Netherlands

Recent decision making theories have explained behaviour using mental sampling mechanisms where people imagine possible outcomes to guide their choices. Simultaneously, work in other domains has found evidence of particular mental sampling patterns, such as autocorrelations between samples and moderation by prior assumptions, which current decision making theories do not generally consider. Here, we seek to unify this work, developing a new sampling model of preferential choice incorporating these findings in other domains. Our model, based on the Autocorrelated Bayesian Sampler, predicts choice, reaction time, confidence and valuation from a common underlying process. We find a strong correspondence between our model’s predictions and empirical choice data, though performance remains below leading explanations for such tasks. Our model does however cover a broader set of response types than existing theories, suggesting the advantages of considering of a wider range of behaviours than are commonly examined in current decision making studies.

**Authors:**

Jake Spicer: University of Warwick; Yun-Xiao Li: University of Warwick; Lucas Castillo: University of Warwick; Johanna Falben: University of Amsterdam; Cheng Stella Qian: Psychology; Jian-Qiao Zhu: Princeton University; Nick Chater: University of Warwick; Adam Sanborn: University of Warwick

CogSci 2024

Mental Sampling in Preferential Choice: Specifying the Sampling Algorithm

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.

poster

Recent research (e.g., Burns & Krygier, 2015; Chi & Burns, 2022) demonstrated that people could exhibit a strong bias towards the smaller first digits, which is consistent with the pattern predicted by Benford’s law. However, this psychological phenomenon was predominantly observed when generating meaningful numbers for decision-making. We investigated explanations rooted in the statistical acquisition of distributional information and the impact of anchoring during number estimation. Undergraduate students were asked to estimate the weight, lifespan and group-size of animals after learning different distributions of these variables, supplied with an anchored value, either an average or a starting point, for reference. The Benford bias reasonably emerged regardless of the variable distribution, yet was strongly influenced by the anchored information. Notably, showing average values significantly suppressed Benford bias. These findings offered insights into the cognitive process of number estimation in the presence of statistical evidence and anchored information.

**Authors:**

Duyi Chi: The Univerisity of Sydney; Bruce Burns: The University of Sydney

Benford’s Law: Testing the Effects of Distributions and Anchors on Number Estimation

In social interactions, inferring the interaction partner's hidden mental state is crucial for predicting their actions and optimizing our responses. Effective models for this inference must account for how these mental states evolve due to the interaction history and environmental changes. For example, recognizing someone's emotional state can help forecast their behavior. Our study investigates how making these latent states visible influences decision-making in social interactions. Using the repeated trust game paradigm, we show how to use hidden Markov models (HMM) to formally represent latent state dependent strategies of the players. HMMs fitted to human dyadic play in the trust game are then used to specify adaptive AI agents that simulate changes in mental dispositions of human players, such as the level of trust in the opponent, during a repeated interaction. Making these artificial HMM based agents take the role of the investor and interact with real human trustees, we then explore how displaying “emotion” cues to the opponent's latent state affects people's actions. We find that the presence of cues was associated with more cooperative behavior from the human trustees, and that patterns of behavior that promote the maintenance of cooperation emerged in the presence of latent state cues and were transferred to settings where the cues were subsequently hidden.

**Authors:**

Ismail Guennouni: University College London; Maarten Speekenbrink: University College London; Kaitlyn Ng: University College London

Impact of Latent State Cues on Behavior in Repeated Games

Political polarisation is growing along with its negative consequences – degradation of functional government and increases in stochastic violence. Polarisation can result from both cognitive factors affecting information processing and biased information ecosystems, but their interactions are poorly understood. We present an agent-based model combining a varyingly polarised media landscape with agents driven by homophily and uncertain (political) identity inference processes. Agents were motivated to find similar others to form an ingroup by comparing moral values expressed in response to environmentally imposed moral dilemmas. Media pushed moral values in line with either liberal or conservative values, varying in agreement and influence. Liberal agents were more satisfied (according to homophily motivations), formed larger, more stable clusters, and morally disengaged less than conservatives. Identity aligned media exposure decreased conservative agents’ satisfaction but had no, or the opposite, effect on liberal agents. We conclude that media exposure asymmetrically affects political polarisation across political identities.

**Authors:**

Julie Maria Ejby Pedersen: University of Edinburgh; Adam Moore: University of Edinburgh

Uncertain Identity Inference in a Biased Media Landscape: An Agent-Based Model of Identity Signalling, Moral Values, and Political Polarisation

How people reach consensus in social networks with locally distributed interactions is relevant to understanding collective group decision-making, problem-solving, and voting. However, while the importance of theory of mind in consensus problems has been hypothesized, little work has been done to test it systematically. We present both computational modeling and behavioral experiments designed to test the impact of theory of mind on individual choices within such consensus networks. We test 2,108 computational models informed by theoretical work on a graph-coloring consensus task to compare models using theory of mind to other behavioral parameters. We then use behavioral responses from 107 participants in a similar task to evaluate support for theory of mind in consensus formation. We find that the computational model that best accounts for prior behavioral data uses theory of mind, and our behavioral results likewise support use of theory of mind over other potential decision-making models.

**Authors:**

Daphne Barretto: Princeton University; Raja Marjieh: Princeton University; Tom Griffiths: Princeton University 

Reaching Consensus through Theory of Mind in Social Networks with Locally Distributed Interactions

Do decision makers’ strategies of integrating different risks depend on framing? In the present study, participants were either instructed that they were choosing between two solutions to a complex problem or between two generic options. The former was framed as an industrial scenario that required choices between modifying and replacing a module (Adapt or Exchange). The risk was higher for Adapt to harm the product and for Exchange to harm the plant. Participants were either told that the consequences of both risks were equally severe (content-same group), or that harming the plant was worse (content-different group). A third group received a generic task framing (no-content group). We expected framing to affect risk integration, inducing different choices and strategies in the content-same than the no-content group. The data refuted this hypothesis, but decisions clearly diverged from the content-different group. These findings question whether ecological validity can be enhanced merely by framing.

**Authors:**

Romy Müller: Technische Universität Dresden; Alexander Blunk: Technische Universität Dresden

Adapt/Exchange decisions or generic choices: Does framing influence how people integrate qualitatively different risks?

Trust is an important factor in interaction with automated agents. This study tracks users’ trust calibration to automated agents in a vocabulary learning task. We hypothesize that trust declines as agent reliability declines and that anthropomorphism should buffer against this decline.
Replicating de Visser et al. (2016), 60 participants guessed the meaning of 96 foreign words in a 4x4x2 mixed experiment. In each trial, they guessed alone, then got an agent’s recommendation and gave trust judgments, and made a final decision. Four pedagogical agents varying in anthropomorphism (within-subject: human, robot, smart speaker, computer) recommended answers with decreasing reliability (within-subject: 100%, 67.5%, 50%, 0%). Furthermore, participants either did or did not watch an introductory video about the agents (between-subject). Behavioral and judgment data were analysed via mixed-effects models and ANOVAs. Two-way interaction shows that trust declined differently in various agents, but there is little evidence supporting trust resilience in any agent.

**Authors:**

Fransisca Hapsari: Technische Universität Darmstadt; Ronja Isabella Stemler: Technische Universität Darmstadt; Stephanie Pieschl: Technische Universität Darmstadt

Trust Resilience in Pedagogical Agents: Will Anthropomorphism Help Against Trust Decline?

People solve a myriad of coordination problems without explicit communication every day. A recent theoretical account, virtual bargaining, proposes that, to coordinate, we often simulate a negotiation process, and act according to what we would be most likely to agree to do if we were to bargain. But very often several equivalent tacit agreements — or virtual bargains — are available, which poses the challenge of figuring out which one to follow. Here we take inspiration from virtual bargaining to develop a cognitive modeling framework for dynamic coordination problems. We assume that players recognize their common goal, identify one or more possible tacit agreements based on situational features, observe the history of their partner’s choices to infer the most likely tacit agreement, and play their role in the joint plan. We test this approach in two experiments (n = 125 and n = 133) based on a dynamic coordination game designed to elicit agreement-based behavior. We fit our model at the individual level and compare its performance against alternative models. Across four different conditions, our model performs best among the set of models considered. Behavioral results are also consistent with players sustaining coordination and cooperation in the task by converging on tacitly agreed strategies or “virtual bargains”.

**Authors:**

Arthur Le Pargneux: University of Warwick; Hossam Zeitoun: University of Warwick; Emmanouil Konstantinidis: University of Warwick; Nick Chater: University of Warwick

Coordination in dynamic interactions by converging on tacitly agreed joint plans

Humans can learn from observing diverse others, even when they know little about their exact preferences, skills, or goals. Yet, while our remarkable social learning abilities have been a popular research topic, prior work has generally been limited to tasks in which observer and demonstrator share the same value function. 
To address this discrepancy, we use the socially correlated bandit task, where participants explore positively correlated, rather than identical, environments in groups. We extend existing work using this paradigm by comparing behaviour across individual and social rounds within participants.
We replicate findings that humans are able to use correlated social information effectively, with behaviour being best described by a model noisily integrates social information. In comparing individual and social search behaviour, we find that social learning partially replaces directed exploration. In conclusion, we find that humans use social information flexibly, employing it as an exploration tool, despite our differences.

**Authors:**

Alexandra Witt: University of Tübingen; Wataru Toyokawa: RIKEN Center for Brain Science; Kevin N Lala: University of St Andrews; Wolfgang Gaissmaier: University of Konstanz; Charley M Wu: University of Tübingen

Social learning functions as an exploration tool in correlated environments

Commitment is a defining feature of human rationality. This study explores a social origin of spontaneous intentional commitment, assuming commitment in individual decision-making arises from an internalized self-presentation, transferring the audience of commitment from a real partner to an inner eye perspective. To test this "social inner eye" hypothesis, we exposed participants to different social contexts while maintaining the individual nature of the task. Across three experiments, we found that (a) individuals consistently showed stronger commitment when acting in front of others, (b) different social contexts had different impacts on the process of commitment formation, with the mere outside observer accelerating commitment, while a parallel player delays it, (c) participants spontaneously coordinated their intentions to avoid conflicts when playing with another parallel player, despite no coordination was required. Taken together, we demonstrated how social context influences the strength, content, and timing of individual commitment.

**Authors:**

Shaozhe Cheng: Zhejiang University; Jingyin Zhu: Zhejiang University; Jifan Zhou: Zhejiang University; Mowei Shen: Zhejiang University; Tao Gao: University of California - Los Angeles

Intentional commitment as a spontaneous presentation of self

There has been considerable interest exploring how the utility of an outcome impacts the probability with which it is mentally simulated. Earlier studies using varying methodologies have yielded divergent conclusions with different directions of the influence. To directly examine such mental process, we employed a random generation paradigm in which all the outcomes were either equally (i.e., followed a uniform distribution) or unequally (i.e., a binomial distribution) probable. While our results revealed individual differences in how the utility influenced responses, the overall findings suggested that it is the outcomes' probabilities, not their utilities, that guide this process. Notably, an initial bias emerged, with individuals displaying a tendency to start with smaller values when all outcomes are equally likely. Our findings offer insights into the benefits of studying the mental sampling processes and provide empirical support for particular sampling models in this domain.

**Authors:**

Yun-Xiao Li: University of Warwick; Johanna Falben: University of Amsterdam; Lucas Castillo: University of Warwick; Jake Spicer: University of Warwick; Jian-Qiao Zhu: Princeton University; Nick Chater: University of Warwick; Adam Sanborn: University of Warwick

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Benford’s Law: Testing the Effects of Distributions and Anchors on Number Estimation

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