United States

The current study examines 120 5 to 10-year-old children’s beliefs about adults’ abilities to use and fix tablet technology when those adults belong to varying gender (man, woman) and age (young, old) categories. The results indicate that, overall, children appear to prioritize age over gender when judging adults’ technological knowledge, with children choosing younger adults as more competent at using and fixing tablets than older adults. In addition, when evaluating adults of the same age category (e.g., a young man and a young woman), children show in-group gender-based preferences where girls choose women and boys choose men. This in-group preference is more pronounced in children’s selections of adults when determining who would be better at fixing tablets than who would be better at using these devices. Implications for children’s developing ability to consider intersectional identities based on gender and age, and for their STEM learning, are discussed.

CogSci 2025

Children Prioritize Age over Gender when Evaluating Adults’ Technological Knowledge

cognitive development

concepts and categories

social cognition

development

psychology

poster

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

The low prevalence effect (LPE), a decrease in target detection performance as target prevalence decreases, is a concern in real-world visual search tasks, such as baggage screening. Unfortunately, much of the research into the LPE and its potential countermeasures may not represent the challenges of other real-world search tasks, such as sonar and security monitoring, in which objects in the search environment exhibit movement. Additionally, target (e.g., submarine) and non-target (e.g., merchant ship) movement may interact with target prevalence to further decrease target detection performance, but these factors have not been systematically manipulated to determine their effects. In Experiment 1, high and low prevalence targets occurred in search conditions with static or randomly-moving objects. Although there was no significant interaction effect detected between target prevalence and motion, these conditions independently contributed to significantly lower hit rates. In Experiment 2, a higher prevalence target was included as an attempted LPE countermeasure. Observers searched for a relatively high and a low prevalence target in the moving search task. The addition of a higher prevalence target improved target detection overall in a search environment with moving objects, serving as a possible countermeasure to the LPE.

The Low Prevalence Effect with Random Motion Stimuli in a Visual Search Task

Visual working memory (VWM) plays a fundamental role in cognitive processes, such as perception, attention, and reasoning. However, existing approaches to modelling VWM are not integrated into cognitive architectures and lack interpretability with respect to their parameters. To address this limitation, we propose a novel VWM model based on the well-established Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA). In contrast to previous works, our model is the first to integrate a VWM model with a cognitive attention model. It only requires three interpretable hyper-parameters: spatial capacity, feature certainty, and memory decay. We experimentally show that our base model without memory decay replicates the set-size effect and swap errors of human data on a continuous reproduction task. More importantly, we show that by introducing a memory decay, we can achieve a statistically significant (p ≪ 0.001) improvement in model fit, suggesting a potentially important role of memory decay in VWM. Further, our VWM model can be easily extended to model pre- and post-cue conditions, consistently achieving KL divergence between modelled and human performance of less than 0.05.

A Cognitively Plausible Visual Working Memory Model

This is a first exploration into a newly identified reasoning error. We explore normative (derived from Bayes’ rule) and naïve (empirical data) evaluations of how order of reliability within chains of evidence (e.g., hearsay testimony) impacts overall evidential value. In a novel paradigm, we swap the position of two witnesses within the chain to determine the effect of order, when these witnesses differ in their reliability. First, a probabilistic (Bayesian) assessment is provided, including both quantitative and qualitative explanations. Second, lay reasoner qualitative intuitions are measured, using Bayesian predictions as a benchmark for accuracy. Lay reasoners significantly deviate from Bayesian predictions. Three quarters (75.41%) made an error when evaluating order effects in hearsay testimony, with 49.18% wrongly concluding that order has no impact. Only 24.59% correctly judged that the preferential order had greatest evidential value. We illustrate how hearsay testimony is inherently complex and an optimal evaluation is nonintuitive.

Order Effects in Evidence Chains: Normative and Naïve Evaluations

Virtual reality (VR) simulations purport to provide a uniquely
immersive means of understanding experiences different from
our own, potentially serving as “empathy machines”. The
utility of such simulations, however, is controversial. We
examined people’s preferences for learning about others’
experiences of visual impairment and sexual harassment,
through VR versus firsthand testimony. We find that people
have a general preference for VR over testimony, expecting VR
to be able to provide a high understanding of others’
experiences. The preference for VR over testimony was more
pronounced for learning about visual impairment than sexual
harassment, and prior experience with sexual harassment
reduced the perceived value of VR relative to testimony. These
findings raise concerns about epistemic justice, as reliance on
VR may undermine deference to firsthand accounts.

Folk epistemological attitudes toward using virtual reality (VR) to learn about others

For more than two decades, researchers have been trying to
explain the source of the processing cost of scalar implicature
(SI). Although the computation of some SIs is associated
with longer processing time (known as the delay effect),
other SIs are processed cost-free. In this study, we investigated
how individual differences in the rate of SI derivation
modulate the delay effect across different scales. We reanalyzed
four datasets from two SI verification task studies,
which examined various scales. In these experiments, participants
judged SI-triggering sentences as either true (literal
reading) or false (SI reading). We fit a computational model to
quantify the by-subject probability of computing SIs. Across
datasets, we found that subjects who prefer the literal reading
of the SI-triggering sentence were faster to respond true than
false. However, the reading preferences modulate the verification
speed differently for different scales. This suggests that
the source of the delay effect might vary between scales.

Individual differences in the delay effect across scales

Misleading visualizations are increasingly prevalent, with a surge in their negative impact on data interpretation, often leading to misunderstandings and poor decision-making. To address this issue, we investigate the impact of informative feedback within perceptual training targeting misleading visualizations. Our results show that informative feedback significantly enhances viewers’ perceptual skills, improving both accuracy and efficiency in interpreting misleading data visualizations. Additionally, participants demonstrated a transfer effect, applying their developed perceptual skills to novel misleading visualizations beyond those encountered during training. These findings highlight the potential of perceptual training with informative feedback to strengthen viewers’ resistance to misleading data visualizations, offering valuable insights for educational practices aimed at fostering viewers’ resistance to misleading data visualizations.

Perceptually Training Viewers against Misleading Data Visualizations with Informative feedback

The aim of this study is to analyse the auditory scene of musical works and to demonstrate that different compositions may prompt the emergence of distinctly interpreted perceptual streams in the listener’s mind. The research focuses on selected excerpts from works by Alexandre Guilmant, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Antonio Vivaldi, which, due to their unique characteristics, elicit diverse auditory impressions. By combining score analysis with auditory scene analysis, this paper seeks to explain how different interpretations of the same sounds result in dissimilar auditory impressions. The auditory scene analysis presented here provides deeper insight into the process of stream formation and its implications for musical performance and aesthetic perception. The findings indicate that perceptual stream formation in music is considerably more complex and context-dependent than previously assumed, with implications for how listeners interpret auditory scenes.

Variable Properties of Auditory Image Analysis: A Case Study of Selected Musical Works

Recent research has suggested that some children, after they learn the meaning of “four,” proceed to learn the next few numbers one at a time (Krajcsi & Fintor, 2023). This claim is in direct contrast with previous theories that argued for an inductive leap after learning “four” (Carey, 2009). We assessed children’s number knowledge using an adapted Give-N method that captured higher set sizes, and tests of executive function and working memory as an exploratory window onto the changes across stages. First, results support the claim that children exhibit partial-number knowledge beyond “four”. Second, executive function was associated with children’s jump from knowing numbers up to “four” (subset-knower stages) to knowing numbers above four, while working memory was associated with the change from partial to putatively full knowledge of number word meanings.  These findings offer new insight into the conceptual change process and suggest a potential two-fold sequence in children’s induction of cardinality.

Continuity and discontinuity in children’s number acquisition 

Considerable debate exists over the kinds of numbers the Approximate Number System (ANS) can represent and compute over. Across three experiments (N = 218), we show that children can represent and add large mixed sets (i.e., large collections that include two types of items) with the ANS. In Experiment 1, 5-7-year-olds completed a replication of a large non-symbolic number addition task using an online asynchronous format. In Experiments 2 and 3, 5-7-year-olds completed a variation of that addition task with mixed sets of stimuli either area-controlled or area-correlated and again performed above chance level. Taken together, these findings are a crucial first step in examining whether the ANS can represent all positive rational numbers (i.e., fractions or ratios), as opposed to exclusively integers. In sum though, our findings suggest that children can represent and compute over large mixed sets of stimuli with the ANS.

Can children represent and compute over mixed sets with the Approximate Number System?

How are complex words recognized during the early moments of visual word recognition? What roles do full word and constituent frequency play in semantic processing? The present study addressed these questions by employing a word-picture relatedness task with brief stimuli presentations designed to tap the early mapping of orthographic input onto semantic representations. The main manipulation involved first presenting a picture depicting the target word’s constituent (200 ms), followed by the presentation of the target word (56 ms). We compared the rate of positive relatedness judgements elicited by picture-word pairs between suffixed (SKI-skier), pseudo-suffixed (MOTH-mother), and non-suffixed words (CAN-canoe). Results suggest that the “constituents” of all three word types are semantically accessed, although with a suffixed word advantage. Regression analyses did not corroborate behavioral findings as no full word and constituent frequency effects were obtained. We discuss the implications of these findings for models of the visual word recognition system.

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The Low Prevalence Effect with Random Motion Stimuli in a Visual Search Task

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