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Recent empirical work has shown that human children are adept at learning and reasoning with probabilities. Here, we model a series of recent experiments investigating the development of school-age children&#39;s non-symbolic probability reasoning ability using the Neural Probability Learner and Sampler (NPLS) system. We demonstrate that NPLS can accurately simulate the probability judgments and a temporary interference from incorrectly using pure numerical frequencies in probabilistic tasks in children. We discuss the roles of model parameters in simulating probability matching in children, and their occasional tendency to wrongly select less probable outcomes based on frequencies.

CogSci 2023

A Computational Model of Children&#39;s Learning and Use of Probabilities

### Welcome to CogSci Conference 2025!

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CogSci 2025

The 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Recent empirical work has shown that human children are adept at learning and reasoning with probabilities. Here, we model a series of recent experiments investigating the development of school-age children's non-symbolic probability reasoning ability using the Neural Probability Learner and Sampler (NPLS) system. We demonstrate that NPLS can accurately simulate the probability judgments and a temporary interference from incorrectly using pure numerical frequencies in probabilistic tasks in children. We discuss the roles of model parameters in simulating probability matching in children, and their occasional tendency to wrongly select less probable outcomes based on frequencies.

A Computational Model of Children's Learning and Use of Probabilities

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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).

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#### **CogSci 2023 Program Book**
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The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Whether children revise their beliefs depends on the counter-evidence they are given. Research with German-speaking children showed that 5-year-olds but not 3-year-olds were more likely to revise their beliefs when presented with direct rather indirect evidence for a claim contradicting their beliefs (Köymen & Tomasello, 2018). Unlike German or English, in languages like Turkish, the obligatory use of evidential markers provides information about reliability, whether the speaker refers to direct or indirect observation. This online study investigated whether Turkish- and English-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds (N=146) revised their initial plausible beliefs in favor of implausible beliefs supported by various types of counter-evidence (direct, indirect, or inference). The results showed that 3-year-olds not only revised their beliefs more often than 5-year-olds, but they also did so more in the direct and inference conditions compared to the indirect condition. Thus, three-year-olds can consider the evidentiary strength of counterarguments when revising their beliefs.

Turkish- and English- speaking children's belief revision based on their evaluation of counterarguments

Most of what we know about the development of generalization comes from studies on children’s reasoning from positive evidence (e.g., evidence of other birds with hollow bones). The present study examined the significance of negative evidence (e.g., evidence of animals that do not have hollow bones). Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N=98) were asked to generalize from samples with negative evidence and samples with positive evidence that were selected either deliberately or incidentally. All children made a higher rate of generalizations from samples that included negative evidence than samples that included positive evidence, but only when evidence was selected deliberately by the experimenter. Furthermore, 5-year-olds generalized from samples in which negative evidence presented either an explicit contrast with the category in question (e.g., sheep do not have hollow bones) or an implicit contrast with the category in question (e.g., sheep have dense bones). Three- and four-year-olds generalized only when samples presented explicit contrasts. These results are discussed in light of other work on inductive reasoning that emphasizes the role of dyadic factors on generalization, such as the expectation that informants intend to share relevant information.

Accentuate the negative: Expectations about sampling procedures determine the impact of negative evidence on children’s inductive judgments

We investigate the early emergence of children’s information-search competence using a simplified version of Lindow’s (2021) finding-presents game. Children (n = 86, 30- to 48-months old) had to find a present in one of three closed boxes. All boxes were identical but for one feature (e.g., all boxes were blue and had a flower icon, but one box was round, one heart-shaped, and one squared). Children received three information cards revealing one feature of the target box (i.e., its color, shape, or icon). As the boxes differed in only one feature, only one information card contained the relevant information to the decision. Children could flip one information card to learn about one particular feature before deciding which box to open. We find that children as young as 2.5 years can efficiently search for information to guide their decisions and underline the importance of using age-appropriate paradigms.


Preschoolers select the relevant information when looking for a hidden present

The current study investigates the effect of constraints in well-structured problem-solving on ill-structured problem-solving by asking people to solve variants of Raven’s advanced progressive matrices (APM) and to create an APM-like puzzle using the creative reasoning task (CRT). Using traditional APM, we created a novel version of APM with comparatively lesser constraints available to solve the puzzle, called creative APM (cAPM). The cAPM task was designed to induce divergent thinking along with convergent thinking by enabling our participants to create new rules, if possible, to complete the puzzle. It is assumed that the change in constraints or availability of rules to deduce reasoning changes the nature of the problem space in solving APM and cAPM and may differently affect the following creative reasoning task. We randomly assigned 50 participants to perform APM or the variant of the APM task, i.e. cAPM, followed by the CRT, in a fixed order. We observed a significant effect of constraints available to solve well-structured problems on ill-structured problem-solving. The current result shows higher CRT scores when CRT preceded cAPM (Median = 79.25) than APM (Median =53.00), suggesting that the lesser constraints could induce divergent thinking required for a better creative reasoning task performance.

Do constraints in APM solving affect APM-like puzzle creation?

Research on how individuals process
information in politics has provided evidence for the selective
processing of information. This has often been attributed to
“motivated reasoning” (MR) , which is targeted towards 
partisan goals as opposed to ‘rational’ reasoning, which tries 
to achieve accuracy goals. We propose that political reasoning is
asymmetrical and MR is only triggered when belief-challenging 
information is presented and not when the information is
belief-conforming (congruent).

To test these claims we performed an experiment and found
that for congruent information, the initial polarization
of the subject did not significantly influence the trust rating for
the information item. But the evaluation did affect the belief
update. In contrast, for incongruent information the polariza-
tion of the subject influenced the trust rating but there was no
significant effect of the evaluation on the belief update. The
finding is consistent with behavior that tries to reduce cogni-
tive dissonance.

Asymmetry in Political Information Processing: Congruency-based reasoning in belief revision and political decision making

The present paper reports an experiment (N = 348) with a two-year-delayed (M = 695 days) follow-up that tests an approach to raising willingness to take climate actions. Here we focus on the longitudinal results. Many Americans still do not view climate change as a threat requiring urgent action. Moreover, among U.S. conservatives, higher science literacy is paradoxically associated with higher anthropogenic climate-change skepticism. Our experimental materials were designed to harness the power of two cognitive constraints — coherence and causal invariance, which map onto two narrative proclivities that anthropologists have identified as universal — to promote climate action across the political spectrum. Towards that goal, the essential role of these constraints in belief formation predicts that climate-change information would be more persuasive when it is embedded in a personal climate-action narrative, the evocation of which can benefit from exposure to parsimonious scientific explanations of indisputable everyday observations, juxtaposed with reasoners’ own, typically less coherent explanations, occurring in a context that engages their moral stance. Our brief one-time intervention, conducted in U.S. states with the highest level of climate skepticism, showed that across the political spectrum, our materials raised willingness to take climate actions in the immediate assessment. It also raised the likelihood of reports two years later of having taken or would have taken those actions had the opportunity existed, suggesting that the effects are long-lasting. Our approach adopts the framework that conceptions of reality are representations, and adaptive solutions in that infinite space of representations require cognitive constraints to narrow the search.

Promoting Climate Actions: Applying a cognitive constraints approach

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in probabilistic measures of argument strength. Such measures have been used to elucidate longstanding questions of both theoretical and practical interest around fallacies of argumentation, scientific argument, legal argument, or argument and evidence aggregation. The measures typically used have drawn, in one form or other, on conditional probability as a central component for measuring argument quality, strength or confirmation. Work in this area has also consistently highlighted the value of Bayesian Belief Networks for computing argument strength in multi-argument (variable) contexts. However, to date, there has been no consideration of whether the key structural property underlying such networks – the notion of conditional independence- has a bearing on argument quality. In this paper, we consider the potential impact of causal structure on the utility of arguments.

Causal Structure and Argumentative Value

The investigation of reasoning involves the study of what is rational (e.g., adequate, optimal) as well as the study of human reasoning (e.g., common intuitions on plausibility). While the first aspect is typically covered by logic or formal epistemology, the second is a matter of empirical psychological research. However, many approaches relate both aspects. This paper discusses these hybrid approaches, their motivation, general critiques that have been raised against them as well as the kind of philosophical commitment behind choosing such kind of framework.


Hybrid Frameworks of Reasoning: Normative-Descriptive Interplay

Since Gottlob Frege’s disambiguation of laws of thought, logicians and psychologists alike have adhered to a strict division of labour, which has created a gap between reasoning as a psychological phenomenon and logic as a formal discipline. However, logic is a benchmark of reasoning according to the standard picture of rationality, and it is hard to accept that logic has no positive special role to play in reasoning. Intuitively, logic and reasoning are connected; however, attempts at bridging the gap are often vulnerable to accusations of psychologism. 
Jean Piaget developed a compass to navigate the hazards of psychologism, and he made logic the mirror of thought rather than vice versa. Metaphors are helpful but ultimately poor substitutes for explanations; in this paper, I therefore intend to elaborate on Piaget’s intimations on the relationship between logic and reasoning to negotiate the pitfalls of psychologism and bridge the gap in mind.

Logic and Psychology—Minding the Gap with Jean Piaget

It is common for cases where people “fail to deny” unflattering claims to be taken to imply those claims are true. Yet, the ‘argument from ignorance’ – arguing in favour of something due to a lack of evidence against it – is often deemed a fallacy. Why is abduction from missing evidence permissible in some cases but not others? We present a framework of factors which disambiguate these cases, using a Bayesian Network model. We suggest that a source’s silence often reflects a latent conflict between their intrinsic motives about what they would like their audience to believe and their extrinsic motives about complying with the institutional constraints on their speech, such as accuracy. Thus, silence often implies that the source does not believe what they would ideally like to say is true, which licenses a probabilistic inference about what is true. We present data from two studies suggesting people reason about silence in this way.

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Turkish- and English- speaking children's belief revision based on their evaluation of counterarguments

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