Netherlands

Theory of Mind (ToM) is central to human social cognition, yet the roots of this capacity remain poorly understood. Both infants and nonhuman primates perform inconsistently on false belief tasks, limiting our understanding of the representations that characterize their ToM. Here, we seek to better understand this often-contradictory literature by dissecting these failures. Specifically, we focus on primates’ characteristic null performance on false belief tasks. Across three studies, we find that—despite succeeding on a closely-matched control—rhesus monkeys fail to predict how agents with false beliefs will behave even when the agents perform highly unexpected, unlikely actions. We interpret this pattern of performance as evidence that monkeys have no representation of another agent’s past awareness once the scene changes outside of that agent’s view. This work moves beyond the success/failure dichotomy typically used to assess ToM, and instead gives a more precise characterization of primates’ signature limits in ToM.

**Authors:**

Amanda L Royka: Yale University; Daniel J. Horschler: Yale University; Walker Bargmann: Yale University; Laurie Santos: Yale University

CogSci 2024

Probing Nonhuman Primate Errors on False Belief Tasks to Explore the Evolutionary Roots of Theory of Mind

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We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

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

Social norms are a hallmark of human social intelligence, yet the reasoning processes involved in norm formation have been difficult to capture with traditional modeling frameworks. We developed a computational model of norm formation as joint planning via theory-of-mind. The model is designed to capture the distinctively human ability to flexibly develop more complex norms in more complex situations, via simulation of joint decision-making with other agents over an extended time horizon. We evaluated the predictions of the model against participant interactions in a 2-player iterated decision-making task. Across 3 conditions our model captured the way participants balanced joint reward, fairness, and complexity when forming norms.

**Authors:**

Dhara Yu: University of California, Berkeley; Bill Thompson: University of California, Berkeley

People balance joint reward, fairness and complexity to develop social norms in a two-player stochastic game

People often select only a few events when explaining what happened. What drives people’s explanation selection? Prior research argued that people’s explanation choices are affected by event normality and causal structure. Here, we propose a new model of these existing findings and test its predictions in a novel experiment. The model predicts that speakers value accuracy and relevance. They choose explanations that are true, and that communicate useful information to the listener. We test the model’s predictions empirically by manipulating what goals a listener has and what actions they can take. Across twelve experimental conditions, we find that our model accurately predicts that people like to choose explanations that communicate optimal interventions

**Authors:**

Lara Kirfel: Max Planck Institute for Human Development; Jacqueline Harding: Stanford University; Jeong Yeon Shin: Department of Computer Science; Cindy Xin: Department of Philosophy; Thomas Icard: Stanford University; Tobias Gerstenberg: Stanford University

Do as I explain: Explanations communicate optimal interventions

Speakers are often over-informative, referring to the color and shape of a referent even when all objects in a scene are unique. Interestingly, this helps listeners locate the target. If speakers are indeed sensitive to listeners’ online processing demands, they should be more over-informative when addressing someone whose processing is especially slow. Here we show that English-speaking adults produce more redundant color adjectives when speaking to children than adults (Exp 1); that although Spanish-speakers produce fewer redundant color adjectives than English-speakers overall, they too do so more often for children (Exp 2); that these results are independent of experience with young children (Exp 3), and that children themselves (ages 4-10) are more over-informative when speaking to younger children than adults (Exps 4 and 5). Collectively, these results suggest that sensitivity to listeners’ online processing demands is robust, emerges early in development, and may be especially tailored to young learners.

**Authors:**

Maya Taliaferro: New York University; Laura Schulz: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see? Speaker use more redundant color adjectives when speaking to children than adults

Recent research has provided experimental support for a new ``Inferentialist'' theory of conditionals, challenging the Equation P(If A, C) = P(C | A) and theories that support it. The key evidence comes from probability judgments involving conditionals whose antecedent and consequent are relevant vs. irrelevant to each other. Expanding on recent experimental work, we argue that Inferentialism has difficulty explaining the data. However, theories that support The Equation theory are well-placed to account for the results once we recognize an independent phenomenon of pragmatic intrusion on probability judgment - in this case, participants' tendency to assign lower probability to conditionals that are pragmatically incoherent.

**Authors:**

Daniel Lassiter: University of Edinburgh; Chunan Li: University of Edinburgh

Pragmatic intrusion in probability judgment: The case of conditionals

Generic statements (e.g., “girls wear makeup”) tie properties to groups and are a common way of transmitting stereotypes. One natural but untested way that people might try to undermine these statements is by making a similar statement about salient but not mentioned contrastive groups (e.g., “boys can wear makeup too”). Do can generics license the same judgments as do generics? Four studies examined how adults judge two novel groups when one group does a property (e.g., Zarpies make pizzas) while the other group can do the property (e.g., Gorps can make pizzas too). Compared to do generics, adults consistently judged groups described with can generics to be less likely to have, less interested in, less competent at, and for it to be less permissible for them to do the property. Overall, these results suggest that can generics are unlikely to be an effective means at equating beliefs about two groups.

**Authors:**

Sophie Arnold: New York University; Mohit Mukherji: New York University; Marjorie Rhodes: New York University

Not all generics are created equal: Differentiating between ‘do’ and ‘can’ generic statements

This study examines the development of children's gaze during face-to-face conversations, following up on previous work suggesting a protracted development in attending to the interlocutor's face. Using recent mobile eye-tracking technology, we observed children interacting with their parents at home in natural settings. In contrast to previous work, we found that children, even in early middle childhood, exhibit adult-like gaze patterns toward the interlocutor. However, differences emerge in gaze allocation between speaking and listening roles, indicating that while children may focus on faces similarly to adults, their use of gaze for social signaling, such as turn-taking cues, may still be maturing. The work underscores the critical role of social context in understanding the development of non-verbal behavior in face-to-face conversation.

**Authors:**

Dhia Elhak Goumri: Aix-Marseille Univesité; Leonor Becerra-Bonache: Aix-Marseille University; Abdellah Fourtassi: Aix-Marseille University

Child-Caregiver Gaze Dynamics in Naturalistic Face-to-Face Conversations

Toddlers are sensitive to the reliability of speakers in their environment \cite{koenig2010}.
While previous work suggests that children prefer labels from reliable speakers, it remains unclear how these social representations guide lower-level information-seeking processes that affect speaker preferences. The current study introduces a gaze-contingent eye-tracking paradigm to investigate how children engage in sampling during word learning. Toddlers (22-24m) view videos of two speakers labeling familiar objects; one speaker provides reliable labels and the other speaker provides unreliable labels. Toddlers then sample novel labels from the speakers using a gaze-contingent interface: only the speaker they are fixating on provides a novel label. Preliminary data (N = 18) suggests that participants prefer to sample first from the reliable speaker over the unreliable speaker. However, there is little difference in overall sampling preferences. Our findings suggest that toddlers can assess speaker reliability, but remain open to exploring information from unreliable speakers.

**Authors:**

Jess Mankewitz: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Robert Hawkins: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jenny Saffran: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Toddlers Actively Sample from Reliable and Unreliable Speakers

A wealth of evidence indicates that children use their developing linguistic knowledge to incrementally interpret speech and predict upcoming reference to objects. For verbs, determiners, case-markers, and adjectives, hearing linguistic information that sufficiently constrains referent choice leads to anticipatory eye-movements. There is, however, limited evidence about whether children also use spatial prepositions predictively. This is surprising and theoretically important: spatial prepositions provide abstract semantic information that must interface with spatial properties of, and relations between, objects in the world. Making this connection may develop late because of the complex mapping required. In a visual-world eye-tracking task, we find that adults and 4-year-olds hearing 'inside' (but not 'near') look predictively to objects that afford the property of containment. We conclude that children make predictions about the geometric properties of objects from spatial terms that specify these properties, suggesting real-time use of language to guide analysis of objects in the visual world.

**Authors:**

Zoe Ovans: University of Pennsylvania; Heesu Yun: University of Pennsylvania; Sarah Yi: University of Pennsylvania; Barbara Landau: Johns Hopkins University; John Trueswell: University of Pennsylvania

A Look “Inside” Children’s Real-time Processing of Spatial Prepositions

Do children reason that people in close relationships accurately represent each other’s minds? In two experiments (total N = 123), we found that 7- to 9-year-old children from the US (i) reason that people who are close will accurately represent each other’s goals and desires and (ii) infer that people are socially close when they accurately predict each other’s emotional states. These findings suggest that children reason flexibly about mental state attributions within close relationships.

**Authors:**

Brandon Matthew Woo: Harvard University; Emma Yu: Harvard University; Ashley J Thomas: Harvard University

Children Expect People to Accurately Represent the Minds of Their Close Social Partners

We study referential communication about concepts at different levels of abstraction in an interactive concept-level reference game. To better understand processes of abstraction, we investigate superordinate referring expressions (animal). Previous work identified two main factors that influence speakers’ choice of referring expressions for concepts: the immediate context and the basic-level effect, i.e. a preference for basic-level terms such as dog. Here we introduce a new concept-level reference game that allows us to study differences in the basic-level effect between comprehension and production and to elicit superordinate referring expressions experimentally. We find that superordinate referring expressions become relevant for groups of objects. Further, we reproduce the basic-level effect in production but not in comprehension. In conclusion, even though basic-level terms are most readily accessible, speakers tailor their expressions to the context, allowing the listener to identify the target concept.

**Authors:**

Kristina Kobrock: University of Osnabrück; Charlotte Uhlemann: University of Osnabrück; Nicole Gotzner: University of Osnabrück

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