Canada

The Covid-19 pandemic altered workplaces. For those with ‘office jobs,’ this meant working ‘virtually,’ or remotely, from home. This transition forced organizations and workplaces to exercise flexibility, adapt workflows and rely on Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to work remotely. However, Blind and Partially Sighted Individuals (BPSI) face challenges accessing work digitally and remote communications through ICTs. In response, we report on the results of our longitudinal participatory design study investigating the impact of working and training over a distance for BPSI. What emerged is a conceptual model to assist in understanding how ICT interfaces convey spatial-topological cues for the construction of shared intentionality in virtual work environments. The implications of our model could be significant, as it aids understanding of what is lost and gained when transitioning to virtual work environments. This could inform the development of ICTs with cross-sensory interaction and national accessibility policies for the workplace.

CogSci 2022

How Virtual Work Environments Convey Perceptual Cues to Foster Shared Intentionality During Covid-19 for Blind and Partially Sighted Employees

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**
<div style="position:relative;padding-top:0;width:900px;height:500px;"><iframe style="position:absolute;border:none;width:100%;height:100%;left:0;top:0;" src="https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/cble/" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" ></iframe></div>


**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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CogSci 2024

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

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.
 
 [**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)
 [**The Detailed Program can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/DeArmond-CogSci2022-program-v113-final.pdf)

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/)

Registration Is Required

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. 





The purpose of this paper is to present a novel conceptualisation of an intuitive, primitive form of trust termed proto-trust. This concept is proposed in order to account for the many different senses, types and domains in which trust has traditionally been defined and theorised. A brief review of the literature on affective and intuitive trust is presented, informing the definition and formalisation of proto-trust. Following this, a preliminary empirical investigation of proto-trust is described, where intuitive trust assessments are compared to analytical trust decisions, under various attribution prompts. Results showed effects of attribution prompts on changes to trust assessments from intuitive to deliberative decisions. In addition, qualitative data are presented for the various reasons participants gave for their trust decisions. One of these reasons (emotional reaction) was found to affect the degree of difference between intuitive and deliberative trust assessments.

Proto-trust and trust attribution: a theory of intuitive, affective forms of trust and the means by which trust decisions are made

The external provision of examples has proven the most successful approach to aid learning and application of declarative concepts (i.e., abstract concepts denoted by key terms and short definitions that can be applied to a wide variety of scenarios). The current experiment sought to further this line of research by exploring the effect of using thematically varied examples on learners' ability to classify novel exemplars and near misses of five system principles that cut across thematic domains. Results revealed that thematic variation increased learners’ ability to reject near-misses and, more crucially, to classify novel exemplars from domains not covered by the studied examples. The fact that this enhanced flexibility was unaccompanied by poorer performance in rejecting near misses or classifying new items from domains covered by the learned examples renders this strategy readily applicable in instructional settings. We end by discussing possible mechanisms that could potentially explain the observed advantage of thematically varied examples.

Defending Diversity: Providing Examples from Different Domains Enhances Application of System Principles Beyond the Domains Covered by the Examples

The learning of rule-plus-exception categories relies on pattern integration and differentiation, but how the representations of rule-followers and exceptions develop through these two operations remains obscure. Here, we inspected the representational shifts in rule-plus-exception category learning by fitting a computational model to behavioral categorization data. We found that exceptions were differentiated from rule-followers within and between categories through learning. The distanced rule-follower and exception representations in each category formed distinct clusters that together constituted a hierarchically structured categorical representation. Moreover, exception learning increased the representational overlap between rule-followers of opposite categories, thereby blurring the category boundary. Our findings illuminate the representational dynamic underlying the acquisition of rule-plus-exception categories and highlight the roles of pattern integration and differentiation in category learning.

Differentiating Exceptions in Rule-Plus-Exception Category Learning

Human behavior is modulated by financial incentives, but it is not well understood what types of behavior are immune to incentive and why. The cognitive processes underlying behavior appear to create restrictions on the effect an individual's motivation will have on their performance. We investigate a classic category learning task for which the effect of financial incentives is still unknown (Shepard, Hovland, & Jenkins, 1961). Across four renditions of a category learning experiment, we find no effect of incentive on performance. On a fifth experiment requiring category recognition but not learning, we find a large effect on response time and small effect on task performance. Humans appear to selectively apply more effort in valuable contexts, but the effort is disproportionate with the performance improvement. Taken together, the results suggest that performance in tasks which require novel inductive insights are relatively immune to financial incentive, while tasks that require rote perseverance of a fixed strategy are more malleable.

Rule discovery performance unchanged by incentives

Being able to learn from small amounts of data is a key characteristic of human intelligence, but exactly how small? In this paper, we introduce a novel experimental paradigm that allows us to examine classification in an extremely data-scarce setting, asking whether humans can learn more categories than they have exemplars (i.e., can humans do "less-than-one shot'' learning?). An experiment conducted using this paradigm reveals that people are capable of learning in such settings, and provides several insights into underlying mechanisms. First, people can accurately infer and represent high-dimensional feature spaces from very little data. Second, having inferred the relevant spaces, people use a form of prototype-based categorization (as opposed to exemplar-based) to make categorical inferences. Finally, systematic, machine-learnable patterns in responses indicate that people may have efficient inductive biases for dealing with this class of data-scarce problems.

Can Humans Do Less-Than-One-Shot Learning?

Paradigms using the free recall of word lists have furthered our understanding of the organizational structure of memory by elucidating the role of contextual associations on memory search. We adapted the traditional word list-learning paradigm to investigate whether emphasizing contextual associations between items influences subsequent retrieval. Specifically, we introduced a review period between encoding and recall of word lists where items were repeated to highlight either the temporal or semantic associations at encoding. We found that temporal review led to stronger temporal clustering compared to a semantic or control review, and semantic review led to stronger semantic clustering compared to a temporal or control review. Moreover, participants recalled more list items when semantic associations were emphasized, with the degree of semantic clustering at recall predicting memory performance. These results demonstrate that emphasizing contextual associations during a repeated viewing after initial encoding can affect subsequent memory organization and recall.

Emphasizing associations from encoding affects free recall at retrieval

The free recall of triadic comparisons, a task used in clinical settings, presents a unique analysis challenge for many memory models, because learning occurs incidentally and items are presented multiple times in triads. To account for this design, we extend the SIMPLE (Brown et al., 2007) model of memory, which assumes to-be-remembered items are stored as separate logarithmically-compressed temporal traces. The ability to retrieve these traces depends on the acuity of memory probes and the semantic similarity between the items represented by the traces. We applied this model to a real-world clinical data set including healthy controls, people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and people with Alzheimer’s dementia. We found that people with MCI had lower acuity than healthy controls, but both groups placed roughly equal weight on temporal and semantic cues. People with dementia had both lower acuity and placed much more weight on temporal cues than semantic cues.

A model of free recall for multiple encounters of semantically related stimuli with an application to understanding cognitive impairment

Retrieval practice of information through testing has been shown to improve learning. So has studying examples. In this paper, we address inconsistencies in the literature concerning which of these two approaches is best. We test the hypothesis that learning depends on what is being learned; whereas practice emphasizes memorization, studying examples allows for selectivity of encoding, resulting in different information being learned. Accordingly, we predicted that practice will improve learning in situations that emphasize memorization (such as learning facts or simple associations), whereas studying examples will improve learning in situations where there are multiple pieces of information available and selectivity is necessary (such as when learning skills or procedures). We report evidence from a laboratory study using naturalistic materials showing results consistent with these predictions.

Learning depends on knowledge: The benefits of retrieval practice vary for facts and skills

Skill learning usually unfolds exponentially — we improve rapidly early on, and then performance levels off. However, we do not know whether people’s representations of skill learning accurately reflect this fact. Here, we asked people to predict the learning trajectory for a novel visuomotor task, “Lollitoss.” First, we established that skill learning unfolds exponentially on Lollitoss (Exp. 1). Across two experiments probing people’s trial-by-trial predictions of learning in Lollitoss using direct performance (Exp. 2a) and likelihood estimates (Exp. 2b), we found that people accurately represent the learning curve as exponential. However, we also found systematic errors - people think individuals start out better, make less errors, and learn slower in the task than in reality. Taken together, we find that people are surprisingly accurate at representing the overall shape of learning, but misestimate certain features, like the rate of learning, which may potentially have downstream effects on self-directed learning.

Thinking about doing: Representations of skill learning

We study the effect of Dutch proficiency on immigrants’ labour market performance, savings and financial wealth in the Netherlands. Different from past research, we had participants (N=659) take a language proficiency test apart from self-reported assessments, and measured participants’ IQ, patience, saving intention, risk aversion, self-control, temporal focus, etc. to better control for individual characteristics. Immigrants’ labour market performance and financial wealth were initially surveyed in 2016, and then again in 2020-2021. We find that Dutch proficiency affects immigrants’ earnings (employment probabilities; income; hourly wages) in 2016 and predicts participants’ earnings in 2021 even after controlling for the baseline in 2016, individual characteristics and demographic information. Furthermore, the results for the first time reveal that language proficiency can also predict immigrants’ current and future savings and financial wealth. Importantly, using an instrumental variables approach we show that language proficiency has a causal effect. Our findings have important theoretical and policy implications.

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Proto-trust and trust attribution: a theory of intuitive, affective forms of trust and the means by which trust decisions are made

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