Netherlands

Cognitive offloading becomes increasingly essential with the advancement of AI-powered technology, as it helps to free up mental resources and optimize overall performance. To better understand how children offload cognitive resources to external intelligent agents, the present study attempted to examine children’s use of social cognitive offloading in a working memory task. Children completed a working memory task that involved remembering 5 or 7 colored circles. We investigated whether and how children’s working memory performance changed in the presence of a virtual agent who always remember two of the colors within a trial (that children could ask for help with). Results showed that starting at age 6, children’s memory performance benefited from the introduction of a virtual agent, however, evidence suggested that children may not yet exhibit a strategic labor division with the agent.

**Authors:**

Chen Cheng: the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Hongdian Zhang: the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

CogSci 2024

Two heads are better than one: Six-year-olds’ use of social cognitive offloading in working memory

### Welcome to CogSci Conference 2025!

The 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was a hybrid meeting held in San Francisco. 

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#### About

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.

#### Our History 

* **Society Creation**<br>
The Society was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional organization in Massachusetts in 1979. The organizing committee included Roger Schank, Allan Collins, Donald Norman, and a number of other scholars from psychology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. 
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* **Conference Creation**<br>
The first conference on cognitive science was held at La Jolla, California in August, 1979, and has occurred annually since then. The proceedings of each conference are published, and those from most years are available through Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. The annual proceedings of the Cognitive Science Conference represent a major source of information on new work and new ideas in the scientific study of thinking. In 1990, the Society, with help from an anonymous donor, established the David Marr Prize for the best student paper at each annual meeting.
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* **Journal Creation**<br>
The Journal, Cognitive Science, began publication in 1976, and is now published by Wiley-Blackwell. The Executive Editor is currently Richard P. Cooper of Birkbeck, University of London, and there are 18 Associate Editors and a 30-member editorial board. It serves as the premier outlet for research reports that intersect two or more disciplines. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society. The Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society voted in late 2006 to found a new journal, Topics in Cognitive Science (topiCS). The Editor in Chief is Wayne Gray, Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The journal seeks to fill a niche not occupied by Cognitive Science Journal or other cognitive science journals. Membership in the Society includes a subscription to Cognitive Science and TopiCS. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society.
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#### Code of Conduct

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CogSci 2025

The 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

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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**<br>
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**<br>
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)<br>
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)<br>
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Friday, July 26**<br>
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)<br>
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration)<br>
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Saturday, July 27**<br>
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)<br>
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture)<br>


#### **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**<br>
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**<br>
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.

Across two experiments, we presented children (N = 168; 3 to 6 years) with a memory task in which three targets were hidden sequentially before a search period. In both experiments, younger children were significantly more likely to first search for the last target hidden (in line with the recency effect), whereas older children were significantly more likely to first search for the first target hidden (in line with the primacy effect). In a separate test phase where some but not all targets were were externally marked, younger children were biased towards selecting the marked target first, whereas older children were significantly more likely to search for unmarked targets before marked targets (thus reducing the time spent maintaining the location of the unmarked targets in memory). These results indicate marked shifts in young children’s ordered memory recall tendencies, much earlier in development than suggested by previous research.

**Authors:**

Lily S Dicken: University of Queensland; Thomas Suddendorf: University of Queensland; Kristy L Armitage: The University of Queensland; Jonathan Redshaw: University of Queensland

Developmental Origins of Ordered Memory Recall Tendencies

Infant word learning is a crucial process that is of great importance to early development. Indeed, delays in early word learning are linked to poor language and educational outcomes, including Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). However infant word learning is highly variable, and the correlates of successful and delayed early word learning are not well understood. Here, we examine the role of individual temperament in word learning, examining the dynamic interplay between category interest, general curiosity, willingness to engage, and motivated word learning in a novel word learning task, using changes in infant pupil diameter as the measurement. Preliminary data suggests category interest to be of key import to early word learning, supporting previous findings from Ackermann et al (2020). We also find differences in personality contribute to word learning, suggesting that the variability in infant word learning might be related to individual differences.

**Authors:**

Samuel Forbes: Durham University; Lucy Elizabeth Edgar: Durham University; Shuai Shao: Bard College

Pupil dynamics open eyes to links between word learning and interest

The productivity of the human mind is rooted in the ability to flexibly combine concepts and computations. Developmental origins of this ability remain poorly understood. In two looking-time experiments, we investigated whether 15-month-olds (N = 48) can learn two distinct functions and compose them. We used a tool that transformed objects: it had two functions (i.e., it changed the kind of the object that went inside, or duplicated it), each triggered by a different handle. Experiment 1 showed that infants could learn both functions: at test, they looked longer when the outcome of the handle manipulation did not match the performed action than when it did. In Experiment 2, following a familiarization with individual manipulations and their outcomes, both manipulations were performed simultaneously at test. Infants displayed surprise when the outcome was inconsistent with a function composition. Infants readily learn two novel functions and spontaneously combine their outcomes.

**Authors:**

Barbara Pomiechowska: Univeristy of Birmingham; Erno Teglas: Central European University; Agnes Kovacs: Central European University

Function composition in human infants: 15-month-olds spontaneoulsy combine two newly learned functions of a tool

Compositionality is a core property of language: the meaning of sentences is derived from the meanings of individual words and rules for combining their meanings (Partee, 1984). Human adults have been shown to make compositional generalizations across many domains such as language, visual concept learning, and sequence learning. Few studies have investigated conceptual compositionality in young children. In two experiments with English-speaking 5- to 8-year-old children who have not been exposed to Chinese characters, we found that after a brief training session, they were able to generalize the newly learned radical-meaning pairs to new characters compositionally. Our results suggest that by age 5, children can make meaningfully compositional generalizations.

**Authors:**

Min Tang: University of California, Berkeley; Rongzhi Liu: University of Chicago; Fei Xu: UC Berkeley

Compositionality in Chinese Characters: Evidence from English-speaking Children

A set of fundamental principles governs our reasoning about objects since infancy: solidity, continuity, and contact. Past studies have shown that adults can revise these principles given a small amount of counterevidence. However, how far would they generalize their revised beliefs? In the present experiments, we demonstrate that given a diverse set of counterevidence, adults changed their behaviors in subsequent maze games. These results demonstrate that adults can generalize their revised beliefs about the core object principles to a completely different virtual environment.

**Authors:**

Rongzhi Liu: University of Chicago; Fei Xu: UC Berkeley

Violations of Core Object Principles Change Adults’ Behaviors in Maze Games

Young children often struggle with reasoning based on abstract relations, which is crucial for learning and thinking. Research has shown that children's relational reasoning abilities can be enhanced under certain circumstances. The underlying reasons and mechanisms behind such enhancement, however, remain unclear. This study examined the effectiveness of explanation, a recently discovered method, in enhancing children's relational reasoning abilities. Seventy-one 4- and 5-year-old children participated in a modified Relational Match to Sample (RMTS) task. Some children interacted with an experimenter who demonstrated relational matches and engaged in question-answer sessions, while others completed the task without such active exploration. Results indicated that children who observed demonstrations and provided explanations or reports showed a higher proportion of relational matches compared to those who completed the task without such active exploration. Furthermore, explanation was more effective than report in promoting children's relational reasoning. These findings suggest that interactive experiences that encourage active exploration contribute to the development of children's relational thinking skills.

**Authors:**

Jiyue Yang: University of Macau; Yu Han: University of Macau; Sophia W Deng: Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Show me, don’t teach me: Active exploration promotes children’s relational reasoning

Although children are on the receiving end of pedagogical questions (asked with an intent to teach) and information-seeking questions (asked with an intent to seek information), little is known about how children differentiate between the two types of questions. Here, we tested if parents spontaneously modulate their prosody when asking pedagogical as opposed to information- seeking questions. To test this, we asked 35 parent- child pairs to engage in a learning game where parents were asking questions while being in the role of a teacher (pedagogical) or in the role of a student (information- seeking). Next, 128 naïve listeners judged the questions produced by parents. We found that naïve listeners could reliably differentiate the two types of questions on the basis of prosody alone. This finding highlights the importance of prosody as a mechanism for communicating pedagogical intent in parent-child interactions.

**Authors:**

Igor Bascandziev: Harvard University; Patrick Shafto: Rutgers University - Newark; Elizabeth Bonawitz: Harvard University

Parents modify their prosody when asking questions with pedagogical intent

Studies suggest that infants track others’ beliefs based on visual information (Baillargeon & Scott., 2017 but see Dörrenberg, Rakoczy, Liszkowski, 2018). However, research targeting whether infants understand that others’ beliefs can be induced via communication is scarce, although most of the human belief-repertoire is acquired via communication. We presented eighteen-month-olds (Experiment1: N=34; Experiment2- replication: N=35) with a false belief scenario where the initial belief was induced via communication, aiming to measure their informative pointing (for an agent mistaken about a toy’s location compared to a true belief scenario). Instead of more pointing to the toy’s current location, in the FB condition we found an unexpected ‘altercentric’ effect (pointing to the earlier location of the toy -FB location). Next, we asked whether infants show different altercentric effects for visually induced beliefs (Experiment 3: N=35). Results replicated the altercentric effect, and were somewhat stronger, suggesting a potentially stronger encoding of visually induced beliefs.

**Authors:**

Bartug Celik: Central European University; Agnes Kovacs: Central European University

Communication-based belief attribution: Do infants encode better others’ beliefs induced via communication or the ones induced via visual cues?

Team coordination is essential for effective team performance during critical and stressful events. To better understand processes and states involved at multiple levels of team coordination, we assessed the correspondence between low- and high-level team coordination in teams participating in simulation-based medical team training. We computed a measure of low-level team coordination with Multidimensional Recurrence Quantification Analysis, applied to arm movement, PPG, and EDA data. High-level team coordination was captured by annotating video recordings for explicit and implicit, information and action coordination. Three linear mixed-effects model were run, each predicting a type of low-level coordination, based on high-level coordination annotations, accounting for multiple observations per team. Our findings showed that, compared to periods without annotated coordination, explicit or implicit information coordination corresponded to significantly different low-level team coordination across all modalities. Further research is required to assess additional factors related to the temporal variability observed in low-level team coordination.

**Authors:**

Kyana van Eijndhoven: Tilburg University; Travis J. Wiltshire: Tilburg University; Josette M.P. Gevers: Eindhoven University of Technology; Elwira A. Hałgas: Eindhoven University of Technology; Annemarie Fransen: Máxima Medisch Centrum

Multi-level Team Coordination Dynamics during Simulation-Based Medical Team Training

Interpersonal synchrony is a foundation of social interaction. However, as a form of coordination, synchrony is limited to regular and rhythmic actions, and may not generalise to more variable social behaviour. In response, the current research considers the effects of social factors on a complimentary form of coordination, complexity matching. In social contexts, complexity matching occurs when measures of individual behavioural variability become aligned. Here we explored whether social factors known to influence interaction, specifically interdependence and social anxiety, impact complexity matching. In pairs, participants completed four walking trials that manipulated interdependence while their gait patterns were captured. While we found evidence that social anxiety had a detrimental effect on behavioural variability, when considering complexity matching, only a consistent trend was apparent. Trends associated with interdependence hinted at effects for both variability and complexity matching but await further data. The results are discussed with respect to theories of interpersonal dynamics.

**Authors:**

Amber Jade Brown: University of Western Australia; Margaret Catherine Macpherson: Macquarie University; Lynden K. Miles: University of Western Australia

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