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Spatial reasoning is an inherent aspectof everyday life. For example, spatial reasoning supports young children playing with blocks, older children learning about positioning on a sports field,and adults navigatingwhere they need to go. Spatial reasoning is also a critical aspect of STEM (science, technology, engineering,mathematics,e.g., Wai, Lubinski, &amp; Benbow, 2009). For example, chemists imagine molecules rotating to compare structure, and physicistsreason aboutthe influence of invisible forces on magnetic fields. As can be observed in the examples above, there are a wide range of spatial tasks. Spatial reasoning in real-world contexts can be complex and multifaceted(Atit et al., 2020). How individuals engage in spatial reasoning is highly context-specific, influenced by task demands, novelty of task, and prior knowledge (Uttal &amp; Cohen, 2012). Unfortunately, most of what we know about spatial reasoning is driven by psychological research using psychometric tasks designed to isolate specific spatial skills,independent of context (for review see Atitet al.,2020). Without examining variability across contexts, models of spatial reasoning are incomplete and limited in scope (Resnick &amp; Stieff, in press). In this symposium, we willexplore different contexts in which spatial reasoning is learned. In doing so, we will raise theoretical questions around universal aspects of spatial cognition as well as practical considerations, such as how and when spatial learning should be included in education. This work is important because spatial reasoning can be learned and improved (Uttal et al., 2013), and improvements in spatial reasoning causally support improvements in STEM (e.g., Hawes et al., 2022; Sorby, 2009).Although all four talks center on the role of context in spatial learning, the presenters are drawn from different disciplines, methodologies, and perspectives.Mary Hegartywillbegin by characterizingthe disconnect between psychological research in spatial reasoning and the spatial reasoning involved in complex STEM tasks. The next three talks unpack specific everyday STEM contexts where spatial reasoningis learned. Ilyse Resnick will present work in the learning sciences on shared book reading. David Uttal, a cognitive and developmental psychologist, will present on geographic information systems. Tom Lowrie, a mathematics education researcher, will present on the importance of embedded authentic tasks in spatial and STEM learning.

CogSci 2023

Spatial Reasoning: The Role of Context in Learning

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The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) will take place in Bangkok, Thailand from August 11th to 16th, 2024. Our Virtual Poster Sessions will take place online Thursday, August 22, 2024.

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ACL 2024

The 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2024) will take place in Bangkok, Thailand from August 11th to 16th, 2024. More information will be announced soon.

Spatial reasoning is an inherent aspectof everyday life. For example, spatial reasoning supports young children playing with blocks, older children learning about positioning on a sports field,and adults navigatingwhere they need to go. Spatial reasoning is also a critical aspect of STEM (science, technology, engineering,mathematics,e.g., Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). For example, chemists imagine molecules rotating to compare structure, and physicistsreason aboutthe influence of invisible forces on magnetic fields. As can be observed in the examples above, there are a wide range of spatial tasks. Spatial reasoning in real-world contexts can be complex and multifaceted(Atit et al., 2020). How individuals engage in spatial reasoning is highly context-specific, influenced by task demands, novelty of task, and prior knowledge (Uttal & Cohen, 2012). Unfortunately, most of what we know about spatial reasoning is driven by psychological research using psychometric tasks designed to isolate specific spatial skills,independent of context (for review see Atitet al.,2020). Without examining variability across contexts, models of spatial reasoning are incomplete and limited in scope (Resnick & Stieff, in press). In this symposium, we willexplore different contexts in which spatial reasoning is learned. In doing so, we will raise theoretical questions around universal aspects of spatial cognition as well as practical considerations, such as how and when spatial learning should be included in education. This work is important because spatial reasoning can be learned and improved (Uttal et al., 2013), and improvements in spatial reasoning causally support improvements in STEM (e.g., Hawes et al., 2022; Sorby, 2009).Although all four talks center on the role of context in spatial learning, the presenters are drawn from different disciplines, methodologies, and perspectives.Mary Hegartywillbegin by characterizingthe disconnect between psychological research in spatial reasoning and the spatial reasoning involved in complex STEM tasks. The next three talks unpack specific everyday STEM contexts where spatial reasoningis learned. Ilyse Resnick will present work in the learning sciences on shared book reading. David Uttal, a cognitive and developmental psychologist, will present on geographic information systems. Tom Lowrie, a mathematics education researcher, will present on the importance of embedded authentic tasks in spatial and STEM learning.

technical paper

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. 
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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 [**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/COgSci-PAAG-V2.pdf)
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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.

Curiosity relates to learning and recent work shows robust associations between curiosity and recall of information in adults and children over age 10. The current study tested a similar association in younger children and explored children’s information-seeking behaviors. Children (n=90, 4-10-year-olds) played a free-exploration game in which they clicked shapes to learn different facts about different topics. They then recalled what they remembered learning on the task (recall) and asked questions about what they were curious to know more about (curiosity). We observed a positive association between children’s curiosity and recall of information, even when controlling for amount of information seeking and children’s age. This association was specifically seen for recall without memory cues. There was no association between children’s curiosity and information seeking behavior, and children showed a strong tendency of breadth exploration over exploring in depth with some indication of children beginning to explore depth more with age.


Exploring to learn: Curiosity, breadth and depth of exploration, and recall in young children

Categories simplify the vast number of entities we encounter into equivalence classes, serving as a fundamental block of our cognition. This simplification of information supports our ability to reason about and interact with members of each category. In adulthood, selective attention helps us form categories efficiently by focusing on relevant attributes while filtering out irrelevant information. However, young children tend to encode more attributes than necessary, and this developmental difference is partly due to a prolonged development of selective attention. In the current study, we proposed another important contributor to the development. As shown in three experiments, children prefer information gathering to efficiency, regardless of its value. Experiment 1 revealed that children sample more information than adults even when filtering demands are low. Experiment 2 further supports children's preference for information. And Experiment 3 eliminates alternative explanations, demonstrating that children enjoy gathering information rather than motor actions associated with it.

Driven by Information: Children's Exploration Shapes Their Distributed Attention in Category Learning

Learning From Aggregated Opinion

Finding Cause in Failure

Rule Learning is Like Analogical Learning

Modeling Rule Learning via Analogical Generalization

Towards a Comparative Cognitive Science of Language

The notion of “context” is a tricky one for a truly embodied cognitive science. One can talk about a context (of a cognitive process or act) only when one can identify the “thing” (process or act) as distinct from the context it’s immersed in. But if we agree that context actually has a constitutive role for “things,” a paradox arises: the same stuff is considered to be a part of a phenomenon and its context. In this talk I will show that resigning from the view of a contentful representational mind and, instead, following William James (e.g., 1912) in favouring the processes of selection as main cognitive processes, may perhaps alleviate this paradox. However, such a theoretical move puts in the centre the question of choosing from among alternative organizations of a perceptual field. Recent attempts in returning to the Gibsonian call for the “psychology of values” (Hodges & R ̨aczaszek-Leonardi, 2022) provide reflection on values as boundary conditions, which may shed light on these choices. I will illustrate these theoretical notions with empirical research in developmental psychology and movement sciences, where the value-realizing framework gives an alternative look at “context” shaping individual behavior and properties of interactions. The same framework is helpful for recognizing how the students of cognitive sciences (that is, we all) move in their research (Reddy, 2023), inherently inviting values realized in our daily and professional activities into shaping our objects of study and conceptual networks we use to capture them.

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Exploring to learn: Curiosity, breadth and depth of exploration, and recall in young children

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