Netherlands

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

CogSci 2024

Visual engagement is not synonymous with learning in young children

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

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

Risk Communication with Icon Arrays in Online Decision Making

When making financial forecasts, individuals often overreact to recent information, as consistently observed in both laboratory studies with naïve participants and professional consensus real-world forecasting. Current models attribute this overreaction to either an overestimation of recent information or memory constraints favoring more accessible information. An alternative explanation suggests individuals accurately integrate all available information into their mental posterior probability distribution for forecasting, but are unable to directly access this distribution, leading to dependence on approximation methods such as sampling. Local sampling algorithms have received recent support in other forecasting contexts, and may introduce overreaction as a consequence of a starting point bias. By reanalyzing existing data from a price prediction task with a random walk price series, we observe increasing variability in predicted values and forecast errors as the horizon expands. Employing this heightened variability and overreaction, we differentiate between competing explanations for the observed forecasting behavior.

**Authors:**

Yuqi Zhou: University of Warwick; Jian-Qiao Zhu: Princeton University; Jake Spicer: University of Warwick; Adam Sanborn: University of Warwick

Unraveling Overreaction in Expectations: Leveraging Cognitive Sampling Algorithms in Price Prediction Tasks

How do verbally reported feelings relate to learning from outcomes in the environment? Prediction errors—differences between expectations and outcomes—are key in models of learning across humans, animals, and machines. Historically, the emphasis has been on outcomes in the environment (e.g., money or food), focusing relatively less on the fact that humans can also report correspondingly expected and experienced affect (e.g., feelings). Recent research suggests that these expected and experienced feelings, including prediction errors, can explain behavior beyond outcomes in the environment alone. However, the properties of affective prediction errors underlying this explanatory power are unknown. We address this gap across three studies. We start by documenting that affective prediction errors can decrease over time (Study 1). We show that such decreases transfer across tasks (Study 2) and depend on introspection (Studies 1& 2). Crucially, decreases in affective prediction errors generally occurred independent of changes in behavior (Study 3).

**Authors:**

Marius C Vollberg: University of Amsterdam

Properties and predictiveness of affective prediction errors

Curiosity has been suggested to reflect a drive for learning and to constitute a learning opportunity signal. If rational, curiosity should incorporate the reliability of the information source: more credible sources should instill more curiosity and learning. We tested these hypotheses in a lab experiment (n = 23) and online replication (n = 64), where we randomly assigned 100 zoology trivia questions and answers to one of three different sources claimed to be .99, .90 and .75 valid, respectively. Participants rated their curiosity for each source-indicated answer, read the answers, rated their credibility, and then took a retest on the questions. We found that indicated source credibility significantly affected curiosity ratings yielding an average of .56z,.22z and -.78z, respectively. Similarly, response update (learning) increased with 87% (exp 1) and 67% (exp 2) per z-score rated credibility (both p < 10-18). Manipulated source credibility thus influenced both curiosity and updating.

**Authors:**

Linus Holm: University of Umeå; Paul Schrater: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Felix Thiel: Department for Psychology

Curiosity act as a rational learning opportunity signal: information source credibility predicts curiosity and trivia fact learning

Conventions can be defined as arbitrary and self-sustaining practices that emerge in a population and facilitate solving coordination problems. A recent study (Formaux et al. 2021) traced the formation of simple conventions in captive baboons in a touch-screen-based colour-matching ‘game’. We replicated this task with human pairs under different conditions (with/without visual access to the partner’s screen; with/without prior information on the task structure) to assess their effects on the formation and stability of conventions. We found that more information delayed the formation of conventions (arbitrary rankings of colours that determined choices in any given colour-pairing). Interestingly, pairs maintained their conventions even when given visual access to their partner’s screen, despite the availability of an alternative, potentially simpler, cognitive strategy. We hypothesise that these differences may be rooted in the extent to which human subjects are prompted to employ cognitively less or more
sophisticated processes in coordination tasks.

**Authors:**

Oviya Mohan: University of Rochester; Dora Biro: University of Rochester

Experimental Emergence of Conventions in Humans: Emergence, stability and cognitive implications

The bystander effect suggests that people are less likely to assist in an emergency when others are present. Traditional theoretical accounts attribute this effect to top-down reflective processes, such as the diffusion of responsibility. However, recent research has proposed a two-system approach, suggesting that an individual's initial response to an emergency is personal distress and avoidance, which is further amplified by the presence of bystanders. In this study, we embed the two-system approach into an evidence accumulation model and argue that a higher distress and avoidance response causes slower evidence accumulation. We conducted a reaction time experiment where participants got exposed to faces or control stimuli and had to judge if a scene was dangerous. Our results confirm our hypothesis: Individuals exposed to faces had slower evidence accumulation for dangerous decisions. These findings contribute to a mechanistic understanding of how the anticipated bystander presence can influence early reflexive reactions to emergencies.

**Authors:**

Chris M. Stolle: Lingnan University; Yi Huang: Lingnan University

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

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