in a narrative could support students’ learning process and facilitate conceptual change. Therefore, we designed learning materials covering complex concepts in biology either in the form of a narrative presenting the to-be-learned concepts in a historical context or as an expository text as control. We then assessed conceptual understanding and potential learning mechanisms. Results indicate that students learned from narrative texts and expository texts to a similar extent. However, if the prior knowledge was higher, the effect on learning was bigger in the narrative group than in the expository group. Moreover, the narrative led to better enjoyment and a higher germane cognitive load than the expository text material.


The Impact of Prior Knowledge in Narrative-Based Learning on Understanding Biological Concepts in Higher Education

Previous studies have shown that temporal metrics of writing behavior in simple transcription tasks have some potential for use in the assessment of student learning. This study explores whether spatial metrics, specifically the distance between written strokes, may also have potential for the assessment of competence. Students, N=219, copied sets of equations with different spatial layouts and equation complexity. Although students’ level of competence is manifest to an extent in distributions of distance metrics, the effects of spacing are weaker than with temporal metrics. Stimuli format contrary to the standard mathematical spacing formats may differentiate high and low competent students.

Assessment of Mathematical Competence by the Transcriptions of Formulas: An Exploration of Spatial and Temporal Metrics

Many scientists describe themselves metaphorically as a “gardener” or “sculptor” of the undergraduate students in their lab and the students’ own research ideas. Across two preregistered studies (N = 1200), we applied existing methods for mapping the entailments of metaphorical concepts to provide insight into lay conceptions of undergraduate research mentoring. Participants were presented with one of several mentoring metaphors and rated how closely a series of mentor attributes fit the metaphor. Iterated exploratory factor analysis revealed a small set of dimensions along which the metaphors differed systematically, reflecting the mentor’s role as a nurturer, authority figure, communicator, and collaborator. The metaphors were also associated with different intuitions about mentors’ responsibility for and power to influence student learning in the lab. Our findings show that mentoring metaphors capture distinct mentor attribute profiles, with implications for how scientists understand and communicate the value of their mentoring approach to their students.


Mapping the Structure of Metaphorical Concepts of Undergraduate Research Mentoring

The comprehension of counterfactual statements (‘If there had been zebras, there would have been lions’) has been subject to much research, but two key questions remain: Can comprehenders interpret counterfactuals without relying on causal inferences? And can comprehenders reach the actual state interpretation relying only on grammatical cues, or is this interpretation triggered by communicative goals? We answer these questions by relying on non-causal counterfactuals, and by manipulating the Question under Discussion between experiments: In Exp. 1, we replicate Orenes et al. (2019), using a web-based eye-tracking paradigm. In Exp. 2, we make the QuD explicit by asking about the actual state of affairs. The results reveal that making a contextually relevant alternative explicit via the QuD shifts counterfactual interpretation, but in general, the suppositional state interpretation is preferred in non-causal counterfactuals. These results imply that the driving forces behind counterfactual processing are pragmatic, not syntactic.

Making the Question Under Discussion explicit shis counterfactual interpretation

When Arabic speakers write in their dialect, they have the choice of using either the standard Arabic script or the non-standard Roman script. Arabizi writing is a new emerging writing system that Arabic speakers use to type their dialects utilizing Roman characters. Although Arabizi is not standardized, people have developed an efficient way to communicate through it. One phenomenon that emerged with this new system is vowel dropping. In this paper, we approach this phenomenon from the perspective of communicative efficiency. We study the informativity of short and long spellings of words and investigate whether the predictability of the word in certain contexts impacts whether the vowel is dropped in that word.

The efficiency of dropping vowels in Romanised Arabic script

Different domains exhibit different degrees of lexical precision. Existing work has suggested that communicative need may modulate the precision of word meaning in individual domains. We extend this proposal across domains by asking why languages have more precise vocabulary in some domains than others. We hypothesize that lexical precision for a domain reflects how frequently speakers need to refer to it. We test this proposal using a cross-linguistic dataset of word-concept mappings for nine diverse domains from seven languages, and word frequencies from independent corpora. We find that the more frequent domains (except for kinship) tend to be more precise in every language, supporting a domain-level account of efficient communication on the precision of the lexicon.

Communicative need modulates lexical precision across semantic domains: A domain-level account of efficient communication

We quantitatively study the emergence of symbolic communication in humans with a communication game that attempts to recapitulate an essential step in the development of human language: the emergence of shared signs. In our experiment, a teacher must communicate a first order logic formula to a student through a narrow channel deprived of common shared signs: subjects cannot communicate with each other with the sole exception of car motions in a computer game. Subjects spontaneously develop a shared vocabulary of car motions including indices, icons, and symbols, spanning both task-specific and task-agnostic concepts such as "square'' and "understand''. We characterize the conditions under which indices, icons, and symbols arise, finding that symbols are harder to establish than icons and indices. We observe the dominant sign category being developed transitions from indices to icons to symbols, and identify communicating in ambiguous game environments as a pressure for icon and symbol development.

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Metacognition and marking-for-self in theatrical dance as a multimodal pattern of semiotic activity

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