Netherlands

We make aesthetic judgments on a daily basis; while we think of these judgments as highly personal, they are often shaped by social context. This poses a computational problem: how do we combine social and individual cues to produce a single evaluation? Here, we test different interfaces of social information in online experiments to examine the dynamics of social influence and compare them against an ideal model that inversely weighs cues by their noisiness. We find that social information has a significant effect on evaluation, but with varying strength across interfaces. We also find that the ideal model vastly overestimates the weights placed on social information in all conditions, suggesting that integration of social cues into aesthetic evaluations cannot be sufficiently explained as signal-noise reduction. These results suggest a more detailed understanding of aesthetic evaluations, with implications for the integration of social information into subjective judgments more broadly.

**Authors:**

Yoko Urano: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics; Raja Marjieh: Princeton University; Tom Griffiths: Princeton University ; Nori Jacoby: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

CogSci 2024

The Influence of Social Information and Presentation Interface on Aesthetic Evaluations

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** 
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

We present a neural process model of visual analogical mapping that receives image inputs and responds by spatially selecting a matching object to a cued object. The relational structure of the base scene is stored such that the arguments of each relation are specified, allowing mappings that take structural correspondence into account to be made and represented as proposed by the structure-mapping theory (Gentner, 2003). All the processes in the model emerge out of coupled differential equations modeling neural population activation dynamics. The model accounts for the developmental change in mappings made in the presence of a featural distractor by manipulating how well the model can maintain attention given to relevant feature/relation dimensions, a manipulation that is compatible with experimental results suggesting inhibitory control as a key factor explaining the difference in mapping (Richland, Morri-
son, & Holyoak, 2006).

Gentner, D. (2003). Why we’re so smart. In Gentner, Dedre & Goldin-Meadow, Susan (Eds.), Language in mind: Advances in the study of language and thought. (pp. 195–235). Boston Review. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4117.001.0001
Richland, L. E., Morrison, R. G., & Holyoak, K. J. (2006). Children’s development of analogical reasoning: Insights from scene analogy problems. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 94(3), 249–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2006.02.002

**Authors:**

Minseok Kang: Ruhr-Universität Bochum ; Daniel Sabinasz: Institut für Neuroinformatik; Gregor Schöner: Ruhr-Universität Bochum

A Neural Process Model of Structure Mapping Accounts for Children’s Development of Analogical Mapping by Change in Inhibitory Control

Relational discovery was investigated with a classical Bongard problems. The arrangement of the instances was varied to facilitate the discovery of the correct or wrong relation in the first comparison. Irrelevant to-the-task arousal between the two comparisons of the categories facilitates the discovery of the relation when the first comparison generates the correct relation. When the wrong relation is highlighted first, arousal slows the overall encoding time. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that attention enhances dominant representation, and highlight the need to reconsider the facilitative role of attention in relational discovery as it is based on multiple comparisons.

**Authors:**

Penka Hristova: New Bulgarian University; Nina Dimitrova: New Bulgarian University

Attention Due to Arousal Can Both Hinder and Facilitate the Discovery of Relations

Analogical reasoning is one of the most common ways individuals bring previous experience to bear on unfamiliar situations. Most theories describe this process as a structured comparison that involves mapping the relational properties between a familiar source and unfamiliar target. This both allows the transfer of useful inferences from the source to the target and highlights the common structure shared by both analogs, represented by an abstract schema. This schema can help with identifying and reasoning about structurally similar situations in the future. While researchers have studied how
representations of source and target analogs undergo alterations as a result of this mapping process, little attention has been paid to how the abstract schemas thought to guide future analogical reasoning might similarly change with use. We explore this question in two experiments and present evidence that suggests abstract schemas do indeed drift under certain conditions.

**Authors:**

Richard Vagnino: University of California San Diego; Caren M. Walker: University of California San Diego

Schema Drift: Relational Concept Stability Across Repeated Comparison

A common narrative about creativity is that diversity gives rise to unconventional and novel ideas, while analogical reasoning studies suggest that similarity could also facilitate creativity. To resolve this paradox, we hypothesized that similarity can be conducive to creativity through facilitating relational thinking. We empirically tested this with 66 typically-developing Chinese children (M = 6.04 years, SD = .28) who were randomly assigned to compare either high-similarity or low-similarity stimulus pairs. Afterwards, all children completed a divergent thinking task and received scores on fluency, originality, and usefulness. Preliminary t-test and correlational analyses showed that children comparing high-similarity pairs reported more alignable differences, though this effect was only significant for surface alignable differences. Contrary to our expectation, the effect of the comparison task did not influence children’s creativity measures. This informs us that perhaps only relational thinking pertaining to structural features is relevant to creativity.

**Authors:**

Chanhee Koo: Tsinghua University; Honghong Bai: Radboud University; Aoxin Luo: Tsinghua University; Stella Christie: Tsinghua University

How does comparing (dis)similar objects affect young children’s creative idea generation? Exploring the role of diversity in facilitating creativity

Computerised technology is an increasingly popular tool for cognitive testing with non-human animals and has numerous benefits, such as tighter control over stimuli presentation and recording responses. Recently, virtual environment (VE) software has been successfully implemented in cognitive research with non-human primates. In VEs, novel stimuli can be presented in innovative ways allowing us to study phenomena in novel ways unrestricted by real-world space. We present evidence from capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella) in a delayed-response task within a VE presented on a touchscreen. We compared capuchins’ short-term memory performance between a VE task and an equivalent physical task. Preliminary data shows an effect of delay on accuracy in the VE, as in the physical task. We show that VE are a feasible method for studying cognition with capuchin monkeys, offering an engaging way to study primate cognition in without the physical constraints that are often present when designing apparatuses.

**Authors:**

Andreea Miruna Miscov: University of St Andrews; Emma McEwen: University of St Andrews; Amanda Seed: University of St Andrews

Virtually anything can happen: investigating short-term memory in capuchin monkeys using virtual environments

Several studies showed that humans are incredibly accurate at extracting simple statistical information from noisy datasets, such as judging the linear trends of scatterplots. Crucially, these intuitions might serve as one of the building blocks of both graphical and mathematical skills. However, we do not know if such abilities are specific to our species or if they can be found in other animals as well. We tested several guinea baboons on a trend judgment task in which they had to judge whether linear trends (both noisy and noiseless) were increasing or decreasing. We show that they can and that they behave strikingly similarly to humans: they seem to base their judgment on the t-value of the graph, which is the index that a statistician would calculate to measure the significance of the linear relationship in the dataset. These findings suggest that the ability to extract statistical information from visual noise is not available only to humans.

**Authors:**

Lorenzo Ciccione: Collège de France - PSL University

The statistician baboon: papio papio’s understanding of noisy linear patterns

This study investigated heart rate synchronization (synchronized arousal) between performers and audience in a real-life dance battle. Although similar phenomena have been observed in some rituals, no studies have been conducted on art performances, such as dance and music. We organized a dance battle and measured the heart rate of both the dancers and the audience during the actual performance. The degree of heart rate synchronization was calculated using cross-recurrence plot/cross-recurrence quantification analysis. The results show that 1) heart rate synchronization between the dancers and audience does occur in dance battles, 2) the degree of heart rate synchronization varies depending on the social relationship between the dancers and audience, and 3) the degree of heart rate synchronization dynamically changes as the performance progresses. These findings suggest that embodied, physiological, and social aspects are involved in the process of performance sharing and appreciation.

**Authors:**

Daichi Shimizu: Graduate School of Human Development and Environment; Shuhei Tsuchida: Ochanomizu University; Ayumi Ohnishi: Kobe University; Tsutomu Terada: Kobe University; Masahiko Tsukamoto: Kobe University

Dynamics and Sociality of Synchronized Arousal between Dancer and Audience in Breakdance Battle Scenes

This study delves into the dynamics of dyadic communication within a predefined acting scenario by analyzing how the utterance and behavior of paired participants change over time and influence each other. Assigned specific roles and objectives within this preset context, participants focus on and verbalize each other's actions. Prior research, which compared verbal characteristics between professional actors and novices, underlines the importance of shifting focus from self to partner in attaining naturalistic performances, referring to authentic communication in an acting setting. The present study incorporates pose estimation into the video analysis of acting training, assessing behavioral dynamics in a natural state. By extracting the correlations in movement changes of the paired participants during role-playing, the dynamic process of interaction in a specific context is traced, elucidating how natural performances develop through intensive mutual attention and interaction. Additionally, examining concurrent changes in utterance provides insights into the reasons behind behavioral changes. Overall, this research not only sheds light on the nuances of performing arts training but also makes a contribution to the broader understanding of action patterns and communication dynamics within specific social roles and interactions.

**Authors:**

Jingyan Sun: The University of Tokyo; Takeshi Okada: The University of Tokyo

Exploring the Dynamics of Dyadic Communication and Performance in Acting Training

Category learning, a critical cognitive process where entities are grouped based on feature similarity, often requires selective attention to discern feature relevance. Unlike adults, who focus on diagnostic features, children show distributed attention to multiple features, likely due to immature cognitive control and limited working memory. Especially, previous studies suggest working memory is needed to maintain an attentional map for selective attention. The present study investigated its interplay with selective attention during category learning development through an experiment with adult participants (N = 71) under a working memory load, mimicking children's working memory capacity. Results indicated that under this load, participants displayed more distributed attention and less differentiated feature memory than those without the load, demonstrating that working memory constraints lead to diffused attention. This finding provides causal evidence that working memory limits result in distributed attention in category learning, underscoring its crucial role in category learning development.

**Authors:**

Qianqian Wan: Ohio State University

A Causal Link between Working Memory Capacity and Attention Distribution in Category Learning

Creators and consumers of popular media for kids tend to
equate children’s sustained attention with learning (Gahan,
2022). Here, we demonstrate that greater sustained visual at-
tention does not necessarily translate to better learning—and in
fact may predict learning deficits in some cases. We present the
results of an empirical eye tracking study in which we demon-
strate that attentionally captivating material can lead to worse
learning with greater attentional capture, likely due to either
distraction or overstimulation. Children who engaged most
during a word-learning task learned the fewest word-object
associations when they were presented on a colorful, moving
background. These results support theories that suggest atten-
tional capture due to perceptual attractors (e.g., things that are
”bright, shiny”) can disrupt learning. This work underscores
the importance of the quality of screen-based media when con-
sidering the potential harms of children’s screen time.

**Authors:**

Sarah Stolp Shepherd: University of California, Berkeley; Celeste Kidd: University of California, Berkeley

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