Netherlands

The research focus on adaptivity in complex systems has propelled an exploration of diverse interactions characterized by state transition processes. However, the investigation of functional variances among processes, rooted in fundamental operands, remains insufficient. Recognizing this gap is crucial for unveiling the constituents of state transitions and their functional boundaries during ongoing adaptivity. To address this, our central focus is on quantifying the functional variance in the interactions of fundamental operands. This approach enables a systematic study of complex adaptive networks grounded in the dynamics of cognitive abilities, where elements adapt and evolve based on cognitive processes. To underscore this point, we emphasize translating ontologically irreducible networks into functionally representable ones at the meso-level, which is essential for assessing their effectiveness. Our active investigation during state transitions explores external interventions, aiming to shed light on mutual influences.

**Authors:**

Kiran Pala: University of Eastern Finland

CogSci 2024

Searching for Functional Boundaries: Evaluating Effectiveness in Complex Adaptive Networks with Cognitive Dynamics.

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**
<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** 
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

With the rise of the Anthropocene, it is increasingly important to investigate people’s mental models of nature as a potential leverage point for influencing pro-environmental behavior. In two studies, we examine how students and non-student adults understand the human-nature relationship and investigate how these beliefs impact pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions. Across both populations, participants generally endorsed an unbalanced relationship: humans having a greater impact on nature than nature has on humans. Participants who believed in equal impacts were more likely to express greater pro-environmental attitudes and behavioral intentions. Interestingly, conceptualizations of the human-nature relationship explained more variance in several measures of pro-environmental attitudes beyond demographics data traditionally thought to predict pro-environmentalism (gender, religiosity, political ideology). These findings underscore how mental models of the human-nature relationship may predict pro-environmental behavior, thus emphasizing the need for tailored interventions targeting these cognitive frameworks to promote a sustainable future.

**Authors:**

Joan Kim: Northeastern University; John D Coley: Northeastern University

Conceptualizations of the human-nature relationship as a predictor of pro-environmental attitudes and behavior

Investors rely on judgmental heuristics and comparative analysis for future stock price prediction based on specific components of information in hand. Information components are used as anchors for price estimation. Through an eye-tracking experiment, we aim to understand the perceived significance of various formats of information, particularly focusing on graphical and numerical components, and to explore the influence of complex time-varying patterns in stock price line plots. Results show that graphical components capture higher visual attention. Participants are not always loss-averse and prominently exhibit disposition effects for investment decisions in profitable scenarios. The 52-week high is allotted the highest fixation duration, signifying its perception as a strong reference point. Investment choices were found to be varying based on levels of prior knowledge and experience. The visual gaze analysis provides behavioural insights into complex decision-making processes.

**Authors:**

Tanvi Narsapur: International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad; Kavita Vemuri: International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad

Visual Voyage of Stock Market Strategies: Eye-tracking Insights into Investor Choices

Electric vehicles (EVs) are radically changing the automotive industry and quickly replacing internal combustion cars. Nonetheless, how drivers’ perception and cognition deal with certain features of EVs remains largely unknown. In this study we focus on the role of in-car sound, specifically the artificial engine sounds, on drivers’ speed perception and control. Previous studies indicate that removing or reducing engine sound leads drivers to underestimate speed and, consequently, to drive faster. Furthermore, evidence suggests that specific sound frequencies could play a role in this process, highlighting the importance of in-car sound features. We considered benefits and limitations of different research paradigms used in the field (driving simulation, video based technique and field studies) and we propose a protocol to systematically investigate the phenomenon. Finally, we suggest that the wider use of psychophysical methods on video recordings would benefit the research in the field and overcome some limitations of simulation studies.

**Authors:**

Valter Prpic: University of Bologna; Elena Gherri: Università di Bologna; Luisa Lugli: University of Bologna

Using psychophysical methods to investigate the role of sound in speed perception

Autistic and neurotypical children do not handle audiovisual speech in the same manner. Current evidence suggests that this difference occurs at the level of cue combination. Here, we test whether differences in autistic and neurotypical audiovisual speech perception can be explained by a neural theory of sensory perception in autism, which proposes that heightened levels of neural excitation can account for sensory differences in autism. Through a linking hypothesis that integrates a standard probabilistic cognitive model of cue integration with representations of neural activity, we derive a model that can simulate audio-visual speech perception at a neural population level. Simulations of an audiovisual lexical identification task demonstrate that heightened levels of neural excitation at the level of cue combination cannot account for the observed differences in autistic and neurotypical children's audiovisual speech perception.

**Authors:**

Grace Brown: Stanford; Naomi H Feldman: University of Maryland

Linking cognitive and neural models of audiovisual processing to explore speech perception in autism

Over the last two decades, an increasing number of cognitive scientists have turned to mechanistic explanatory frameworks in their efforts to describe and explain cognitive phenomena. Most mechanistic frameworks conceive of cognitive systems as composed of functionally-individuated components whose functions are narrowly defined by their ranges of possible inputs and outputs, as well as their relations to other components within the phenomenon-producing mechanism. In this paper, I argue that this modular view of cognitive mechanisms as linear systems is not applicable to biological cognitive systems, and offer an alternative characterization using the methodology of Dynamical Systems Theory.

**Authors:**

Alexander Michael Hölken: Institute for Philosophy II

Mechanistic Explanations in the Cognitive Sciences: Beyond Linear Storytelling

We propose a new account of concepts as specifically structured and handled mental files. We argue that concepts consist of two components, (a) an integrated network of associated information used for recognition and categorization of some types of entities (e.g. objects) according to properties, and (b) a handling system that organizes this associative network. A certain type of concept is determined by the package of associated information integrated in a mental file and the specific structure of this information including the specific way this information is handled. With this framework, we can account for the large variety of concepts including everyday concepts of individual objects and properties, scientific concepts, natural kind concepts and phenomenal concepts.

**Authors:**

Francesco Marchi: Ruhr University Bochum; Albert Newen: Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Concepts are specifically structured and handled mental files

A popular class of models of opinion dynamics involves averaging of opinions. Evidence for opinion averaging has also been found in behavioural studies of opinion dynamics. Finally, opinion averaging is a common means of judgment aggregation that is used in the service of crowd wisdom effects. In this paper, we use simulations with agent-based mod- els to highlight contexts in which opinion averaging leads to poor outcomes. Specifically, we illustrate the conditions under which the optimal posterior prescribed by a normative model of Bayesian argument exchange diverges from the mean belief that would be arrived at via simple averaging. The theoretical and practical implications of this are discussed.

**Authors:**

Ulrike Hahn: Birkbeck, University of London; Leon Assaad: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Jason W. Burton: Copenhagen Business School

Opinion Averaging versus Argument Exchange

Among the many fascinating findings to come out of the numerical cognition literature, subitizing – the ability to quickly, effortlessly, and accurately identify the number of items in small collections – has been studied extensively by researchers from a wide variety of disciplines. Despite hundreds of studies targeting this phenomenon, the identity of the cognitive systems that explain the unique features of subitizing remains unknown. One prominent account is that of Trick and Pylyshyn (1994), which is based on parallel individuation of visual indexes. Despite its promise, a few researchers have questioned its validity, due to experiments showing that attentional load influences enumeration performance. This paper offers a re-interpretation of some studies on the nature of the relation between subiziting and attention in order to help clear up in which sense subitizing depends on attentive and pre-attentive processes, offering a defense of Trick and Pylyshyn’s influential model.

**Authors:**

Jean-Charles Pelland: University of Bergen

Subitizing, Visual Indexes, and Attention

Investigating how people evaluate more or less complex explanations has been a focal point of research. However, previous studies have either focused on choice between a limited set of explanations or do not systematically quantify the explanations' complexity. We provide a new approach for modeling explanation selection that foregrounds the balance between observed and latent structure in the mechanism being explained. We combine a Bayesian framework with program induction, enabling coverage of unbounded partially observable model space through sampling, and reflecting how a simplicity bias emerges naturally in this setting. Through simulation, we identify two novel principles: (1) simpler explanations should be favored as latent uncertainty (the number of hidden variables) increases; (2) latent structure is attributed a larger role when the observable patterns become less compressible. We found that these principles were reflected in human judgments, indicating that people are sensitive to latent uncertainty when selecting between explanations.

**Authors:**

Tianwei Gong: University of Edinburgh; Simon Valentin: University of Edinburgh; Chris Lucas: University of Edinburgh; Neil R. Bramley: University of Edinburgh

Paradoxical parsimony: How latent complexity favors explanatory simplicity

Although research in the area of belief updating has flourished in the last two decades, most studies do not treat beliefs as part of a complex and interactive network. In this study, we investigate humans' use of auxiliary hypotheses as a mechanism to avoid belief updating in light of conflicting information. In Experiment 1, we replicate an unpublished study by Kahneman and Tversky, introducing two additional domain conditions (N=119). Participants construct an initial model, express a prior belief, and face conflicting information. They are then prompted to provide an explanation. Across domains, only 37% of responses attribute the conflict to the original report's invalidity. In Experiment 2 (N=29), a within-participants manipulation of credibility shows no effect on generating auxiliary hypotheses. Even in the presence of credibility cues to explain away information conflicts, participants generated auxiliary hypotheses to resolve them in 27% of the cases.

**Authors:**

Trisevgeni Papakonstantinou: University College London; Kuan Iao Leong: University College London; David Lagnado: University College London

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