Netherlands

The neural entrainment paradigm (Batterink &amp; Paller, 2017) extended to infant statistical learning (SL; Choi, Batterink, Black, Paller, &amp;Werker, 2020) provides a continuous, implicit measure of learning as infants are exposed to a syllable sequence in a classic word embedding paradigm (cf. Saffran, Aslin, &amp; Newport, 1996). We investigated the potential for feedforward multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) and Simple Recurrent Networks (SRNs; e.g., Elman, 1990, 1991) to simulate neural entrainment in statistical learning (SL). Similar to human SL, these artificial neural networks are capable of attuning to sequential regularities. We trained MLPs and SRNs on items based on those from Choi et al. (2020), with four 3-syllable word-like patterns in random order. The models’ task was to predict the next syllable given the current syllable. We transformed the model’s initial discrete activation per second into a continuous time-domain signal, expanding them into 1000 samples. Syllable rate was 3Hz, so word rate was 1Hz. Treating nodes like EEG channels, we applied standard neural entrainment analyses that assess phase-locked responses to stimulus characteristics (using Inter-Trial Coherence, or ITC). Both MLPs and SRNs exhibited human-like entrainment, with early entrainment to syllable frequency and later entrainment to word frequency, although only SRNs exhibited a human-like significant correlation between the relative strength of word vs. syllable ITC and preferences for word-like patterns after training. Later entrainment to word-rate is typically interpreted as an index of SL, on the logic that such entrainment emerges as the learner develops representations of word-like patterns. However, we also found ITC at syllable and word rate when we pushed the raw input sequence through our pipeline (with no learning, just a pattern of activations over localist input nodes). We discuss implications for theories of SL as well as interpreting neural entrainment.

**Authors:**

Qihui Xu: Ohio State University; Guro Stensby Sjuls: Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Marina Kalashnikova: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language; James Magnuson: University of Connecticut

CogSci 2024

Modeling infant cortical tracking of statistical learning in simple recurrent networks

## Welcome to 2024 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics!
This year, the conference is in Mexico City. NAACL was actually already planned for Mexico City in 2021, but due to the pandemic the entire conference was moved online. This year, finally, we get to go! So it is my sincere pleasure to welcome you to Mexico City, whether in person or virtually. Having the conference in Mexico City is a good opportunity to emphasize that NAACL is our flagship conference for ACL members not only in North America but also in Central and South America, even though NAACL has been bearing “North” in its name. At this year’s conference, we have a theme to match, with a theme track on the Languages of Latin America to showcase the linguistic diversity of the region.
 
The opportunity to present at NAACL should not depend on a researcher’s travel budget, or their family status. This is why it is so important to make virtual participation at NAACL as good an experience as possible – but we want to also provide a good experience for in-person participants. As a community, we are still working out the best way to do that. This year at NAACL, we are trying out a big virtual poster session ahead of the conference, with the hope that this will make make for a lively and interactive experience. At the same time, we are reducing virtual oral presentations, which seem to be particularly tricky to make to work well. A big thanks to the NAACL program chairs and to Luciana Benotti for all their ideas and work to improve the virtual experience. And participants, virtual as well as in-person: Please let us know what worked for you and what didn’t, so we can continue to improve hybrid conferences. 
 
I have been lucky to work with many amazing people. Without their insight, dedication and patience, and without the many hours of work they put in, NAACL would not have been possible. A huge thank you to the program chairs Helena Gomez, Kevin Duh, and Steve Bethard – you are the best! 
 
Finally, I would like to thank all authors, invited speakers and panelists, area chairs and reviewers, the volunteers organizing and chairing sessions, and all attendees, in-person and virtual. Thank you for helping us make NAACL 2024 come to life. 
 
Welcome and hope you all enjoy the conference! 
Katrin Erk 
The University of Texas at Austin 
NAACL-2024 General Chair 
*You can read the full Welcome message in the [Conference Handbook (downloadable)](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H1NvW0VASQjkSCYgw3mr-3l4yYDSxz6B/view?usp=sharing)*

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NAACL 2024

2024 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

The neural entrainment paradigm (Batterink & Paller, 2017) extended to infant statistical learning (SL; Choi, Batterink, Black, Paller, &Werker, 2020) provides a continuous, implicit measure of learning as infants are exposed to a syllable sequence in a classic word embedding paradigm (cf. Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996). We investigated the potential for feedforward multi-layer perceptrons (MLPs) and Simple Recurrent Networks (SRNs; e.g., Elman, 1990, 1991) to simulate neural entrainment in statistical learning (SL). Similar to human SL, these artificial neural networks are capable of attuning to sequential regularities. We trained MLPs and SRNs on items based on those from Choi et al. (2020), with four 3-syllable word-like patterns in random order. The models’ task was to predict the next syllable given the current syllable. We transformed the model’s initial discrete activation per second into a continuous time-domain signal, expanding them into 1000 samples. Syllable rate was 3Hz, so word rate was 1Hz. Treating nodes like EEG channels, we applied standard neural entrainment analyses that assess phase-locked responses to stimulus characteristics (using Inter-Trial Coherence, or ITC). Both MLPs and SRNs exhibited human-like entrainment, with early entrainment to syllable frequency and later entrainment to word frequency, although only SRNs exhibited a human-like significant correlation between the relative strength of word vs. syllable ITC and preferences for word-like patterns after training. Later entrainment to word-rate is typically interpreted as an index of SL, on the logic that such entrainment emerges as the learner develops representations of word-like patterns. However, we also found ITC at syllable and word rate when we pushed the raw input sequence through our pipeline (with no learning, just a pattern of activations over localist input nodes). We discuss implications for theories of SL as well as interpreting neural entrainment.

**Authors:**

Qihui Xu: Ohio State University; Guro Stensby Sjuls: Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Marina Kalashnikova: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language; James Magnuson: University of Connecticut

poster

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**
<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** 
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.

Accumulating behavioral and electrophysiological evidence demonstrates the effects of sentence context on word processing. However, there is a relative scarcity of research investigating both global and local effects during processing, particularly in terms of the influence of grammatically constraining and semantically selectional components, such as Chinese classifiers, as local (in)congruency. In this study, we manipulated congruency between global sentence context and head nouns, as well as congruency between classifiers and head nouns in highly constraining Chinese sentences using a two-by-two factorial design. The results revealed that the semantic and grammatical feature of highly predicted nouns can be pre-activated in advance of the bottom-up input. In addition, both global sentence context and local classifier-noun congruency significantly influenced head noun processing, with neither factor exhibiting overwhelming strength over the other. Both global and local information can be integrated during lexical processing.

**Authors:**

Zhenlin Chen: Leiden University; Leticia Pablos Robles: Leiden University; Niels O. Schiller: City University of Hong Kong

The influence of global context and classifier-noun congruency on Chinese predictive sentence processing

The experiment reported here investigated the neural correlates of predictive processing of angry and neutral speech. Twenty-six participants listened to recordings of angry and neutral conversation segments, as well as to speech-shaped noise, while their EEG was recorded. Oscillatory power in the gamma band (30–80 Hz) and the N400 component of event-related potentials (ERP) to sentence-final words were analyzed. In comparison to neutral words, negative emotional valence significantly reduced the amplitude of the N400 elicited by sentence-final words. Furthermore, there was larger gamma power during exposure to angry speech in comparison to neutral speech. The results generally suggest increased prediction and facilitated semantic integration in negative as compared to neutral speech. To date, the predictability effects on gamma power have been reported with relation to the semantic-lexical content of words. The present findings demonstrate that gamma power is also modulated by the emotional content of speech.

**Authors:**

Natálie Kikoťová: Charles University; Katerina Chladkova: Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences

Neural oscillatory and ERP indices of prediction in emotional speech

This paper presents a case study of a 10-year-old Chinese-English bilingual boy, who has developmental dyslexia and exhibits a discrepancy in reading and writing skills between the two languages. This discrepancy is believed to be influenced by the different orthographic characteristics and cognitive demands of the two languages. The study investigated the reasons behind his literacy skills profile from both orthographic and cognitive perspectives. To achieve this, the researchers assessed the boy’s literacy skills, receptive vocabulary, and cognitive abilities (including phonological skills, naming speed, and visual skills) in both Chinese and English. The preliminary results showed that the bilingual child’s reading skills in English were on par with bilingual children, although lower than English monolingual children. This case study supports the cognitive account theory, suggesting that the different cognitive demands required for literacy skill development can lead to discrepancies in these skills, particularly in terms of accuracy, in bilingual children.

**Authors:**

Catherine Shee-hei Wong: Hong Kong Metropolitan University ; Dr Emily Ge Hao-yan: Hong Kong Metropolitan University

Influence of cognitive abilities on literacy skills in a Chinese-English bilingual child with developmental dyslexia

Human communication, known to occur between two individuals using various modalities, has attracted significant interest, particularly in the context of neural dynamics’ studies. Embodied communication, especially in cooperative or competitive scenarios, has been a focal point of these studies. However, the neural activity during this process is not well understood from the viewpoint of motor intention in communication. It is crucial to note that intentional motor switching occurs following motor coordination within a pair. In this study, we conducted a simultaneous recording of EEG, motion, and gaze of two players engaged in our newly devised coordination game involving bodily motions. We observed significant differences in time-frequency power during cooperative and competitive situations in intentional motor switching. This finding suggests that the EEG power differences in local brain regions and in the alpha and high frequency bands are effectively related to the process of intentional motor switching.

**Authors:**

Masayuki Fujiwara: Komatsu University; Kosei Shibata: Kyushu Institute of Technology; Takashi Hashimoto: Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Hiroaki Wagatsuma: Kyushu Institute of Technology

Neural Activities in Intentional Motor Switching after Coordinating Bodily Motions in Pairs

The seminal dual coding theory by Paivio (1971) posited that non-verbal and verbal stimuli differ in their representational format, whereby the former activates a dual code while the latter only a single one. These differences in code have implications for tasks such as visual search. The current eye-tracking visual search study aims to re-evaluate this theoretical framework while examining the role played by semantic processing, that has never been looked at before. We followed the original design by Paivio and Begg (1974), with participants searching for a target, cued either as a word or as a picture, in an array of either words or pictures. The target could be either semantically related or unrelated to the other distractors. Corroborating original results, response times for correct trials were faster in pictorial arrays and substantially slower when a cued picture had to be found in a word array. Semantically unrelated targets were looked at faster, for longer, and leading to overall shorter search responses than semantically related targets. Critically, these effects driven by semantic relatedness were amplified when codes had to be converted (e.g., picture-to-word). Our findings refine our understanding of the role semantic processing plays in the representational format of words and pictures and the implications it carries for visual search.

**Authors:**

Marika Mauti: Sapienza University of Rome; Giorgia D'Innocenzo: Universidade de Lisboa; Antimo Buonocore: Suor Orsola Benincasa University; Moreno I. Coco: Sapienza, University of Rome

Semantic Processing Modulates the Attentional Accessibility of Verbal and Nonverbal Search Targets

Studies examining the impact of Focussed attention meditation on mismatch negativity (MMN) have yielded inconsistent and conflicting results, emphasizing the necessity for well-powered studies examining different meditation styles to comprehend MMN modulation. Addressing methodological issues from previous research, the present study focuses on expertise in mantra meditation, akin to focused attention meditation, employing a sufficiently powered investigation with a novel intensity MMN paradigm. This paradigm introduces both louder and quieter deviants to discern whether Meditation-induced MMN effects signify higher-order cognitive processes or result from sensory adaptation. While the findings indicate a tendency of higher MMN in novices compared to experts, statistical significance was not achieved. The modest effect is attributed to enhanced attention skills in novices through consistent practice. The consistent unidirectional polarity shift in event-related potential (ERP) to both deviant stimuli types suggests that intensity-related MMN effects may not solely rely on loudness-dependent modulation of sensory components but could signify higher-order deviance detection. Results from eLORETA source localization are consistent with bilateral temporal and frontal cortex activity, which had lower amplitudes for the expert mantra meditator group compared with novices.

**Authors:**

Chandan Srivastava: IIT Bombay; Jamie A O'Reilly: King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang; Rashmi Gupta: IIT Bombay

Influence of mantra meditation on intensity mismatch negativity

Our senses receive a continuous stream of complex information. According to Event Segmentation Theory (EST), we parse this information into meaningful events, allowing us to extract relevant information, remember it, and act upon it. Previous research has related these events to so-called ‘neural states’: temporally and regionally specific stable patterns of brain activity, which tend to coincide with events in the stimulus. Here we show that these neural states additionally align with stable features in a movie stimulus that are relevant to a specific brain region. This supports the idea that many brain areas across the cortex apply event segmentation in a hierarchical manner. Using intracranial measurements, we further investigate whether neural states are present at a much smaller timescale and how their characteristics correspond to EST. Our initial findings provide support for the idea that neural states could underlie the cognitive skill of event segmentation.

**Authors:**

Djamari Oetringer: Donders Institute; Dora Gozukara: Donders Institute; Umut Guclu: Radboud University; Linda Geerligs: Radboud University

The neural basis of Event Segmentation Theory during naturalistic perception: stable neural activity patterns throughout the cortex

Speech production in aphasia is often described as “effortful”, though the consequences of consistent, high degrees of cognitive effort have not been explored. Using recent work on mental effort as a theoretical framework, the present study examined how effort-related fatigue produces decrements in performance in picture naming among participants with post-stroke aphasia. We analyzed three data sets from prior studies where participants completed a large picture naming test. Decreasing naming accuracy across trials was statistically significant in two of the three samples. There were also significant effects of practice (better performance on a second test administration), word frequency (better performance for more frequent words), and word length (better performance for shorter words). These results are the first concrete demonstration of fatigue affecting performance on a language task in post-stroke aphasia. They open a new avenue for research on mental effort/fatigue with potential implications for aphasia assessment, treatment, and management.

**Authors:**

Daniel Mirman: University of Edinburgh; Anna Krason: Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute; Malathi Thothathiri: George Washington University; Erica Middleton: Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute

Effect of Fatigue on Word Production in Aphasia

According to Bayesian accounts, perception is the consequence of integrating sensory input with prior expectations, resulting in biased percepts attracted towards our expectations. Contrary to this logic, Phan et al. show that downward motion is perceived as less accelerating than upward motion: a repulsion from the expectation that downward-moving objects should accelerate. This is one of a small number of reported effects where perception is repulsed from expectation. The question then arises, under what conditions do repulsion effects emerge, and why? Here we manipulated the expected acceleration profiles for context and object identity along the horizontal axis, asking whether we see repulsion effects similar to those observed by Phan et al. We find repulsion when expectations are related to the context in which a ball moves, but attraction when an association is made between the ball’s colour and the acceleration profile. We discuss possible reasons and implications for the contradictory results.

**Authors:**

Nick Simpson: UCL; Matan Mazor: University of Oxford; Kirsten Rittershofer: Birkbeck, University College London; Emma K. Ward: UCL; Clare Press: UCL

Attraction and repulsion effects of expectation on the perception of acceleration.

The neurocognitive processes involved in understanding objects and scenes remains debated, such as the separability of electrophysiological responses thought to index object identification (N300) and semantic access (N400). Yet, studies typically introduce incongruities which evoke N300/N400 patterns, not different deflections. We measured EEG to naturalistic comic strips with panels that “zoomed-in” on scene content. In Experiment 1, zoom and full-scene panels were compared within sequences that were in/congruous to the sequence. Incongruities evoked larger negativities for both the N300 and N400, while zoom panels elicited attenuated N300s yet enhanced N400s. In Experiment 2, zoom and full-scene panels appeared in succession. Both types evoked attenuated N400s when appearing second, benefiting from the repetition effect, but N300s were less negative for zooms than full panels. Across both experiments, these opposite patterns of deflections across components suggest differential processes of object identification (N300) and semantic access (N400) in the processing of visual information.

**Authors:**

Neil Cohn: Tilburg University; Tom Foulsham: University of Essex

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