United States

Psychological theories of actual causation aim to characterize
which of multiple causes of an event is singled out as the pri-
mary cause. We present one such theory called the continu-
ity account of actual causation. The continuity account treats
events as changes of state in continuous time and traces a se-
quence of stage changes backwards through time from an event
to its primary cause. The account is broadly compatible with
the physical process view of causation and we test it by ask-
ing people to identify the primary cause of events occurring in
simple physical systems. An initial experiment confirms that
root causes are more likely to be chosen as primary causes than
are immediate causes. A second experiment demonstrates that
root causes that have temporal continuity with the effect are
preferred even when probability raising accounts would pre-
dict otherwise. The results of both experiments are consistent
with the continuity account, and suggest that inferences about
changes of state in continuous time may underpin an important
class of actual causation judgments.

CogSci 2021

Temporal Continuity and the Judgment of Actual Causation

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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

Research has long investigated how knowledge about the world is connected by meaningful, semantic links. Much of this research has focused on a specific type of semantic link known as a taxonomic link, which connects concepts belonging to the same semantic category. However, many inconsistencies have emerged regarding how and when this specific type of semantic link is formed. The goal of the present study was to investigate this contradicting research and provide an explanation for the inconsistent results. To do this, we examined the linguistic environment of stimuli sets from three studies that either supported or did not support protracted taxonomic development. Results provided evidence that the idea that semantic links between members of taxonomic categories in early development may be based on simple co-occurrences in language.

The Mystery of Early Taxonomic Development

Previous research has shown that gestures help people think and solve problems more successfully. Recent studies have also found that encouraging gesture use helps generating new creative ideas and enhances verbal improvisation. Moreover, fluid arm movements have been associated with improving the ability to connect remote associates. Research is still limited with emphasis on divergent thinking and the mechanisms behind the gesture-creativity interplay are not clear. This study examined whether encouraging gesture use could enhance the ability to connect both verbal and visual remote associates of young adults (N = 90) and hypothesised that mental imagery skills could facilitate that relationship. Our preliminary results showed that encouraging gestures did not improve remote association scores, however, mental imagery ability was a significant predictor of verbal remote associates’ scores when gestures were encouraged. We suggest that individuals who have higher mental imagery skills might benefit more from gestures for visualising verbal information.

Does encouraging gesture use help us connect remote associations?: The role of mental imagery

Literature on sensory discrimination suggests that it relies on two separate abilities, one related to processing of auditory-temporal stimuli, and the other involved in processing non-temporal visual stimuli. Musical training is associated with structural and functional adaptations in the brain, which improve sensory processing. However, to date the advantage of musicians was particularly evident in the auditory and temporal tasks (as related with perception of music). This study aimed to investigate potential advantages of musicians not only in the ability to discriminate auditory and temporal stimuli, but also with regard to visual discrimination. As many as nine adaptive stimulus discrimination tasks were administered to 56 musicians and 54 non-musicians, with both groups matched on working memory capacity. The musicians displayed better discrimination scores in each modality, including the visual one. The results support the view of modality-independent perceptual benefits resulting from prolonged musical training.

Auditory, temporal, and visual sensory discrimination advantage of musicians

In cognitive psychology, dual-task investigations have indicated that internal language plays a role in a variety of cognitive functions. This preregistered study investigated whether physical endurance as exemplified by cycling performance depends on internal language and internal visual experience. A sample of 50 physically active participants performed 12 cycling trials, each lasting one minute where they were required to cycle as fast as possible while remembering either a sequence of letters and numbers (verbal interference) or locations on a grid (nonverbal interference). We found that participants cycled a shorter distance in the verbal interference condition compared with the no-interference (p < .001) and the visuospatial inference conditions (nonsignificant: p = .10). Further, participants who reported that self-talk usually helps their sports performance were more negatively affected by verbal interference. Our study comprises a first attempt at using the dual-task method to investigate the causal role of self-talk in physical performance.

Mind over Body: Investigating Cognitive Control of Cycling Performance with Dual-Task Interference

Explanations of science denial rooted in individual cognition tend to focus on general trait-like factors such as cognitive style, conspiracist ideation or delusional ideation. However, we argue that this focus typically glosses over the concrete, mechanistic elements of belief formation, such as hypothesis generation, data gathering, or hypothesis evaluation. We show, empirically, that such elements predict variance in science denial not accounted for by cognitive style, even after accounting for social factors such as political ideology. We conclude that a cognitive account of science denial would benefit from the study of complex (i.e., open-ended, multi-stage) problem solving that incorporates these mechanistic elements.

Studying science denial with a complex problem-solving task

Generic statements, such as “mosquitoes fly” and “mosquitoes carry malaria,” are remarkable in that they are an intuitive and readily understood means of conveying knowledge, and yet their implied prevalence---the specific quantification they convey---can vary widely. This variability may lead to miscommunication, with speakers using generic statements flexibly and listeners rigidly interpreting them as implying near universal prevalence (Cimpian et al., 2010). However, recent research found that listeners with applicable prior knowledge interpret generic statements flexibly (Tessler & Goodman, 2019b). The evident importance of prior knowledge suggests that expertise may impact how people interpret generic statements. We investigated whether experts and novices systematically differ in the way they interpret generic statements, using the esport League of Legends as a cultural microcosm. As hypothesized, experts interpreted generic statements more flexibly than novices did, and novices tended to assume generic statements applied more broadly than experts did.

Experts Interpret Generalizations Differently Than Novices

Brain pathways for vocal learning and spoken language

Moving, mundane, beautiful, troubling, enlightening, sublime—Network Modeling and Latent class analyses of what makes aesthetic experiences unique or universal for humans… and beyond?

Why are birds so smart?

PCIbex is a free web platform for designing and running a wide variety of behavioral experiments online. It provides a simple and accessible, yet versatile code interface for designing experimental tasks, and furthermore makes it possible to share experiment code and resources with a single click, allowing for easy replication. PCIbex comes with an easy-to-learn mini-language, which builds on a standard JavaScript engine. Advanced features include audio- and video-recording as well as an integration of the webgazer eye-tracking API. The workshop will provide a hands-on introduction to the basic functionalities, as well as illustrations of advanced features and time for Q&A. While already in fairly wide use in the linguistics community, the tutorial aims to make this resource more widely accessible within the cognitive science community at large.

Temporal Continuity and the Judgment of Actual Causation

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The Mystery of Early Taxonomic Development

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