Netherlands

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

CogSci 2024

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

The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was an in-person meeting held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands at the Postillion Hotel & Conference Centre.

**ON-DEMAND PROGRAM ACCESS AFTER THE CONFERENCE** 
Recordings of the invited program are now available. You can access them by clicking on the 'Schedule' icon on the left. Select view by week and navigate to the day and time slot of the recording you wish to view. Click on the time slot to access the recording.

Recordings available (click on each recording to view):

**Thursday, July 25** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Morgan Barense on Enhancing real-world event memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/17997/lecture/99084-dynamics-between-minds-and-the-environment) 
1000: [Gleitman Award Winner Isabelle Dautriche on Language Foundations: Insights from acquisition, communication, cognition, and more](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18000/lecture/99085-gleitman-talk) 
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture) 
1700: [Rumelhart Prize Presentation Speaker Alison Gopnik on Exploit, explore, empower: Three ages and three intelligences](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18028/lecture/99161-rp1-rumelhart-prize-presentation) 

**Friday, July 26** 
0900: [C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize Keynote Speaker Kia Nobre on Focusing in memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18035/lecture/99162-hp1-c-l-de-carvalho-heineken-prize-keynote-address) 
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration) 
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture) 
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture) 
1745: [Keynote Speaker Andrea E. Martin on Neural dynamics encode the structure and statistics of language](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18077/lecture/99271-neural-dynamics-encode-the-structure-and-statistics-of-language) 

**Saturday, July 27** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Gregor Schöner on How higher cognition emerges from the dynamics of strongly interacting neural populations](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18083/lecture/99273-dynamics-within-the-mind) 
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture) 
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture) 


#### **CogSci 2024 Program Book**
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**The Program Book can be downloaded [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yRVp1cBqRnAbdYi4GXWV_pZeyWNsRquv/view?usp=sharing).**

#### **Letter from the President**

Welcome to the 2024 Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Rotterdam! CogSci 2024 brings together a large community of cognitive scientists who have traveled here from around the world, as well as a smaller group of remote presenters. I would like to extend an especially warm welcome to our first-time CogSci meeting attendees, and hope that 
their experience inspires them to join our future meetings for many years to come.

I want to thank this year’s conference co-chairs, Larissa K Samuelson, Stefan Frank, Mariya Toneva, Allyson Mackey, and Eliot Hazeltine, for putting together an amazing series of invited talks and symposia around the theme of Dynamics of Cognition. The co-chairs also deserve credit for handling a record-breaking number of submissions and producing a truly exciting conference program 

Beyond the invited talks and symposia dedicated to this year’s conference theme, I would like to highlight the presentations and events honoring the 
Rumelhart, Elman, Gleitman and C .L . de Carvalho Heineken prize winners, including the Rumelhart reception on Thursday. As you may know, we are recording all of the invited talks and symposia, and all prize-winners’ talks, and will be making this content available after the conference. 

The Cognitive Science Society relies on the volunteer efforts of our Governing Board members who work on matters related to our membership; conference policies; diversity and inclusion, international, and outreach initiatives; prizes and much more. We welcome interest from Society members who would like to become more involved in what we do. The 
Society is deeply grateful to Rick Dale and Andrea Bender, who serve as editors of the two Society journals, Cognitive Science and Topics in Cognitive Science respectively. We especially acknowledge our editors’ generosity in donating their stipends each year to D&I and outreach efforts. 

This year’s Annual Meeting depends critically on the support of Marischal De Armond and his team at Podium Conference Specialists: Sharon Zwack, Cendrine De Vis, Sarah-Kate Burke, and Rachel Waller worked tirelessly to secure the venue and handled a multitude of logistical and organizational issues, from arranging coffee breaks and receptions to making sure that a huge number of posters fits comfortably into the available space. Finally, and importantly, I would like to acknowledge the Cognitive Science Society Executive Officer, Erica Wojcik, for managing the complex and ever expanding sphere of our Society’s activities.

I hope you enjoy this year’s meeting and the many different opportunities to engage with the vibrant community of cognitive scientists gathered here. I also hope you get a chance to explore the great city of Rotterdam with its many attractions, museums, restaurants and scenic views. If you’d like to talk more about our Society, or simply want to say hello, please stop by!

![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/3c66d0e21fff30e204df1138ffd15173.jpeg)

**Anna Papafragou** 
President, Cognitive Science 
Society 2023-2024

**CODE OF CONDUCT** 
By attending the CogSci 2024 Conference, you are required to adhere to the society’s [Code of Conduct](https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-6KkptF0Gn3ZYGJDlpqpwTdImw45Ng0/view?usp=drive_link).

**ABOUT THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SOCIETY** 
The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education.

The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.

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The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

poster

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

Visual engagement is not synonymous with learning in young children

Human perceivers are very sensitive to which way others are facing, with head and eye gaze cues capturing attention (when directed at us), orienting attention (when directed elsewhere), and even influencing downstream judgments about others’ social traits. But what causes us to see a shape as directed in the first place? Does the perception of a shape’s facing direction depend mainly on its internal structure — or might it also be influenced by spatial context? In Experiment 1, observers briefly viewed a randomly oriented oval and afterward used a circular slider to report which way they saw it as facing. A dot was always drawn near the oval — aligned with either its long or short symmetry axis. Observers were biased to see the oval as facing toward the dot, but this effect was much stronger when the dot was aligned with the oval’s long (vs. short) symmetry axis, indicating that external elements interact with a shape’s internal structure to determine its perceived facing direction. How automatic is this association between long-axis alignment and ‘towardness’? In Experiment 2, participants saw the same displays and now made speeded keypresses to indicate whether the oval’s long or short axis was aligned with the dot. In one block of trials, they pressed an anterior (further forward) key to report long-axis alignment and a posterior (further back) key to report short-axis alignment. In another block, they responded with opposite key-mappings. Participants responded faster in the block where an anterior key was paired with long-axis alignment and a posterior key with short-axis alignment, suggesting an automatic bias to see long-axis alignment as facing towards. We conclude that the perception of facing direction is driven by the interaction of internal structure and external context in a way that indicates the particular salience of long symmetry axes.

**Authors:**

Jiangxue Valentina Ning: The New School; Benjamin F. van Buren: The New School

Forging a head: how environmental elements influence the perception of a shape’s facing direction

This study investigated the impact of illusory contour clarity and surface representations on visual search for Kanizsa figures. Experiment 1 manipulated illusory contour clarity through inducer size, while Experiment 2 manipulated clarity by varying the number of arcs in the inducer pacman. Both experiments compared Kanizsa figures with non-illusory figures under the same manipulation conditions. The findings from both experiments suggested that illusory contour clarity did not significantly influence Kanizsa figure search performance, but rather suggested a Kanizsa advantage over non-illusory figures, underscoring the importance of surface representations. Experiment 3 explored the effects of surface alterations on Kanizsa figures and smoothed counterparts, and confirmed that surface alterations had discernible effects on visual search for Kanizsa illusory contours. The results indicated that visual search for Kanizsa illusory contours remained robust, unaffected by variations in illusory contour clarity, thereby emphasizing the role of surface representations in guiding visual search processes.

**Authors:**

Zorana Zupan: University of Belgrade; Dr Vasilije Gvozdenovic: UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE

Illusory Contour Clarity does not guide visual search but Surface Representations do

Categorization is a fundamental cognitive skill that spans the senses. Even so, most research has focused on categorization and category learning in the visual modality. As a result, it is not yet clear how modality influences the perceptual and cognitive processes supporting category learning. In two experiments, we tested whether category learning results in amodal or modality-specific representations. We found strong evidence for modality-specific representations with independent learning across modalities. These results highlight the need to look beyond vision when constructing and testing models categorization and category learning. These findings also contribute to the longstanding debate on the amodal/modal nature of human knowledge, which is of broad interest to the cognitive science community.

**Authors:**

Casey L Roark: University of New Hampshire

Perceptual Category Learning Results in Modality-Specific Representations

Viewers are sensitive to the distinction between visual events with an internal structure leading to a well-defined endpoint (bounded events) and events lacking this structure and a well-defined endpoint (unbounded events). Here, we asked whether boundedness could be represented in the auditory modality in a way similar to the visual modality. To investigate this question, we trained participants with visual and auditory events on bounded or unbounded event categories in a category identification task. Later, we tested whether they could abstract the internal temporal structure of events and extend the (un)boundedness category to new examples in the same modality. These fındings suggest that the principles and constraints that apply to the basic units of human experience in the visual modality have their counterparts in the auditory modality.

**Authors:**

Bahar Tarakçı: Özyeğin University; Ceren Barış: Özyeğin University; Ercenur Ünal: Özyeğin University

Boundedness is Represented in Visual and Auditory Event Cognition

Leveraging people’s proficiency in extracting summary statistics from ensembles, we conducted two studies in which we presented rating information from consumer feedback systems through color-coded icon arrays. The investigation aims to explore how different icon array arrangements (ascending, descending, random) influence decision making and average estimation across varying levels of ensemble means (average ratings) and ensemble sizes (review volume). Our results revealed four key insights: 1) Preferences for rating variance differed, particularly at the extremes of the average rating spectrum when ensembled were dominated by one or two rating categories. 2) Structured information yielded greater certainty in responses, with confidence increasing when the task setup aligned with task goals. 3) Ensemble size prompted individuals to adapt strategies based on contextual needs. 4) Unstructured presentations led to higher estimation accuracy, suggesting that a lack of structure may encourage heightened processing effort.

**Authors:**

Jingqi Yu: University of Toronto

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