United States

A set of fundamental beliefs governs our reasoning about objects and agents since infancy. Studies have shown that infants and children show enhanced exploration and learning when they observe apparent violations of these beliefs. However, little is known about whether these beliefs can be revised given counterevidence. In the present experiments, we demonstrate that 4- to 6-year-old children can revise their most fundamental beliefs in the physical domain (Experiment 1) and the psychological domain (Experiment 2) when they observe multiple pieces of belief-violating evidence.

CogSci 2021

Revising Core Beliefs in Young Children

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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

Recent studies have applied network-based approaches to analyze the organization and retrieval of specific semantic categories, with a focus on the animal category. The current study extended previous studies by using network science tools to quantitatively investigate the structural differences of noun and verb categories of various levels of specificity. Specific (animal and body movement) and general noun and verb networks were constructed from four verbal fluency tasks. Common network measures indicated that the two verb networks were more condensed and less modular than the noun networks, supporting that nouns are more well-organized in the mental lexicon than verbs. Comparing the specific and general networks within each lexical category also corroborated lexical semantic studies that nouns have a more clear hierarchical structure. The results of this paper, along with recent semantic network studies, provide converging evidence for the usefulness of network science in semantic memory research.

Structural Comparisons of Noun and Verb Networks in the Mental Lexicon

In a high-risk environment, such as during an epidemic, people are exposed to a large amount of information, both accurate and inaccurate. Following exposure, they typically discuss the information with each other in conversations. Here, we assessed the effects of such conversations on their beliefs. A sample of 126 M-Turk participants first rated the accuracy of a set of COVID-19 statements (pre-test). They were then paired and asked to discuss either any of these statements (low epistemic condition) or only the statements they thought were accurate (high epistemic condition). Finally, they rated the accuracy of the initial statements again (post-test). We did not find a difference of epistemic condition on belief change. However, we found that individuals were sensitive to their conversational partners and changed their beliefs according to their partners’ conveyed beliefs. This influence was strongest for initially moderately held beliefs.

The Effects of Dyadic Conversations on Coronavirus-Related Belief Change

Whether different formats of numbers are represented by one or more systems across development is a subject of long-standing interest in the field of numerical cognition, with seemingly contradictory results. Here we examined numerical comparison to test a developmental theory that can reconcile these discrepancies. In Experiment 1, we found numerical understanding progresses through three continuous phases of association between numerical symbols and approximate sense of numerosity. In the youngest age group (prefluent phase), comparing numerals were slower than comparing dot arrays, but became similar (fluent phase) then faster (overlearning phase) with age. Because this developmental change occurred in the order of numeric range 1-9, followed by 10-99 and 100-999, multiple phases co-existed during childhood. Furthermore, results from Experiment 2 indicated that comparing different formats of numbers was affected by ratio even at the highest levels of proficiency, suggesting that the approximate number system is never fully replaced.

Toward a Comprehensive Developmental Theory for Symbolic Magnitude Understanding

Analogical reasoning is at the core of human cognition, but is it universal? Do people from different cultures reason analogically in the same way? Despite the prevalence of analogical research, to date, there is almost no cross-cultural work investigating analogical reasoning in adults from non-WEIRD cultures. Here we fill this important gap by revisiting a long-standing cross-cultural difference—the holistic-analytic difference among Easterners and Westerners (Nisbett, 2001)—to ask whether this difference is also evident in analogical reasoning. Decades of cross-cultural research showed that Easterners are more attentive to contextual relations than Westerners, giving way to an untested presumption that Easterners are more relational, more analogical than Westerners. We tested this assumption using the classic holistic-analytic task and scene analogy mapping task with US and Chinese participants. While we replicated the holistic-analytic (East-West) difference, US and Chinese participants did not differ in the analogy task.

East-West Revisited: Is Holistic Thinking Relational Thinking?

Previous studies investigating the influence of a working memory load on category learning gained mixed findings. The current study investigated the role of increased working memory load in the processes of encoding two artificial categories with a rule-plus-similarity structure. During category learning, adults were trained with a dual-task that integrated the category learning task with a secondary working memory task. Participants were instructed to retain verbal (auditorily delivered) information while learning the categories in each trial. The learning phase was followed by recognition and categorization tasks evaluating their learning of the categories and memory for exemplar features. The results indicated that verbal working memory load affected category learning and representation as compared to the control condition where participants learned the categories without interference. The dual-task paradigm disrupted attention optimization and the formation of a rule-based category representation while increasing the probability of similarity-based encoding.

Verbal working memory capacity modulates category representation.

People often think about counterfactual possibilities to an event and imagine how it could have been otherwise. The study of how this occurs is central to many areas of cognitive science, including decision making, social cognition, and causal judgment; however, modeling the memory processes at play in naturalistic counterfactual retrieval has been difficult. We use established memory models to evaluate and compare multiple mechanisms that could be involved in counterfactual retrieval. Our models are able to capture nuanced dynamics of retrieval (e.g. how retrieved counterfactuals cue subsequent counterfactuals), and can predict the effects of retrieval on evaluations and decisions. In doing so, we show how existing theories of counterfactual thinking can be combined with quantitative models of memory search to provide new insights about the formation and consequences of counterfactual thought.

Dynamics of Counterfactual Retrieval

Grapheme-color synesthetes experience linguistic symbols as having a consistent color (e.g., “The letter R is burgundy.”). Intriguingly, certain letters tend to be associated with certain colors, and these biases are not random: numerous properties of letters influence which letter is associated with which color. These influences, called “Regulatory Factors” (RFs), each explain some fraction of the variation in observed associations. No comprehensive model of the influences on grapheme-color associations exists: RFs have only been measured in isolation, are not always operationalized consistently, and often make competing predictions that cannot be accounted for in a univariate model. Here, we describe a statistical framework that integrates the predictions of all RFs into a single model, and thus yields a unified account of their influence on grapheme-color associations. Our model also links these predictions to measurable properties of language, offering a window into the multifactorial contributions to letter representation in the brain.

A Unifying Model of Grapheme-Color Associations in Synesthetes and Controls

Competence and morality are two of the most important dimensions in social evaluation. Recent studies have suggested the primacy of morality, showing that information about immorality of an ordinary target person decreases evaluation of their competence. We examined the effect of moral taint on multiple non-moral judgments: ratings of the competence, accomplishment, and contribution of fictitious professionals who were described as highly successful in various fields. Moral taint significantly decreased participants’ non-moral social evaluations of professionals regardless of their field. Mediation analyses showed that the negative impact of immoral character on competence judgments is more strongly mediated by the decrease in participants’ psychological involvement with the target, rather than a decrease in perceived social intelligence of the target. These findings suggest that motivation to distance oneself from immoral others plays a critical role in the revision of social evaluations.

Disgraced Professionals: Revelation of Immorality Decreases Evaluations of Professionals’ Competence and Contribution

Much research into persistence focuses on methods to increase trying without distinguishing whether persistence is rational. However, expectations of effort efficiency suggest that reducing effort in the face of repeated failure is logical. We performed archival behavioral coding to propose exploration as a rational means to extend persistence as new information is gained and the possibility of success is maintained. Infants were presented with an impossible task and exploratory behavior was classified. Infants decreased effort with increased experience failing, but persisted for longer when using several exploratory strategies and exploring for proportionally longer. These results confirm that infants are sensitive to the utility of their actions, and that exploration offers a means to persist even in the face of failure.

Try smarter, not harder: Exploration and strategy diversity are related to infant persistence

Humans are able to make sense of extraordinarily abstract concepts in mathematics (e.g., negative numbers). What is the underlying representation of these concepts? Integers extend natural numbers by including zero and negative numbers. To study the mental representation of integers, we employed a number comparison task in an online context. We replicated the previously-reported distance effect, in that far comparisons were faster than near comparisons. Namely, we observed reliable distance effects for positive and negative comparisons, and critically, an inverse distance effect for mixed comparisons. We conclude that the mental representation of integers may align with a hypothesis proposing the mental number line for negative numbers mirrors the natural number line. Moreover, we conclude that web-based data collection is a promising tool for future numerical cognition research.

Revising Core Beliefs in Young Children

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