Netherlands

In this Symposium we link different perspectives and traditions of research on language and concepts in the cognitive sciences to better understand the process of abstraction from the social-interactive standpoint. In contrast to the usual benefits of abstraction – such as the ability to categorize and generalize – we underscore the possibility of abstract concepts and words to remain underspecified, “open to the context, the suggestions of others” (Borghi, 2023) or to processes of real-time negotiations (Christiansen &amp; Chater, 2022). This is enabled by their largely non-perceptual rela-tional character (Gentner, 2005) and by the fact that they arise in cognitive systems continually embedded and active in their environments (Cisek 1999; Mannella &amp; Tummolini 2023).0

CogSci 2024

The Fundamental Flexibility of Abstract Words

### Welcome to CogSci Conference 2025!

The 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was a hybrid meeting held in San Francisco. 

<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/amvr/"  seamless="seamless" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" ></iframe></div>

#### About

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.

#### Our History 

* **Society Creation**<br>
The Society was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional organization in Massachusetts in 1979. The organizing committee included Roger Schank, Allan Collins, Donald Norman, and a number of other scholars from psychology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. 
<br><br>
* **Conference Creation**<br>
The first conference on cognitive science was held at La Jolla, California in August, 1979, and has occurred annually since then. The proceedings of each conference are published, and those from most years are available through Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. The annual proceedings of the Cognitive Science Conference represent a major source of information on new work and new ideas in the scientific study of thinking. In 1990, the Society, with help from an anonymous donor, established the David Marr Prize for the best student paper at each annual meeting.
<br><br>
* **Journal Creation**<br>
The Journal, Cognitive Science, began publication in 1976, and is now published by Wiley-Blackwell. The Executive Editor is currently Richard P. Cooper of Birkbeck, University of London, and there are 18 Associate Editors and a 30-member editorial board. It serves as the premier outlet for research reports that intersect two or more disciplines. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society. The Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society voted in late 2006 to found a new journal, Topics in Cognitive Science (topiCS). The Editor in Chief is Wayne Gray, Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The journal seeks to fill a niche not occupied by Cognitive Science Journal or other cognitive science journals. Membership in the Society includes a subscription to Cognitive Science and TopiCS. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society.
<br><br>

#### Code of Conduct

By attending the CogSci 2025 Conference, you are required to adhere to the society’s **[Code of Conduct](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ChPuihLy6jE_BWqfO7J2KKgX35JW2zsM/view?usp=sharing)**.
<br><br>


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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.

In this Symposium we link different perspectives and traditions of research on language and concepts in the cognitive sciences to better understand the process of abstraction from the social-interactive standpoint. In contrast to the usual benefits of abstraction – such as the ability to categorize and generalize – we underscore the possibility of abstract concepts and words to remain underspecified, “open to the context, the suggestions of others” (Borghi, 2023) or to processes of real-time negotiations (Christiansen & Chater, 2022). This is enabled by their largely non-perceptual rela-tional character (Gentner, 2005) and by the fact that they arise in cognitive systems continually embedded and active in their environments (Cisek 1999; Mannella & Tummolini 2023).0

symposium

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**<br>
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**<br>
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)<br>
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)<br>
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Friday, July 26**<br>
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)<br>
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration)<br>
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Saturday, July 27**<br>
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)<br>
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture)<br>


#### **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**<br>
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**<br>
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.
<br><br>

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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.

To communicate is to move. There is no way around that. If
we pick up comprehensive handbooks or introductory texts
in movement science (Hong and Bartlett (2008)) we see
that there is very rich knowledge and tractable mathematical
models about different aspects of movements. Yet, we find
no chapter on communicative movements. While the field
of speech motor control is a developed area on its own
(Parrell and Lammert (2019)), there is no movement science
of communication proper, which would include whole-body-,
hand-gestural-, signed-, and inter-bodily actions.0

Towards a movement science of communication

As a foundation for social interaction, interpersonal coordination is facilitated by positive social qualities (e.g., cooperation), but undermined in negative contexts (e.g., conflict). Exactly how social factors shape coordination is less clear. Previous literature notes that the way people attend to others impacts how interactions unfold. It is possible therefore, that patterns of social attention also govern coordination. We examined this proposition by using virtual reality to investigate how attentional focus (self vs. other) and partner gaze (direct vs. averted) influence the spontaneous emergence of coordination. The results indicated that: (i) coordination was enhanced in the other (cf. self) focus condition; (ii) coordination was diminished in the averted (cf. direct) gaze condition. These findings suggest that changes in social attention impact interpersonal coordination. More broadly, this work provides further evidence that the emergence of interpersonal coordination fluctuates as a function of social context.0

Do attentional focus and partner gaze impact interpersonal coordination?

Humans rely on our social networks to make more accurate inferences about the world. 
Yet it remains unclear how those inferences are shaped by the medium through which information is exchanged and beliefs are shared.  In this paper, we report two experiments where participants (N=645) were asked to make inferences about an unknown probability distribution based on limited private observations.  They exchanged messages with neighbors in a small social network and were asked to update their beliefs over repeated rounds.  We compared three conditions: a unidirectional message medium, a constrained slider medium, and an interactive chat.  All groups were able to converge toward more accurate inferences, but their convergence rates varied across conditions in ways not well-captured by common models.  We argue that computational models of collective behavior must move beyond the assumption of direct belief transmission to capture the complexities of sharing information through natural language.0

Distributed statistical inference in social interaction networks

When humans communicate, they typically adapt to their conversational partner in how they speak, and in how they interpret what the conversational partner says. In the area of pragmatic language comprehension, there is so far little work that has studied the individual differences between listeners with respect to adapting to a given speaker. We investigated which individual cognitive factors correlate with listener's ability to associate speakers with humorous utterances.
We found that working memory updating (as measured by the Keeping Track Task) was a significant predictor of adaptation to the speaker.
These findings are in line with a recent related study (Schuster et al., 2023) which investigated speaker-specific adaptation to the use of uncertainty expressions. We furthermore observe a correlation between speaker adaptation and the Faux Pas Test. This task is used for measuring theory of mind abilities and is believed to specifically tap into intention recognition, an ability which is also very relevant to joke comprehension.0

Adaptation to Speakers is modulated by working memory updating and theory of mind -- a study investigating humor comprehension

We explore different aspects of cognitive diversity and its effect on the success of group deliberation. To evaluate this, we use 500 dialogues from small, online groups discussing the Wason Card Selection task - the DeliData corpus. Leveraging the corpus, we perform quantitative analysis evaluating three different measures of cognitive diversity. First, we analyse the effect of group size as a proxy measure for diversity. Second, we evaluate the effect of the size of the initial idea pool. Finally, we look into the content of the discussion by analysing discussed solutions, discussion patterns, and how conversational probing can improve those characteristics.
Despite the reputation of groups for compounding bias, we show that small groups can, through dialogue, overcome intuitive biases and improve individual decision-making. Across a large sample and different operationalisations, we consistently find that greater cognitive diversity is associated with more successful group deliberation. 

Code and data used for the analysis are available in the repository: https://github.com/gkaradzhov/cognitive-diversity-groups-cogsci240

The effect of diversity on group decision-making

We assessed the goodness of fit of three models of vocabulary growth, with varying sensitivity to the structure of the environment and the learner's internal state, to estimated vocabulary growth trajectories in autistic and non-autistic children. We first computed word-level acquisition norms that indicate the vocabulary size at which individual words tend to be learned by each group. We then evaluated how well network growth models based on natural language co-occurrence structure and word associations account for variance in the autistic and non-autistic acquisition norms. In addition to replicating key observations from prior work and observing that the growth models explained similar amounts of variance in each group, we found that autistic vocabulary growth also exhibits growth consistent with "the lure of the associates" model. Thus, both groups leverage semantic structure in the learning environment for vocabulary development, but autistic vocabulary growth is also strongly influenced by existing vocabulary knowledge.0

Modeling Vocabulary Growth in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

High-frequency words are often assumed to be the most useful words for communication, as they provide the greatest coverage of texts. However, the relationship between text coverage and comprehension may not be straightforward -- some words may provide more information than others. In this study, we explore alternative methods of defining core vocabulary in addition to word frequency (e.g., words that are central hubs in semantic association networks). We report on the results of an empirical test of communicative utility using a text-based guessing game. We show that core words that reflect corpus-based distributional statistics (like frequency or co-occurrence centrality) were less useful for communication than others. This was evident both in terms of the size of the vocabulary that must be known and the proportion of the text that must be covered for successful communication.0

Are the most frequent words the most useful? Investigating core vocabulary in reading

What factors contribute to the growth of children’s early vocabulary? One method for exploring this question is investigating predictors (e.g., frequency) that differentiate words learnt earlier from those learnt later. A more comprehensive account requires the examination of multiple language families and multiple levels of linguistic representation (e.g., phonological, morphosyntactic, semantic). Here, we studied 10 predictors of word ages of acquisition across 27 languages and dialects. We found that words that were more frequent, concrete, and associated with babies were learnt earlier, whereas words that had greater length in phonemes and mean length of utterance were learnt later. There was no reliable effect of other morphosyntactic predictors, or of phonological neighbourhood. We found evidence of a tradeoff between a language’s morphological complexity and the effect of syntactic complexity for predicates, supporting the competition model. Predictor coefficients revealed broad consistency across all languages, along with variability that reflected language family classifications.0

Predicting ages of acquisition for children's early vocabulary across 27 languages and dialects

Dual language learners (DLLs) constitute a large portion of the population, but relatively little is known about the best ways in which to assess their vocabulary knowledge. Past research has used both conceptual vocabulary knowledge, assessing whether a child knows a word in either language, as well as total vocabulary knowledge, assessing what words a child knows in each language separately. The present work uses neural networks to predict specific word learning for individual Cantonese-English DLLs. As its input, The model utilizes word2vec embeddings that either represent children’s’ conceptual word knowledge or total word knowledge. We find that using total word knowledge results in higher predictive accuracy, suggesting that knowing what specific words DLLs know in each of their languages provides the most accurate picture of DLLs’ vocabulary knowledge. The present work has many implications for both identification of at-risk individuals and the creation of learning materials for DLL populations.0

How Should We Represent Bilingual Vocabulary Knowledge?

Whereas principles of communicative efficiency and legal doctrine dictate that laws be comprehensible to the common world, empirical evidence suggests legal documents are largely incomprehensible to lawyers and laypeople alike. Here, a corpus analysis (n=59
million words) first replicated and extended prior work revealing laws to contain strikingly higher rates of complex syntactic structures relative to six baseline genres of English.

Next, two pre-registered text generation experiments (n=280) tested two leading hypotheses regarding how these complex structures enter into legal documents in the first place. In line with the \textit{magic spell hypothesis}, we found people tasked with writing official laws wrote in a more convoluted manner than when tasked with writing unofficial legal texts of equivalent conceptual complexity. Contrary to the \textit{copy-and-edit hypothesis}, we did not find evidence that people editing a legal document wrote in a more convoluted manner than when writing the same document from scratch.

From a cognitive perspective, these results suggest law to be a rare exception to the general tendency in human language towards communicative efficiency. In particular, these findings indicate law's complexity to be derived from its performativity, whereby low-frequency structures may be inserted to signal law’s authoritative, world-state-altering nature, at the cost of increased processing demands on readers. From a law and policy perspective, these results suggest that the tension between the ubiquity and impenetrability of the law is not an inherent one, and that laws can be simplified without a loss or distortion of communicative content.0

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