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Having low confidence in a decision can justify the costly search for extra information. Rich literatures have separately modelled the metacognitive monitoring processes involved in confidence formation and the control processes guiding search, but these two processes have yet to be treated in unison. Here, we model the two as inference and action in a unified partially-observable Markov decision problem where decision confidence is generated by more sophisticated postdecisional or second-order models. Our work highlights how different metacognitive monitoring architectures generate diverse relationships between object- and meta-level accuracy as well as normative information collection in the face of costs. In particular, we demonstrate that decreased metacognitive efficiency prescribes both increased and decreased search, depending on the underlying model of metacognitive confidence. More broadly, our work shows how it is crucial to model interactions between metacognitive monitoring and control, whether in information search or beyond.

CogSci 2021

Confidence in control: Metacognitive computations for information search

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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.

We hope that you enjoy the conference this year!<br><br>

**Your Program Chairs,**
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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.

poster

Interacting through understanding others' roles based on perspective taking is important for achieving a group goal. However, complex and dynamic interactions, such as group non-verbal behaviors with three or more members, have not been fully examined. Our theoretical contribution expands the range of the theory applied to problem solving and learning in cognitive science to group non-verbal behavior with three members. In this study, participant triads repeatedly engaged in a coordinated drawing task, operating reels to adjust the thread tensions and moving a pen connected to the three threads to draw an equilateral triangle. We measured the pen positions and tensions. Analyzing group behavior quantitatively, the results showed that the role of stretching the thread a little significantly contributed to improved performance for drawing quickly. It suggests that maintaining overall balance through individuals' understanding others' roles based on perspective taking, is key to coordination.

Understanding Others' Roles Based on Perspective Taking in Coordinated Group Behavior

Culture – the totality of traditions acquired in a community by social learning from others – has increasingly been found to be pervasive not only in humans but in many animals’ lives, with profound implications for comparative cognitive science as well as evolutionary biology, anthropology and conservation (Aplin, 2019; Brakes et al., 2019; Whiten, 2011; Whiten, 2017a; Whiten et al., 2017). Compared to individual learning, learning from experienced others can more safely and efficiently assimilate the wisdom already accumulated in those individuals.

The Burgeoning Reach of Social Learning and Culture in Animals’ Lives

The primary goals of computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) systems are to provide a personalized interactive environment and to accurately diagnose mispronunciations. Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems have been shown to be an effective tool for diagnosing mispronunciations. While the data ASR systems output can be difficult for the layperson to understand, presenting it in a multimodal fashion can make it easier and feeding it into an automated narrative system can produce personalized feedback. In the absence of native speech examples, synthetic examples produced by text-to-speech (TTS) engines have proven to be an adequate substitute, making data collection easier and allowing for larger CAPT systems. In this work we present the SpeakEasy pronunciation trainer, a CAPT system that leverages ASR, TTS, automated narrative systems, and multimodal data representation to provide a personalized interactive environment that tracks a user's progress over time.

SpeakEasy Pronunciation Trainer: Personalized Multimodal Pronunciation Training

Tversky and Kahneman (1973) found that, under time pressure, people massively underestimated the expansion of 8! (correct value 40,320), and this bias was mitigated for participants presented the descending (8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1; Median=2,250) vs. ascending order (1x2x3x4x5x6x7x8; Median=512). In a first-ever replication (N=140), we also found predominant underestimation, but no significant between-subjects descending vs. ascending order effect. However, when participants then estimated the opposite order, we reproduced this order effect within-subjects. Finally, participants received calibration information (the correct value of 6! or 10!) and again estimated both orders of 8!. Participants who received 10! made more accurate estimates for 8! (Median=38,000), which did not differ statistically from the correct value. Participants who received 6! still grossly underestimated (Median=2,678.5), despite 8! being closer to 6! than 10! in linear and log units. Thus, we surprisingly found the classic factorial estimation bias only within-subjects, and provide evidence for how calibration can reduce it.

Calibration information reduces bias during estimation of factorials: A (partial) replication and extension of Tversky and Kahneman (1973)

People intuitively distinguish between uncertainty they believe is potentially resolvable and uncertainty that arises from inherently stochastic processes. The vast majority of experiments investigating decisions based on experience, however, have focused exclusively on scenarios that promote a stochastic interpretation by representing options as images that remain identical each time they are presented. In the current research, we contrasted this method with one in which the visual appearance of options was subtly differentiated each time participants encountered them. We found that introducing this variability to the appearance of options influenced the way people interpreted uncertainty. Although there was little evidence of an impact on exploration, these differences in interpretation may reveal other limitations to the generalisability of previous decision-making tasks.

Epistemic and aleatory uncertainty in decisions from experience

How do we represent other people? Our representations are prone to a wide range of biases. We project our mental states onto others (especially when we assume they are similar to us), or rely on existing stereotypes (when we think they are different). But sometimes, it can be unclear how similar or different a person actually is from us. How does this affect how we represent their preferences? Here, subjects declared their favorite and least favorite colors and were introduced to another person whose preferences were neither completely similar or dissimilar. Across experiments, people successfully remembered the other person’s preferences, but they also tended to falsely ascribe their own lower ranked preferences to the other player in multiple memory and decision-making tasks. These results suggest a tendency to distance ourselves from preferences we identify with the least in our hierarchy of preferences, and to associate them instead with the ''other''.

The lure of the self: How we misattribute our lesser likes to the “other” in perspective-taking and decision-making

Theory of Mind (ToM) or mentalizing is the ability to infer mental states of oneself and other agents. Theory of mind plays a key role in social interactions as it allows one to predict other agents' likely future actions by inferring what they may intend or know. 
However, there is a wide range of ToM skills of increasing complexity. While most people are generally capable of performing complex ToM reasoning such as recursive belief inference when explicitly prompted, there is much evidence that humans do not always use ToM to their full capabilities. Instead, people often fall back to heuristics and biases, such as an egocentric bias that projects one's beliefs and perspective onto the observed agent. We explore which (internal or external) factors may influence the mentalizing processes that humans employ unsolicitedly, i.e., employ without being primed or explicitly triggered. In this paper we present an online study investigating unbalanced decision problems where one choice is significantly better than the other. Our results demonstrate that participant's are significantly less likely to exhibit an egocentric bias in such situations.

Less Egocentric Biases in Theory of Mind When Observing Agents in Unbalanced Decision Problems

Whether through setting reminders on a smartphone, or creating grocery lists, we often rely on external aids to skirt the accuracy/capacity limitations of internal memory. When relying on internal memory, memory for valuable information is better than less valuable information. Across two preregistered experiments, we investigated how the availability of an external aid influences internal memory for high- and low-value information. We presented participants with to-be-stored words paired with values and assessed recall. Perceived external store availability and word value were manipulated within-participants. Recall was significantly higher for high-value items and when participants knew not to expect access to the external store. Critically, we found a significant reduction to the value effect when participants were told that they could use the external store, suggesting a reduction in the differential encoding of information by value. Results highlight the potential cost to memory for high-value information when external stores are available.

The influence of the ability to rely on an external store on value-directed remembering

People can explain phenomena by appealing to temporal relations, e.g., you might explain a colleague’s absence at a meeting by inferring that their prior meeting did not end on time. Cognitive scientists have yet to investigate temporal explanations, and explanatory reasoning research tends to focus on how people assess causal explanations; it shows that reasoners often generate causal explanations to resolve conflicts. We posit that temporal explanations help reasoners resolve temporal conflicts, and describe three experiments that test the hypothesis. Experiment 1 provided participants with temporal information that was consistent or inconsistent and elicited their inferences about what followed. Participants spontaneously provided temporal explanations to resolve inconsistencies, and many of them also provided more conservative refutations. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants evaluated explanations and refutations in light of conflicting information. The studies showed that participants spontaneously generate temporal explanations, and in certain cases, they prefer temporal explanations when a more conservative refutation was available. The research is the first to examine patterns in temporal explanatory reasoning.

Temporal explanations help resolve temporal conflicts

Conventional metaphors such as early bird are interpreted rather fast and efficiently since they might be stored as lexicalized, non-compositional expressions. Pissani and de Almeida (2020, submitted) showed that, after reading metaphors (John is an early bird so he can…), participants took longer and were less accurate selecting the continuing word (attend) when it was paired with a literally related distractor (fly) rather than an unrelated one (cry) in a maze task. This suggests that the literal meaning of a conventional metaphor is available immediately afterward. But does the availability of the literal meaning remain further downstream? We examined whether this effect is replicated when there is a medium (6–8 words) and a large (11–13 words) distance between metaphor and word selection. Results indicated that the awakening effect persists but decreases significantly as word distance increases, suggesting that the literal meaning is still available downstream but fades rapidly.

Confidence in control: Metacognitive computations for information search

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Understanding Others' Roles Based on Perspective Taking in Coordinated Group Behavior

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