Netherlands

Traditional event cognition research typically characterises events as continuous, each bounded by a single beginning and a single ending. Daily events, however, often seem to involve discontinuities. For instance, if one is in a meeting that is temporarily interrupted by a phone call, one retains two events—the meeting and the phone call—rather than three, which include the meeting before the phone call, the phone call itself, and the meeting subsequent to the call. This study explores what binds events together across these discontinuities in everyday life. We examined five potential binding factors: place, people, topic, activity, and goal. Fifty-one participants provided data on recent non-contiguous daily life events, revealing that 97% of these events were tied by the &#39;Activity&#39; aspect, followed by the &#39;Place&#39; aspect (82%) and &#39;Goal&#39; aspect (56%). &#39;People&#39; (48%) and &#39;Topic&#39; aspects (24%) were less significant in unifying non-contiguous events. The proportion of each event aspect in non-contiguous events suggests a need to expand theories of event cognition to focus on what brings events together rather than solely on what separates them—a perspective often overlooked in cognitive event theories.

**Authors:**

Viviana Sastre Gomez: The University of Melbourne; Rebecca Defina: University of Melbourne; Paul Michael Garrett: University of Melbourne; Jeffrey M. Zacks: Washington University in Saint Louis; Simon Dennis: The University of Melbourne

CogSci 2024

What binds non-contiguous events together?

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.

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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** 
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**ABOUT THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SOCIETY** 
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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.

Traditional event cognition research typically characterises events as continuous, each bounded by a single beginning and a single ending. Daily events, however, often seem to involve discontinuities. For instance, if one is in a meeting that is temporarily interrupted by a phone call, one retains two events—the meeting and the phone call—rather than three, which include the meeting before the phone call, the phone call itself, and the meeting subsequent to the call. This study explores what binds events together across these discontinuities in everyday life. We examined five potential binding factors: place, people, topic, activity, and goal. Fifty-one participants provided data on recent non-contiguous daily life events, revealing that 97% of these events were tied by the 'Activity' aspect, followed by the 'Place' aspect (82%) and 'Goal' aspect (56%). 'People' (48%) and 'Topic' aspects (24%) were less significant in unifying non-contiguous events. The proportion of each event aspect in non-contiguous events suggests a need to expand theories of event cognition to focus on what brings events together rather than solely on what separates them—a perspective often overlooked in cognitive event theories.

**Authors:**

Viviana Sastre Gomez: The University of Melbourne; Rebecca Defina: University of Melbourne; Paul Michael Garrett: University of Melbourne; Jeffrey M. Zacks: Washington University in Saint Louis; Simon Dennis: The University of Melbourne

poster

Research in event cognition highlights the crucial role of event segmentation in shaping perceptions and memories. Anticipation of event boundaries is influenced by characteristic duration, often assumed to follow normal distributions in daily events. This study replicates recent investigations into event duration using a nightly segmentation approach with continuously captured daily images. Forty-one participants collected images over fourteen days, segmenting them into events. Event durations for various activities were modelled using truncated normal, exponential, gamma, and an exponential-truncated normal mixture model. Our findings align with prior research in event distribution revealing that overall, an exponential or gamma distribution provides a superior fit compared to a truncated normal distribution. Notably, events like sleeping/napping displayed a bimodal distribution, best characterised by a mixture model of exponential and normal components. This suggests that while some pre-planned events have characteristic durations, most daily events lack discernible signs of such durations.

**Authors:**

Viviana Sastre Gomez: The University of Melbourne; Rebecca Defina: University of Melbourne; Paul Michael Garrett: University of Melbourne; Jeffrey M. Zacks: Washington University in Saint Louis; Simon Dennis: The University of Melbourne

Event Distribution in Daily Life: A Replication Study.

The verbal overshadowing effect, a phenomenon where verbal descriptions of an encoded face hinder subsequent recognition, has been linked to the similarity in facial image sets used in recognition tasks. However, the specific aspects of similarity that influence this effect remain underexplored. This study, therefore, employed the Stable Diffusion image-generation model to create image sets that are similar either verbally or nonverbally. Experimental results using these sets revealed the presence of the verbal overshadowing effect in the verbally-similar set, but it was not evident in the nonverbally-similar set. These findings align with existing explanations of the verbal overshadowing effect and contribute to enhancing its predictability.

**Authors:**

Yuki Tsukamura: The University of Tokyo; Kensuke Okada: The University of Tokyo

Exploring the Influence of Verbal and Nonverbal Similarities on the Verbal Overshadowing Effect in Facial Recognition

This study examined how individuals would express their preference or distaste for experiences associated with beverages they found to be delicious or unpalatable using facial expressions. We recorded videos where six individuals were asked to drink their preferred or unpreferred beverages and to make “delicious” or “unpalatable” expressions irrespective of what they drank, resulting in four conditions: (1) “delicious” expression with a preferred beverage (genuine delicious), (2) “unpalatable” expression with an unpreferred beverage (genuine unpalatable), (3) “delicious” expression with an unpreferred beverage (fake delicious), and (4) “unpalatable” expression with a preferred beverage (fake unpalatable). A total of 33 participants watched the videos and estimated the level of deliciousness of the beverage and inferred the emotions of happiness, sadness, and disgust conveyed by the actor. The results showed genuine and fake delicious expressions conveyed more deliciousness than genuine and fake unpalatable expressions. The participants interpreted that the drink was more unpalatable when observing fake expressions than when observing genuine unpalatable expressions. There was no difference in the evaluation of deliciousness between the genuine and fake delicious expressions. Furthermore, fake unpalatable expressions were rated as containing more disgust than genuine unpalatable expressions. These results suggest that individuals exaggerate disgust when making fake and unpalatable expressions.

**Authors:**

Kae Mukai: Faculty of Science and Engineering; kensuke nakazato: Faculty of Science and Engineering; Katsumi Watanabe: Waseda University

Intentional facial expression variation per taste preference for beverages

The study of mind perception, particularly how one perceives the mental states of ``others'' has received considerable interest in cognitive science. The present study contributes to the investigation of mind perception in a human-robot interaction context, by testing a humanoid robot and a human and their communicative and noncommunicative actions. We examine mind perception across its two primary dimensions: Agency and Experience and in their High and Low ends. The novelty of our study lies in its real-time and implicit nature---both identified as crucial elements in current debates within the field. Our results indicate that testing physically present and active agents, as well as exposing participants to various types of live actions, influences mental capacity attributions across different capacities. Additionally, the integration of behavioral measurements alongside verbal data holds promise for a detailed interpretation of the mind perception process.

**Authors:**

Tuğçe Nur Pekçetin: Middle East Technical University; Şeyda Evsen: Bilkent University; Serkan Pekçetin: Middle East Technical University; Cengiz Acarturk: Jagiellonian University; Burcu A. Urgen: Bilkent University

Mind Perception at Play: Exploring Agent and Action Dynamics in Real-Time Human-Robot Interaction

The benefit of retrieval practice over restudy has been demonstrated across a variety of materials and settings. However, past research regarding the efficacy of repeated retrieval practice over repeated restudy has failed to consider participant engagement during passive restudy. Over four cycles, participants studied a list of 76 word-pairs using passive restudy or engaged restudy (answering semantic yes/no questions about each pair). Participants who restudied with semantic engagement performed markedly better on a final recall test than those who used passive restudy. Our findings indicate that the current literature may overstate the true benefit of retrieval practice compared to restudy.

**Authors:**

Alejandro Carranza: University of California, San Diego; Emma H Geller: University of California San Diego; Tim C Rickard: University of California, San Diego

Sorry! You lost me at restudy: The power of engagement during successive study

Social interaction plays a fundamental role in language acquisition. Although adult learners can acquire language through passive instruction, they also benefit from interaction. We asked whether these benefits are due to interaction providing information about communicative context. We designed an online interactive game where participants communicated in an artificial language with a computer partner. We contrasted 3 conditions: a fully interactive condition, a passive condition in which participants learned through passive exposure, and a third condition, in which participants were exposed to the language in context but without involvement in interaction. We found that interaction produced the best results, and that mere exposure to context did not help: even when tested interactively, passive learners did better than participants who had been exposed to, but not involved in, interaction. The main benefit of interaction therefore, at least in an online learning environment, is not merely to provide context for language use.

**Authors:**

Olga Feher: University of Warwick

The role of interaction in online language learning

How do people start conversations with someone they have never met before? In this project, we investigate the hypothesis that good starting topics facilitate transitions to many different topics. To test this, we leverage a dataset of unstructured, 10-minute conversations between pairs of strangers. Using natural language processing (NLP) and network approaches, we show that strangers begin their conversations with topics that are centrally located in a network of topic transitions. These “launch pad” topics are useful starting points because they are well-connected to other topics, potentially increasing the likelihood of finding common ground. These findings underscore the fact that it is not the semantic meaning of a topic that makes it an effective starting point, but rather its transition properties. This insight paves the way for future research to identify conversational launch pads in different populations, where common starting topics may vastly differ but nonetheless hold similar network positions. When people start conversations, they begin the process of trying to understand and connect with another person’s mind. Here, we examine how this important process unfolds.

**Authors:**

Emma Templeton: Dartmouth; Luke Chang: Dartmouth College; Thalia Wheatley: Dartmouth

Conversational launch pads: Strangers start their conversations with topics that lead to many other topics

Research in lexical acquisition has frequently focused on children's ability to make rapid, context-informed guesses about the meaning of newly encountered words, known as ‘fast mapping’. However, there is a gap in research examining how children and adults revise and adjust these guesses about word meanings as they encounter words repeatedly applied to different referents. We propose, on computational grounds, that learners adjust word meanings incrementally to accommodate new evidence. To begin to test this proposal, we lay out a new research program probing how word meanings evolve. In a pilot experiment, adults learn the meaning of novel kinship terms and we probe their beliefs by repeatedly eliciting generalizations. We manipulate the order in which participants observe the same word used to refer to different members of a family tree. We find a mixed pattern of order effects but our inspection of individual trajectories suggestive of a syntax-level relationship between the current and previous hypothesis. This relationship was supported by a computational model based analysis of lexical meaning generation via a probabilistic language of thought.

**Authors:**

Ella Markham: The University of Edinburgh; Hugh Rabagliati: University of Edinburgh; Neil R. Bramley: University of Edinburgh

Slow mapping words as incremental meaning refinement

Speech disfluency refers to the errors, pauses, or repetitions in speech production. Co-speech gestures are known to help resolve disfluency, suggesting a metacognitive involvement.
Here we ask whether (1) disfluencies and gestures act as metacognitive cues in speech, and (2) they have different functions in conversational vs. non-conversational settings. Fifty participants responded to trivia questions, and rated their confidence in their answers (i.e. metacognitive judgement), either with a visible or a non-visible listener. They audibly elaborated on their answers during which we measured the frequency and type of disfluencies and co-speech gestures. We predict confidence ratings to change as a function of the rate of disfluency and the gestures produced by the participants. We also expect the rate of disfluencies and gestures change depending on the conversational setting. Our findings will contribute to understanding the multimodal nature of language and the role of metacognition in speech and gesture production.

**Authors:**

Begum Yilmaz: Koc University; Emel Nur Kaya: Baskent University; Sultan Karakaş: Hacettepe University; Reyhan Furman: University of Central Lancashire; Tilbe Göksun: Koç University; Terry Eskenazi: Koc University

Disfluency in Speech and Gestures: Windows into Metacognitive Processes

For the claim that child-directed speech (CDS) aids language development to be generalisable, superior learning from CDS compared to adult-directed speech (ADS) must be demonstrated across multiple input domains and learning outcomes. To determine availability of relevant evidence we performed a study space analysis of the research literature on CDS: 942 peer-reviewed studies were coded with respect to CDS features, learning outcomes and whether they included a comparison between CDS and ADS. The results showed that only 290 (16.2%) studies compared outcomes between CDS and ADS, almost half of which focussed on the ability to discriminate between the two registers. Only 20 studies showed learning benefits from CDS for some morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features and none for pragmatic and extra-linguistic features. Thus, CDS-ADS comparison studies are very unevenly distributed across input features and outcome measures. Until these research gaps are filled claims that CDS facilitates language development should be moderated.

**Authors:**

Vera Kempe: Abertay University; Mitsuhiko Ota: University of Edinburgh; Sonja Schaeffler: Queen Margaret University Edinburgh

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