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Theory of Mind enables us to attribute mental states to others. But we not only make inferences about mental states (like what someone believes or wants), but about mental processes (like if someone is distracted or whether they remember something). Here, we present a computational formalization of these kinds of inferences. We propose that inferences about mental processes are structured around a principle of rational mental effort: the expectation that other people allocate mental resources rationally so as to minimize thinking costs incurred while pursuing their goals. We develop this theory into a computational model in the context of the Rush Hour puzzle game. In two behavioral experiments testing different inferences about mental processing, we find that our model predicts participant judgments. This work advances our understanding of the richness of the human mind&#39;s ability to think about other minds, and even about thinking itself.

CogSci 2023

Thinking about Thinking as Rational Computation

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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.

Theory of Mind enables us to attribute mental states to others. But we not only make inferences about mental states (like what someone believes or wants), but about mental processes (like if someone is distracted or whether they remember something). Here, we present a computational formalization of these kinds of inferences. We propose that inferences about mental processes are structured around a principle of rational mental effort: the expectation that other people allocate mental resources rationally so as to minimize thinking costs incurred while pursuing their goals. We develop this theory into a computational model in the context of the Rush Hour puzzle game. In two behavioral experiments testing different inferences about mental processing, we find that our model predicts participant judgments. This work advances our understanding of the richness of the human mind's ability to think about other minds, and even about thinking itself.

poster

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/)
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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.

Problem solving under time and material constraints assumes that humans face both their own internal computational limitations and constraints of the external task environment. To find optimal solutions under these constraints, the agent must adapt their behavior by using various strategies such as offloading (i.e., using external materials to aid their performance). We designed a novel tower building task to investigate adaptive use of strategies under constraints. The task worked as designed: Participants found the optimal solution most often on the least difficult scenario and least often on the most difficult scenario. Surprisingly, offloading led to no significant differences in performance. However, on the most difficult scenario, some participants found the optimal solution using a prospective, concurrent, or retrospective strategy based on experience with the constraints of the task environment. We conclude that optimality can be understood as a trend over time and investigated in studies that allow multiple attempts.

Adaptivity and optimization under constraints

Comprehensive datasets used for modeling endeavours in syllogistic reasoning
research usually contain only a single conclusion per task for each subject.
However, this means that no information about the other conclusions is provided,
preventing the distinction between conclusions that were rejected, conclusions
deemed to be valid but not the preferred conclusion and conclusions that were
not considered at all. In this work, we present a multiple choice dataset
containing all conclusions that participants considers valid. The data is
compared to datasets with other response designs, and an extensive evaluation
is performed to assess the impact of the response design on the predictive 
performance of cognitive models. Finally, our results are discussed and put
into perspective.


Effect of Response Format on Syllogistic Reasoning

A set of fundamental principles governs our reasoning about agents since infancy. Past research has shown that adults are surprised when they observe apparent violations of these principles, which might prime them to learn from the violations and update their beliefs. In the present experiments, we demonstrate that adults can revise their beliefs about these principles in a specific, virtual world when they observe multiple pieces of counterevidence, and generalize their revised beliefs to new agents in the same environment. These findings suggest important future directions to investigate whether adults can also revise these principles in the real world.

Can Adults Revise Their Core Beliefs about Agents?

In our global and technical world, there is an increasing need for humans to be able to solve problems that are complex, nontransparent and self-dynamic. There are vast differences between humans in terms of their capability to solve such problems that go beyond classical intelligence and having an analytical mind. Factors such as personality, knowledge, and the motivation to engage in effortful cognitive problems can contribute to success. Only a few studies investigated the relationship between these `soft' factors and complex problem-solving (CPS). In the following, we will investigate these factors in the CPS framework Tailorshop, a computer-based scenario with the goal of increasing the company value by manipulating several variables. Results indicate that personality traits and need for cognition are no successful predictors. Overall, the present study points out the tendency of relevant personality traits as CPS predictors.

The Impact of Personality for Solving Complex Problems

Vaccines are among the best tools to limit the spread of preventable diseases. yet, recent years have seen a rise in anti-vaccination sentiments for vaccines against COVID-19, the MMR, and more. It is critical to understand the factors that influence whether a person will accept or reject a vaccine for a given disease. 
This paper tests a Bayesian model to predict attitudes toward vaccines. with five factors (subjective beliefs concerning danger of illness, safety of the vaccine, prevalence of the disease, perceived social norm, and governmental recommendation). 
To parameterize the model, Study 1 elicits the full conditional probability table while Study 2 tests model predictions by eliciting people’s priors for COVID-19 and the common flu. We find a good fit between predictions and observations, accounting for 53% and 44% of the variance. This suggests the usefulness of a formal model to capture people’s beliefs about vaccination.


Estimating attitudes toward vaccination: A Bayesian framework

Both the logical form and content of assertions can have an impact on the conclusions humans derive. Despite this, research in that domain has often singled out one aspect: e.g., in syllogistic reasoning research about the logical form dominates (with some exceptions), while in conditional reasoning the role of different contents is more prominent. A core result in the latter domain focuses on the suppression effect, namely that alternatives or disablers can make a conclusion less likely. An effect that is very likely in everyday reasoning, where rarely a statement is exclusively true or false. So far, however, it has not been studied whether this is an effect specific to the conditional domain, or whether it transfers to the domain of syllogisms. This paper systematically investigates the impact of assertions that allows for disablers and alternatives in syllogistic reasoning. The response distribution for both conditions demonstrate on the aggregate level a shift for the case of non valid conclusions to preferred patterns. Using methods from machine learning we develop information based models that represent the gathered data with an accuracy of up to 83%. We discuss the need to bridge the gap between concepts and phenomena found in different reasoning domains.

Towards Bridging the Gap Between Conditional and Syllogistic Reasoning

What does it mean to deny the conditional statement, if you steal an apple, you go to jail? One theory argues that, because conditionals are probabilistic, their denials are too. And so the conditional probability, P(not-jail | steal-apple), best describes a conditional denial. Another theory argues that conditional denials concern possibilities, i.e., they activate imagined situations in which you cheat on your taxes but don’t go to jail. The two accounts make diverging predictions: only the latter predicts that people should assess conditionals and their denial as mutually inconsistent. Two experiments corroborate the possibility-based account: the studies show that both in implicit and explicit evaluations of consistency, conditional denials conflict with the conditionals they deny.

Conditionals conflict with their denials

Gestures play a critical role in human-human and human-robot interaction. In task-based contexts, deictic gestures like pointing are particularly important for directing attention to task-relevant entities. While most work on task-based human-human and human-robot dialogue focuses on closed-world domains where all task-relevant entities are known of a priori, recent research has begun to consider open-world tasks, where task-relevant objects may not be known of to the hearer a priori. In open-world tasks, we argue that a more nuanced consideration of gesture is necessary, as interactants are likely to gestures that uniquely bridge traditional gesture categories in order to navigate the open-world dimensions of their task environment. In this work, we explore the types of gestures used in open-world task contexts, and their frequencies of use. Our results suggest a need to rethink the way that gesture analysis is approached in the study of human-human and human-robot interaction.


What was and what will be: What gestures are used in open-world task-based referential communication?

Languages vary in the way they categorize semantic domains. Incidentally certain semantic systems appear more often than others across the world. Recent research has shown that the attested variability can be explained as the result of languages being a plurality of optimal solutions to efficiency constraints. However, the question of the prevalence remains open. Assuming that languages are a form of culturally transmitted cognitive technology, the Typological Prevalence Hypothesis proposes that the prevalence of a linguistic system is explained by how cognitively natural it is to learn and use. We aim to formalize and test this hypothesis by proposing an information-theoretic measure of communicative and developmental naturalness applied to color typology. While controlling for phylogenetic relatedness, we find that communicative naturalness is a better predictor of typological prevalence than developmental naturalness.

A Colorful Formalization the Typological Prevalence Hypothesis

By the preschool age, children develop a strong understanding of norms, fairness, and inequality. However, little is known about the social mechanisms underlying these developments; a gap we hope to bridge. We explored how parenting styles and beliefs in agency affect children's beliefs about inequality. Four-to-eight-year-old children (n=45; target n=80) were exposed to two trials in which they watched a character be disadvantaged either due to poor performance (merit) or a bad decision (self-chosen) and were asked to make a fairness judgment and resource reallocation. We also assessed parenting style and children’s beliefs in free choice/agency. We found that children with authoritative parents gave more stickers to disadvantaged characters and were more likely to think of both inequalities as fair. Additionally, greater belief in free choice correlated with belief in the fairness of both inequalities. Results show how parenting and beliefs in choice impact children’s social cognition.

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Adaptivity and optimization under constraints

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