Netherlands

Having better knowledge of fractions is causally related to the ability to learn algebra, so what happens when teaching and learning about fractions is disrupted, as was the case during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this study, we examine how educational disruption caused by a pandemic differentially impacted students’ fraction learning relative to students who were learning other mathematics content during that time. This study provides results from a cross-sequential project examining various facets of mathematics knowledge for students in 4th-10th grades over three years (2021, 2022, 2023; N=903 students). We investigate differences in fractions and algebra knowledge based on students’ grade levels across cohorts to determine if there are particular periods at which students’ learning was differentially affected by the disruption. Individual differences in students’ self-regulation, self-efficacy, and personality will also be explored as potential buffers.

**Authors:**

Julie L. Booth: Temple University; Renée M Tobin: Temple University; Christina Barbieri: University of Delaware

CogSci 2024

COVID-19 Disruptions in Learning of Critical Mathematics Content

The annual UI conference has grown from a meeting to a community of more than 6,000 researchers, program officers, evaluators, program directors, training faculty, and others within STEM, and now operates with a mission to mutually inform scholarship and practice, develop and enhance the community interested in educational interventions, and provide professional development for all STEM persons. UI held its first Virtual conference in December of 2020 in response to Covid-19 restrictions that forced the cancellation of the original March 2020 in person meeting. Born out of necessity, the virtual conference introduced a format that provided pre conference availability of symposia, Deeper Dives and Poster presentations. The 13th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference will continue with that design and we foresee future conferences adopting aspects of that format in reaching a virtual audience as well as those who attend the conferences in-person.

Attendees will experience plenaries, workshops, symposia, and poster presentations on hypothesis-based research on interventions and initiatives that broaden participation in STEM careers. The conference will continue to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Graduate students in these fields are strongly encouraged to attend. Workshops, sessions, and posters will communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

The cost to attend the conference is $150. There are special rates for post-doctoral fellows and graduate students, as well as conference grants that can be provided for those with need. Registration for the conference is open, with additional information to come.

13th Conference on Understanding Interventions 2021

The annual UI conference has grown from a meeting to a community of more than 6,000 researchers, program officers, evaluators, program directors, training faculty, and others within STEM, and now operates with a mission to mutually inform scholarship and practice, develop and enhance the community interested in educational interventions, and provide professional development for all STEM persons. 

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.

All numbers can be positioned on a number line. Children's understanding of this fact, as well as their ability to actually place said numbers, have been shown to both foster and predict their success with more complex mathematics. Although several studies reported difficulties in placing rational numbers such as fractions, none did provide a thorough assessment of children’s errors. In this work, we tested around 26,000 pupils from 6th- to 10th-grades and analyzed what specific errors they made. Several systematic error patterns emerged and were shared across all grades and curricula, albeit in different frequencies. We propose that children’s responses are driven by a dual-strategy model that chains a number of subprocedures in an input-output sequence. Some of them may sometimes include 'bugs' or can even be ad hoc procedures made to match the input with the expected output, both of which can explain the observed incorrect responses.

**Authors:**

Maxime Cauté: CEA, Inserm, Université Paris-Saclay; Cassandra Potier-Watkins: CEA, Inserm, Université Paris-Saclay; Chenxi He: CEA, Inserm, Université Paris-Saclay; Stanislas Dehaene: CEA, Inserm, Université Paris-Saclay

Evaluating the comprehension of fractions in 6th to 10th grade using a graduated number line test

Young children are frequently exposed to mixed messages about the value of their effort: Educators talk about the importance of effort, but give rewards (e.g., grades) based on children’s achievement. How do these mixed messages about effort influence children’s motivation? Here, we presented 4- to 5-year-old children (N = 80) with an initial verbal message preaching about the importance of effort and generated mixed messages by rewarding participants either by their effort (consistent) or performance (inconsistent) across a series of visual search tasks. We found that children persisted longer on the immediate task, as well as on a novel, transfer task, when they received consistent versus inconsistent messages about effort. These findings suggest that consistent messages about the value of effort across modalities foster children’s persistence.

**Authors:**

Elaine Wang: Yale University; Mia Radovanovic: University of Toronto; Jessica Sommerville: University of Toronto; Julia Anne Leonard: Yale University

Practice what you preach: Consistent messages about the value of effort foster children's persistence

Humans are born with an intuitive representation of the physics world. How accurate is intuitive physics? Researchers from education focus on the failures, students' errors and misconceptions while cognitive psychologists argue humans anticipate and manipulate physical environments in ways betraying veridical knowledge of classical mechanics. One solution is to hypothesize there are distinct systems of “cognitive physics” with different limitations and deployment in the tasks favored by the two literatures. The goal of current study is to gather evidence from psychometric studies by estimating how many distinct factors explain performance on intuitive physics assessments. We build an augmented concept inventory including several previously-validated concept inventories, around 120 items. The pilot study indicated that participants recruited online from Prolific displayed expected accuracy on the tasks. We are now collecting around 1,000 participants and applying multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) analyzes to identify the latent structure.

**Authors:**

Wei Li: Boston College; Joshua K Hartshorne: Boston College

Latent Structure of Intuitive Physics

This study investigates metacognitive awareness among students, focusing particularly on 'subjective confidence' as a predictor of potential conceptual change. In our study, 132 eighth graders completed a basic number knowledge test and evaluated their confidence level for each answer. Our analysis revealed that metacognitive accuracy—the alignment of confidence levels with actual performance—was significantly related to academic achievement scores in the 'Two-Numbers Comparison' task (e.g., choosing the correct inequality such as '1/2 > 1/3' or '1/2 < 1/3'), but not in the 'Number Approximations' task (e.g., choosing the closest result to '21/10 + 60/31' from options such as 2, 4, 41, or 81). Additionally, we observed distinct behavioral patterns in response times: the 'Two-Numbers Comparison' task elicited rapid responses, whereas the 'Number Approximations' task resulted in slower, more reflective responses. In conclusion, our results indicate that metacognitive processes are more actively engaged during intuitive thinking compared to reflective thinking.

**Authors:**

Tomohito Yamazaki: Graduate School of Media and Governance; Mutsumi Imai: Faculty of Environment and Information Studies

Differential Metacognitive Activation in Intuitive versus Reflective Thinking in Classroom Assessment Test

Math affect (i.e., attitudes/beliefs about math) and feedback are predictors of mathematical performance. How these factors jointly influence cognition during mathematical problem-solving is less understood. A computer mouse-tracking task was used to assess math affect and computation ability of 78 undergraduate volunteers, before and after feedback (none; positive; negative). Positive affect toward math significantly predicted better accuracy on mathematical computations, but performance improved noticeably after positive feedback. This led to the question of whether or not feedback and affective components of math impact decision-making. Post-baseline, participants' ability to calculate the mathematical problems sped up significantly — evidence of a practice effect. Individuals with more negative attitudes toward math exhibited more indecision in their responses when they received feedback, whereas participants with more positive attitudes toward computation reduced their indecision after feedback. This suggests that feedback interacts with math affect in important ways, impacting in-the-moment cognitive processing during mathematical calculation.

**Authors:**

Shruti Kate: Kent State University; Peri Goldblatt: Kent State University; Katie Asaro: Kent State University; Giulia Borriello: Kent State University; Jennifer Roche: Kent State University

Interaction Between Mathematical Affect and Feedback During Mathematical Computation: A Computer Mouse-tracking Task

Feedback is a necessary component of learning. Yet, variable effects of feedback remain unclear. We tested two features of feedback that may alter a learner’s attention to the self and performance: (1) the modality of feedback—whether feedback is provided by a computer alone, in a hybrid fashion (computer with virtual person), or by a live person, and (2) the personalization of feedback—whether feedback contains the self-cue “you” or not. 6- to 8-year-old children (N = 150) completed a math task online via Zoom or in-person in lab. During the activity, children were assigned to different feedback conditions which varied both feedback modality and feedback personalization. Feedback modality was the only feature found to affect performance. In terms of children’s accuracy, there was an advantage to having feedback from a live person. However, live in person feedback also reduced strategy variability, suggesting that it decreased children’s exploratory problem-solving behaviors.

**Authors:**

Megan V Merrick: Indiana University - Bloomington; Emily R. Fyfe: Indiana University

The benefits of live in person feedback on children’s mathematics performance

Prior research on the effects of acoustic music on stress reduction and cognitive performance has produced inconsistent results. This study investigated this relationship by conducting a within-subject experiment involving fifty five college students. The experiment involved playing acoustic music during assessment tasks and measuring changes in perceived stress levels and cognitive performance in music and non-music conditions. Results showed no significant one-way impacts of acoustic music on stress levels or cognitive performance. However, the effect of music on stress levels mediated the relationship between perceived pleasantness of the music and change in cognitive performance in response to music. Listening to liked music may reduce stress, improving performance, while disliked music may increase stress to an optimal level, facilitating performance. Thus, the effect of music on performance depends on individual perceived pleasantness of the music. This study has implications for selecting music for specific purposes, such as relaxation or cognitive enhancement.

**Authors:**

Tsz-chung Ronald Chan: The University of Hong Kong; Ricky Van-yip Tso: The University of Hong Kong

The Effect of Music on College Students’ Stress Level and Cognitive Performance – Perceived Pleasantness of Music Makes the Difference

Laptops and smartphones are now commonplace in university classrooms, whereas in the past, the use of technology was reserved in front of professors or in a classroom environment. This has changed with the COVID-19 pandemic. As education turns to online learning, students can now learn independently. However, this presents difficulties, as a lack of self-discipline in technology usage can lead to more distractions. The paper examines the effects of the influence of these distractions with the help of two concepts similar to assignments in students' lives: a text comprehension \& memorization task, as well as a systematic work approach in which the function of an apparatus was to be tested and described. The results show no effect on understanding a text, but there is a decrease in the information learned. Furthermore, when working systematically, participants needed more trials to understand the scheme, performed more repetitions, and needed more proceeding time.

**Authors:**

Jenny Rettstatt: Chemnitz University of Technology; Daniel Brand: Chemnitz University of Technology; Marco Ragni: TU Chemnitz

Breaking Focus: The impact of disruptive distractions on academic task performance

Following the increasing use of graphs to communicate statistical information in social media and news platforms, the occurrence of poorly designed misleading graphs has also risen. However, previous research has been limited to examining only a few common misleading visual features of such graphs. Our study extends this research by examining the impact of 14 distinct misleading visual features across various graph types. We compared the deceptive potential of these features to identify those with the biggest potential to mislead viewers. Our findings indicate that misleading visual features significantly decreases viewers’ accuracy in interpreting data. While certain misleading visual features (e.g., inverted y-axis or manipulated time intervals) significantly impeded viewers’ accurate graph comprehension, other features (e.g., the use of pictorial bars or compressed y-axis) had little misleading impact. By identifying visual features that strongly affect graph understanding, we suggest that these features should be the focus of educational interventions.

**Authors:**

Jihyun Rho: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Martina A. Rau: University of Wisconsin - Madison; Shubham Kumar Bharti: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Rosanne Luu: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jeremy McMahan: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Andrew Wang: University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jerry Zhu: University of Wisconsin-Madison

Various Misleading Visual Features in Misleading Graphs: Do they truly deceive us?

In teleoperation, the spatiotemporal calibration of the system is likely to drive both performance and user experience, which may not necessarily be causally linked. This study asks if Sense of Embodiment (SoE) varies with spatiotemporal calibration of a teleoperated system, which in turn affects task performance. The concept of the embodiment illusion was originally defined in the well-known Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI), in which participants develop a sense of self-attribution over a surrogate. However, most SoE studies are passive and they do not represent a great paradigm to study the impact of calibration on SoE in active teleoperation. Therefore, we designed an active RHI in Mixed Reality where we manipulated both the spatial calibration (i.e., shifts) and visuo-proprioceptive synchronicity (i.e., temporal delay). We investigated 1) if this manipulation affected performance and proprioceptive mapping and 2) whether it affected a sense of embodiment and the perception of the setup as a mediator. We found a significant main effect of synchronicity, pointing to enhancement of the operator's calibration and encouraging sustained usage. Additionally, the definition of SoE is explored comprehensively, considering multiple tests to assay implicit and explicit dimensions of this calibration.

**Authors:**

Sara Falcone: Vassar College ; Jordan Taylor: Princeton University

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