Netherlands

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&#39; 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

CogSci 2024

Probability, but not utility, influences repeated mental simulations of risky events

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** 
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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) 


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#### **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** 
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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.

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

poster

Whether logical inference is available without language is highly debated. One such inference is the disjunctive syllogism (A Or B, Not A, Therefore B). Evidence from non-linguistic search tasks suggests that that the syllogism may be unavailable before age 3 (Mody & Carey, 2016). However, in a replication of the same task using language (i.e., verbal negation), even 2.5-year-olds succeeded (Grigoroglou, et al., 2019). Here we explore the role of language in children’s logical reasoning. 2.5-, 3- and 4-year-olds performed a non-linguistic search task, after a short training in reasoning by exclusion. Half of the children received linguistic training (e.g., heard “there is no coin in X cup”); half received non-linguistic training (i.e., saw that one location was empty). Results show that 2.5-year-olds who received linguistic training succeeded in disjunctive syllogism but those who received non-linguistic training failed. We conclude that the presence of verbal negation facilitated logical reasoning.

**Authors:**

Myrto Grigoroglou: University of Toronto; Salima Hackeek: University of Toronto; Patricia Ganea: University of Toronto

Logical language and the development of reasoning by the disjunctive syllogism

Efficient cognitive algorithms enhance problem-solving in many cognitive domains but can be difficult to discover and use. Classical studies of seriation suggest that children struggle to apply algorithmic strategies in a simple sorting problem, yet it remains unclear why. We examined children's solutions to a modified variant of the sorting problem in which object ranks were hidden. Children independently discovered at least two efficient algorithmic solutions to this problem. Older children were more efficient sorters.

**Authors:**

Huiwen Alex Yang: University of California, Berkeley; Bill Thompson: University of California, Berkeley; Celeste Kidd: University of California, Berkeley

Children spontaneously discover efficient sorting algorithms in a seriation task

Spatial abilities and their developmental trajectory are an important part of human intelligence and have been the subject of numerous studies, including mental rotation and perspective taking. However, little is known about these processes in under-represented populations. Here we report a study on 10-year-old children in such a context who participated in four spatial tasks – animal picture mental rotation, abstract figures mental rotation, memory for object location, and picture perspective taking. Results revealed no male advantage on any task, and better performance in the abstract figures task for girls following an alternative school program in mathematics. Furthermore, the analysis found no correlation between the mental rotation and perspective taking performance. Research on under-represented populations is an important drive towards greater generalizability of findings and conclusions

**Authors:**

Elena Andonova: New Bulgarian University

The Role of Gender and Curriculum in Mental Rotation & Perspective Taking

Learned fears of stimuli from phylogenetically fear-relevant categories (such as snakes and spiders) tend to be significantly more resistant to extinction than those from fear-irrelevant categories (such as birds and butterflies.) Olsson et al. (2005) demonstrated that representations of outgroup members, as defined by race, can act as fear-relevant stimuli in a classical conditioning paradigm. It is not as clear, however, whether (and how) persistent fear of outgroup members can be acquired vicariously. We investigate whether observers of interactions with negative outcomes associated with representations of outgroup members develop extinction-resistant fears. Our results indicate that outgroup members can act as fear-relevant stimuli in an observational scenario. The effect is not sensitive to self-relevance manipulations; importantly, however, other-oriented empathy may reduce the tendency toward forming extinction-resistant conditioned responses to outgroup members. Implications of these preliminary results, including limitations and suggestions for future research, are discussed.

**Authors:**

David A. Bosch: New York University; Andreas Olsson: Clinical Neuroscience, Division Psychology

Is outgroup fear contagious? Vicariously acquired fears to outgroup faces resist extinction, but the effect is mitigated by other-oriented empathy

This study assessed the holistic and fragmented retention and forgetting of event models. We report four experiments that manipulated causality, co-reference, events versus objects, and description determinacy. While increased causal connections among events increased holistic remembering, there was no clear effect for manipulations of co-reference, events versus objects, or determinacy. Thus, our work suggests that there are limits to the extent to which different types of events are remembered and forgotten in a holistic or fragmented manner. That said, all of our events did show significantly greater than chance holistic remembering, suggesting that the very act of creating event models leads these memories to be remembered or forgotten as wholes to a greater extent.

**Authors:**

Daniela Parra: University of Notre Dame; Nicole Antes: Leibniz-Institut für Wissensmedien; Gabriel A. Radvansky: University of Notre Dame

Event Cognition and Holistic versus Fragmented Remembering and Forgetting

When people share information online, they do so with different intentions (connection, persuasion, etc). However, are these motives always apparent to others? To test this, we put participants (N = 319) in imaginary ingroup and outgroup online forums. In each, people were presented with different types of statements and asked why they thought the poster had shared them, whether they believed the poster was an ingroup or outgroup member, and how much they liked the poster. Although results showed a high degree of heterogeneity, some patterns were present. Preliminary analyses indicate that identity expression was the most common motive attributed to perceived-ingroup posters across statement types, whereas wanting to persuade or anger were also prevalent motives for perceived-outgroup posters. Notably, while wanting to anger was the main motive that made people dislike perceived-ingroup posters, all motives across all statement types resulted in a high proportion of dislike towards perceived-outgroup posters.

**Authors:**

Viola Pucci: The University of Melbourne; Andrew Perfors: University of Melbourne; Yoshihisa Kashima: University of Melbourne

Why are they saying this? The perceived motives behind online posting and their psychological consequences

The pretesting effect suggests that attempting and failing to guess unknown information can improve memory compared to errorless study. A key question is when it is the best moment to give feedback after testing. In this study, we explored two factors: (1) the timing of feedback after unsuccessful pretest, provided immediately or after 24 (Experiment 1) and 48 hours (Experiment 2); and (2) the timing of the final test after feedback, immediately or after 24 hours (Experiment 1). We assessed their impact on recall accuracy, comparing with an errorless (read-only) learning condition. Results showed superior accuracy for pretesting than read-only condition; for immediate feedback than delayed; and for immediate test than delayed. Furthermore, although smaller, there was still pretesting effect after 24 and 48 hours of feedback delay. This flexibility in timing could be particularly useful in educational settings where logistical constraints may force a delay in feedback or test.

**Authors:**

Yeray Mera: University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU; Nataliya Dianova: University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU; Eugenia Marin: University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU

The Pretesting Effect: Exploring the Impact of Feedback and Final Test Timing

Verbs in progressive aspect can be used for different motion states of people or objects. For example, “A leaf is falling” can describe either the beginning of, or on-going, or the ending of the falling motion of the leaf. Then do people spontaneously use different co-speech gestures according to different motion states when they use the same progressive verb in speech? This study investigated participants’ co-speech gestures used with a progressive verb, focusing on the paths of produced gestures. The paths were analyzed according to the direction (vertical or horizontal) or trajectory (arc or straight). The results showed that the participants’ use of co-speech gestures differed when they expressed different motion states (beginning or ending). In addition, associated agents (given by different phrase structures) of the motion were also described with different paths of gestures. The study suggests that gestures can compensate the motion states of agents that may not be described by language.

**Authors:**

Hina Kimura: Graduate School of Tokyo Denki University; Tetsuya Yasuda: University of Tokyo; Harumi Kobayashi: Tokyo Denki University

Co-speech gestures complement motion state information expressed by verbs

In two experiments (N = 179), we studied the effect of contextual similarity and training mode on new vocabulary learning. Adult participants were trained on blocks of items that were semantically similar, phonologically similar, or unrelated to one another. Each participant was trained through passive exposure, active comprehension, or active production of the new vocabulary. Exp 1 trained items in clusters of 9, whereas Exp 2 trained the same number of items in clusters of 3. Exp 2 also assessed delayed retention 48-72 hours after training. Results showed a robust and negative impact of semantic similarity and production mode on vocabulary learning. A detrimental effect of phonological similarity was only observed in the delayed test. These results suggest that adding the challenge of resolving similarity-induced competition and articulating the word-form negatively impacts the quick acquisition of new vocabulary.

**Authors:**

Megan Waller: Carnegie Mellon University; Dan Yurovsky: Carnegie Mellon University; Nazbanou Nozari: Indiana University

Effect of similarity and training experiences on new vocabulary learning

Co-speech gestures that teachers spontaneously produce during explanations benefit students’ learning by enhancing memory (Church et al., 2007). However, it remains unclear whether certain gestures are intrinsically more memorable, and if so, owing to what semantic and visual features. We created 360 10-second audiovisual stimuli by recording 20 actors producing natural unscripted explanations of Piagetian conservation problems. For each audiovisual stimulus, two trained experimenters extracted high-level semantic and low-level visual/acoustic features in speech and gesture. We then tested online participants’ memories using a between-subjects study-test paradigm in three different conditions: audiovisual (gesture+speech stimuli), visual-only (gesture-only version of the same stimuli), and audio-only (speech-only version of the same stimuli). We found that participants consistently remembered certain gesture, gesture+speech, and speech stimuli better than others. Focusing on the visual-only (gesture-only) condition, we discovered that both semantic (speech and gesture meaningfulness) and visual (number of hands used) features make co-speech gestures memorable.

**Authors:**

Xiaohan (Hannah) Guo: The University of Chicago; Wilma Bainbridge: University of Chicago; Susan Goldin-Meadow: University of Chicago

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Logical language and the development of reasoning by the disjunctive syllogism

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