Netherlands

Children learn nouns more readily than verbs in early development. Research on candidate explanations for this noun advantage has suggested that, while noun meanings can be easily gleaned from their observational contexts, verb meanings require access to their syntactic constructions, which remain inaccessible until later in development (Gentner, 2006; McDonough et al., 2011; Piccin &amp; Waxman, 2007). This study asks whether previous demonstrations of tenuous verb learning from their observational contexts are partly due to the assessment method. In an adapted version of the Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP; Gillette et al., 1999), we assessed verb learning using multiple tasks. When verb learning was assessed via a free-response task, learning was minimal, replicating the challenge of learning precise verb meanings via observational contexts. The findings from both a categorization and semantic similarity task, however, suggest that learners do acquire partial knowledge of both action and mental verbs via their observational contexts.

**Authors:**

Nina Schoener: University of California, Berkeley; Sumarga H. Suanda: University of Connecticut

CogSci 2024

Partial Verb Learning via Observational Contexts

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference.<br>
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

Join us!

<br>[**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/COgSci-PAAG-V2.pdf)
<br>[**The Detailed Program can be found here**](https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/mswz/)
<br><br>

#### **CogSci 2023 Program Book**
<iframe style="width:700px;height:400px" src="https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/tzgk/"  seamless="seamless" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" ></iframe>
<br>

CogSci 2023

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Children learn nouns more readily than verbs in early development. Research on candidate explanations for this noun advantage has suggested that, while noun meanings can be easily gleaned from their observational contexts, verb meanings require access to their syntactic constructions, which remain inaccessible until later in development (Gentner, 2006; McDonough et al., 2011; Piccin & Waxman, 2007). This study asks whether previous demonstrations of tenuous verb learning from their observational contexts are partly due to the assessment method. In an adapted version of the Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP; Gillette et al., 1999), we assessed verb learning using multiple tasks. When verb learning was assessed via a free-response task, learning was minimal, replicating the challenge of learning precise verb meanings via observational contexts. The findings from both a categorization and semantic similarity task, however, suggest that learners do acquire partial knowledge of both action and mental verbs via their observational contexts.

**Authors:**

Nina Schoener: University of California, Berkeley; Sumarga H. Suanda: University of Connecticut

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**<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**
<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**<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.

Social norms are often characterized as a system of rules that guide behavior. However, social norms also allow for flexibility; not entirely restricting individuals to one possible behavior. Here, we put forward an agent-based cognitive model that captures social norms as processes that are socially constructed through interactions between individuals. In this modelling work we formalize social norms as a process, with a focus on the role of social norm acquisition and on conformity bias in both action production and inference-making. This computational cognitive model allows us to think about social norms along three dimensions: individual versus collective, behavior versus belief, and subjective versus objective. Our simulation results show: (i) that an inconsistency in a social norm can arise between the individual and collective level, and (ii) that conformity bias in action production versus inference-making interacts with social norm emergence in intricate ways.

**Authors:**

Yue Chen: Radboud University; Tibor Bosse: Radboud University; Marieke Woensdregt: Radboud University

The Role of Hand Gestures on Emotional Intensity and Phenomenological Ratings of Autobiographical Narratives

This study investigates vocal congruence across populations with different gender identities. Forty-four participants completed a voice perception task in three conditions (Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, and Listening to their recorded voice) after reading gender-stereotyped priming texts. Our findings show that gender-expansive participants experience lower vocal congruence listening to their outer voice compared to cisgender participants, but they perceive inner voice as more congruent to the self. Results confirm the role of interoceptive awareness on general voice congruence perception, suggesting that it varies across gender identities. Further research is needed to deepen the relationship between inner experience and voice perception and to disentangle the reciprocal relationship between self-identity and self-voice perception.

**Authors:**

Chiara De Livio: Sapienza Univerisity of Rome; Claudia Mazzuca: Sapienza University of Rome; chiara fini: Sapienza University of Rome; Anna Borghi: Sapienza University of Rome

Perceived Vocal Congruence Varies Across Gender Identities

Virtual Reality (VR) can offer insights into realistic human defensive behavior. In the present work, we sought to elucidate the interplay between feelings and actions in VR-simulated threatening scenarios. Participants (n = 30) encountered various animal threats in VR during a fruit collection task. We retrospectively assessed participants’ feelings after each episode on several dimensions, namely valence, arousal, potency, surprise, and anxiety. As predictor variables, we included scenario characteristics, behavioral responses, and personality traits. Our results indicate that the primary determinants for subjective feelings except potency were ultimate survival, the availability of self-defense weapons, and the animals’ behavior (attack or not). No strong determinants for potency could be found. Notably, participants’ behavioral responses did not independently influence feelings reported later. These findings highlight VR’s potential in expanding our understanding of subjective feelings in threatening situations. Our research suggests that behavior and feelings in defensive situations might not be closely linked.

**Authors:**

Lukas Kornemann: University of Bonn; Ulises Daniel Serratos Hernandez: UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London; Jules Brochard: University of Bonn; Dominik R. Bach: University College London

Feelings and Actions in Threatening Virtual Reality Environments

This research studies how 24 experts in sport, music, and business were able to make successful and repeated career transitions to senior levels in their field. It examined – among other aspects – the roles of cognitive flexibility, personal intelligence, generative thinking, motivation, and contextual intelligence in career transitions. It also examined how identity changes and adapts during a career transition and how self concept evolves over the course of a career. 

In-depth interviews were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively and served as the basis for evaluating several theories of expertise, cognition, motivation, and intelligence. Key findings include: deliberate practice was rarely mentioned as a contributor to transitions; the early development of expertise in multiple domains contributed to its generalizability; transition expertise evolved over the course of a career; and self concept did not unfold in a linear progression of sequential stages as predicted by many theories in the field.

**Authors:**

Christopher Connolly: N/A; Fernand Gobet: London School of Economics and Political Science

Transition Expertise: A study of individuals who succeeded repeatedly in life and career transitions

Anxiety is measured using questionnaires including the GAD-7 and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) which lacks depth and can have difficulty capturing complex mental states. The present study consists of a GAD questionnaire, followed by 5 open-ended questions about anxiety each requiring 50-word responses. Frequency of emotion words and the frequency of first-person singular pronouns will be examined. Participants will then complete the emotional Stroop test, where they will click on the correct colour label of either an emotion word or a neutral word, ignoring the meaning of the word. Reaction times and accuracy are recorded. A positive correlation is predicted for anxiety and the frequency of emotion words and first-person pronouns, while a relationship between anxiety and slower reaction time and lower accuracy is predicted. Findings will contribute to our understanding about the relationship between emotion word processing and anxiety.

**Authors:**

Alina Hussain: University of Birmingham; Yaling Hsiao: University of Birmingham

What can language tell us about anxiety: A novel emotion Stroop task

While ample work has examined how to increase empathy within situational contexts, little research has focused on how the language used to communicate with others may elicit empathy. Here, we investigate how (Study 1) the degree of a narrator's culpability and (Study 2) narrative framing of personal narratives (focusing on experienced sensations, emotions, or neither) affects feelings of empathy reported by listeners. Across our two studies, 901 participants read narratives describing common life events, rated their empathy towards the narrator, and were given an option to write a response to the narrator. Our findings indicate that people report less empathy towards narrators that caused their misfortune, although their written responses were more focused on the narrator. By contrast, however, highlighting sensory or emotional details in a narrative did not significantly impact the degree of empathy reported by listeners, yet still affected the language of responses produced by listeners.

**Authors:**

Emma Gueorguieva: The University of Texas at Austin; Tatiana Lau: Toyota Research Institute; Eliana Hadjiandreou: University of Texas at Austin; Desmond Ong: The University of Texas at Austin

The Language of an Empathy-Inducing Narrative

Learning with dynamic facial expressions often results in higher face recognition performance than with static images. However, few studies have used both positive and negative facial expressions to investigate the effects of dynamic facial expression information on recognition memory. The present study examined whether the effect of dynamic facial expressions depends on the type of facial expression used during the learning and recognition phases. Participants viewed individuals with smiling or angry expressions in either static or dynamic images in a learning session. Participants then performed a recognition task using static images with neutral, angry, or smiling expressions. The results showed that when tested with the neutral static faces, the advantage of the dynamic expression was observed regardless of the facial expression during learning (Experiment 1). However, when tested with the angry static faces, the dynamic expression advantage was not observed, but the recognition performance was better for the faces learned with the angry static faces (i.e., identical to the faces in the recognition task) (Experiment 2). In the recognition task with the static smiling faces, the advantage of dynamic expression was again observed in addition to the emotion congruency effect (i.e., better performance for the faces learned with the smiling expression) (Experiment 3). These results suggest that the effect of dynamic facial expression information on recognition depends on the type of facial expression during learning and recognition.

**Authors:**

Mika Wakui: Waseda University; Kae Mukai: Waseda University; Chihiro Saegusa: Kao Corporation; Haruko Sugiyama: Kao Corporation; Yoko Tsuchiya: Kao Corporation; Misaki Kawashima: Kao Corporation.; Katsumi Watanabe: Waseda University

Effects of Dynamic Facial Expressions of Positive and Negative Emotions on Recognition Memory

Much of social cognition involves reasoning about others’ minds: predicting their reactions, inferring their feelings, and explaining their behavior. By representing mental contents like beliefs, desires, and emotions, Bayesian theory of mind models have made progress in capturing how humans manage these cognitive feats. But social life is not merely observation: humans must also plan to intervene on these same mental contents. The present work models how people choose interventions to influence others’ emotions. Building on a prior model of people’s intuitive theory of emotions, we model how people use their intuitive theory to evaluate and simulate the effects of different interventions. We apply our model to data from behavioral experiments requiring counterfactual and joint interventions, and show a close alignment with human choices. Our results provide a step towards a potentially unifying explanation for emotion prediction and intervention, suggesting that they could arise from the same underlying generative model.

**Authors:**

Tony Chen: MIT; Sean Dae Houlihan: Dartmouth; Kartik Chandra: MIT; Josh Tenenbaum: MIT; Rebecca Saxe: MIT

Intervening on Emotions by Planning Over a Theory of Mind

We investigated whether inner language enhances memory for events in a naturalistic, non-verbal task where participants constructed simple models from memory after watching an instructional video. Across three experiments, we used linguistic suppression to manipulate access to language and tested its effect on overall memory performance. Results showed that access to inner language consistently affected event memory: when inner language was disrupted at encoding, participants were poorer at recalling the models and remembered fewer events. Critically, the effect of linguistic suppression on memory performance was greater than a control secondary task that did not affect access to language (i.e., poorer performance was not solely due to dual-task effects). These findings support the proposal that inner language enhances event memory via a mechanism of linguistic bootstrapping, which in turn extends theories of event memory and adds to a growing body of evidence that inner language is a highly valuable cognitive tool.

**Authors:**

Louise Connell: Maynooth University; Briony Banks: Lancaster University

Access to inner language enhances memory for events

Does linguistic framing shape memory for consequential events? An influential study by Loftus and Palmer (1974) found that people estimated higher speeds when asked how fast the vehicles involved in an accident were going when they smashed (vs. hit) each other. This finding has proven difficult to replicate, however. Based on a key difference between the original study and previous replications, as well as recent work on linguistic framing, we hypothesized that verbal elaboration and pragmatic inference might moderate this classic effect. In two experiments (N = 1204), participants viewed a brief car accident video. They either wrote a verbal description of the event or did not before answering the verb-framed speed question. Participants who wrote longer descriptions and inferred a greater difference in intensity between the two verb frames were less likely to show the expected framing effect. These findings advance our understanding of how suggestive language influences recollections.

**Authors:**

Kevin J. Holmes: Reed College; Lena Kassin: Reed College; Stephen Flusberg: Vassar College

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