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Folk-biological concepts are sensitive to both statistical information about feature prevalence (Hampton, 1995; Kim &amp; Murphy, 2011; Rosch &amp; Mervis, 1975) and teleological beliefs about function (Atran, 1995; Keil, 1994; Kelemen, Rottman, &amp; Seston, 2013; Lombrozo &amp; Rehder, 2012), but it is unknown how these two types of information interact to shape concepts. In three studies (N = 438) using novel animal kinds, we found that information about prevalence and teleology inform each other: People assume that common features are functional, and they assume that functional features are common. However, people use teleological information to predict the future distribution of features across the category, despite conflicting information about current prevalence. Thus, both information about prevalence and teleological beliefs serve important conceptual functions: Prevalence information encodes the current state of the category, while teleological functions provides a means of predicting future category change.

CogSci 2021

The function of function: People use teleological information to predict prevalence

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**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

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**Learn more about the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub at the University of Vienna, hosts of CogSci 2021**

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To review the proceedings for the conference or review the searchable program, please visit the [website](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/program/).


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.

Folk-biological concepts are sensitive to both statistical information about feature prevalence (Hampton, 1995; Kim & Murphy, 2011; Rosch & Mervis, 1975) and teleological beliefs about function (Atran, 1995; Keil, 1994; Kelemen, Rottman, & Seston, 2013; Lombrozo & Rehder, 2012), but it is unknown how these two types of information interact to shape concepts. In three studies (N = 438) using novel animal kinds, we found that information about prevalence and teleology inform each other: People assume that common features are functional, and they assume that functional features are common. However, people use teleological information to predict the future distribution of features across the category, despite conflicting information about current prevalence. Thus, both information about prevalence and teleological beliefs serve important conceptual functions: Prevalence information encodes the current state of the category, while teleological functions provides a means of predicting future category change.

poster

In phonological form preparation, speakers are able to prepare in advance when to-be-spoken words share initial segments, despite not knowing which word they will be asked to produce. The standard account viewed preparation as partial production and therefore claimed that all possible words must share that segment (e.g. Roelofs, 1997). Alternatively, preparation occurs through a flexible sustained attention process that is external to production. Recently, O’Seaghdha and Frazer (2014) demonstrated preparation benefits in non-unanimous sets using picture naming and word reading versions of the blocked cyclic task, though not in the more attentionally-demanding paired associates version. Here, the current studies demonstrate small, but significant, preparation benefits using the paired-associates task, but only when cue-target pairs are highly associated (e.g. dog-cat, oreo-cookie, hot-cold, worm-bait). This finding supports the sustained attentional account of preparation in word production.

Sustained Attention in Phonological Form Preparation: Evidence from Highly Associated Word Pairs

Process data recording students’ interactions with digital assessment items are available in digital educational assessments and have become a focus of cognitive scientists to analyze inquiry skills during problem solving. This study examines the inquiry behaviors of using tools (i.e., resource tabs) in short response construction items from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress science assessment. We visualized the occurrence times and durations of response construction behaviors and tool use behaviors and conducted correlation analyses and mixed-effects regressions between the count (and duration) of tool use behaviors and item scores. The results reveal that tool use behaviors are significantly associated with item scores and probabilities of finishing the whole block the problem; increasing tool use durations or counts increases the chances of getting higher scores, but it also increases the chances of not finishing the block. This study exemplifies how to use process data to investigate scientific inquiry skills.

Investigating Scientific Inquiry Skills from Process Data

We investigated the influence of structural properties of previously learned stimuli on Spatial Visual Statistical Learning.
Participants (n=170) were first exposed to a stream of scenes containing only one type of regularity (horizontal or vertical pairs), followed by a stream containing both types of regularities. We found that participants performed above chance for the pairs of the first stream (M=54.7%, SE=1.2, p<0.001, BF=91.89) as well as for the novel type of pair of the second stream (M=55.6%, SE=1.9, p=0.005, BF=4.04), but not for the familiar type of pair of the second stream (M=51.5%, SE=2.0, p=0.465, BF=0.11).
This observed novelty effect indicates an interference between the similarly structured pairs in the first and second stream of scenes, suggesting representational overlap of pairs of the same orientation.

Pre-Training Leads to a Structural Novelty Effect in Spatial Visual Statistical Learning

Cross-linguistically prevalent semantic distinctions are widely assumed to be easier to learn, due to the naturalness of the underlying concepts. Here we propose that pragmatic pressures can also shape this cross-linguistic prevalence, and offer evidence from evidentiality (the encoding of information source). Languages with grammatical evidential systems overwhelmingly encode indirect sources (reported information or hearsay) but very rarely mark direct, visual experience. Conceptually, humans reason naturally about what they see, however, on pragmatic grounds, when encoding a single source, reported information is more informative because it is potentially unreliable and consequently more marked. In two Artificial Language Learning experiments, we directly compared the learnability of two simple evidential systems, each marking only a visual or reportative source. Across experiments, participants learned more easily to mark reportative information sources. Our results provide support for a pragmatic bias that shapes both the cross-linguistic frequency and the learnability of evidential semantic distinctions.

Pragmatic Bias and the Learnability of Semantic Distinctions

Observing gestures facilitate listeners’ comprehension, especially for visual-spatial information. However, people differ in how and to what extent they benefit from gestures depending on their visual-spatial abilities. This study examined whether and how spatial skills (i.e., mental rotation) relate to how much listeners benefit from observing gestures. We tested 51 Turkish-speaking adults’ comprehension of spatial relations when the critical spatial information was provided in three different conditions: (1) only in speech (e.g., saying “right” without making any gesture), (2) both in speech and in gesture (saying “right” and gesturing to the right), and (3) only in gesture (saying “here” and gesturing to the right). We found that mental rotation scores were associated with increased accuracy only for speech + gesture (z = 2.37, p = .02) and the gesture-only conditions (z = 2.13, p = .03). These results suggest that visual-spatial cognitive resources might be important for gesture processing.

Is it for all? Spatial abilities matter in processing gestures during the comprehension of spatial language

Prior research often finds increased altruism following natural disasters. One explanation is the social heuristic hypothesis: humans are prosocial by nature but become self-interested when they have the opportunity to deliberate. As the stress of a disaster lowers people’s ability to engage in effortful deliberation, their heuristic prosocial tendencies emerge. However, this link has often been explored with very simple tasks; here, we study the impact of COVID-related stress on outcomes in multi-issue negotiations with a computational virtual agent. In two experiments with a virtual negotiation partner, we explore two distinct pathways for how COVID-19 stress shapes prosocial behavior. Consistent with the social heuristic hypothesis, COVID-stress is correlated with giving, mediated by heuristic thinking. But COVID-stress also seems to enhance information-exchange and perspective taking, which allowed participants to grow more value which they could give away. Our results give new insights into the relationship between stress, cognition, and prosocial behavior.

Pandemic Panic: The Effect of Disaster-Related Stress on Negotiation Outcomes

Humans readily form musical inference: upon hearing a Blackfoot lullaby, a Korean listener is far more likely to judge the music’s function as “to soothe a baby” than as “for dancing”. Are such inferences driven by experience, or does the mind naturally detect form-function links? We tested this in a large online sample of 2418 children, who were played songs from 70 world cultures and guessed the original behavioral context. Results show that inferences were reliable, with practically no improvement in performance from the youngest (age 3) to oldest (age 12). Moreover, their intuitions tightly correlated with adults’ intuitions about the same songs (𝑁 = 85,068). And both children’s and adults’ intuitions were predictable from a few key musical features of the songs. These results support the existence of universal links between form and function in music, and imply that sensitivity to these links is minimally, if at all, experience-dependent.

Children infer the behavioral contexts of unfamiliar foreign songs

Recently, the close connection between action and creativity has been gaining attention. However, studies investigating how the body influences creativity are limited. This study proposed the framework for that mechanism called Perception and Action-based Imagination based on studies of creativity and embodied cognition. It suggests that creation proceeds through the cycle of imagination generation based on perceptual information and the acquisition of rich perceptual information through imagination implementation. We conducted an experiment to investigate its validity. We prepared the following three conditions: the participants designed the toy with manipulation of the parts 1) by their bodies. 2) in their mind while seeing the parts. 3) in their mind without seeing the parts. Results showed that in the first condition, high creativity evaluations were obtained, the participants paid more attention to the possibility of part fabrication, and the above condition’s effect was partially explained by the focus of part fabrication.

Interaction between Action and Cognition in Creativity: Perception and Action-based Imagination (PAI) Framework

Can mental simulation of alternative research outcomes reduce bias? We attempted to extend Hirt et al.’s (2004) finding of debiasing when alternative basketball standings were easy to simulate and participants were low in need for structure (NFS). Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) participants explained why taking notes by hand might improve test scores, then three groups of them explained different outcomes: Consider-opposite participants explained benefits of laptop notetaking, and two transfer groups explained either a plausible or an implausible outcome for unrelated research. None of the three groups differed from a baseline group in test score estimates or likelihood that taking notes by hand leads to higher test scores. However, low-NFS participants estimated marginally lower likelihood that notetaking by hand is superior, suggesting less bias to their initial explanation. We consider whether variation in participants’ psychology backgrounds might have overwhelmed effects, and discuss a replication with students taking introductory psychology.

Does mental simulation of alternative research outcomes reduce bias in predicted results?

Musicians and listeners perceive dependency structures between musical events such as chords and keys. Music theory postulates the goal-directedness of such dependencies, which manifests in formal grammar models as right-headed (head-final, left-branching) phrase structure. Goal-directedness has a direct cognitive interpretation; dependencies that point forward in time can be understood as creating expectation, and the empirical correlates of this relationship are a topic of current psychological research.

This study presents a computational grammar model that represents the abstract concept of headedness but does not encode properties specific to music. Bayesian grammar learning is applied to infer a grammar for Jazz and its headedness proportions from a corpus of Jazz-chord sequences. The results show that the inferred grammar is right-headed. A second simulation using artificial data was conducted to verify the correct functionality of the headedness induction. The goal-directedness of Jazz harmony is thus demonstrated to be learnable without music-specific prior knowledge.

The function of function: People use teleological information to predict prevalence

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Sustained Attention in Phonological Form Preparation: Evidence from Highly Associated Word Pairs

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