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Animals socially interact with each other using complex behavioral displays. To better understand the dynamics of these interactions, videos and animations on computer screens have been used as one of the interactive animals. While both of these offer more control, whether responses to such stimuli are similar to responses to live animals remains poorly understood. Here, using the song of the male zebra finch, a songbird, as an example of a complex behavioral display, we examine responses to videos and animations of female zebra finches. We show that male zebra finches sing to videos and animations of female zebra finches, and the properties of these songs are similar to songs directed towards live female zebra finches, especially for longer videos. Overall, these results highlight the potential of using videos and animations to better understand social interactions involved in the production of complex behavioral displays, like birdsong.

CogSci 2021

Using videos and animations to study zebra finch social behaviors

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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,**
![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/99984908caba5e6453e5fc5ba34f3507.jpg)

**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

Tetrapod vertebrates evolved acoustic calling to circumvent impediments in communication media. Motor and auditory neural underpinnings of such calling are hundreds of millions of years old. More complex vocalizations, known as display, however, have since convergently evolved in many lineages. I hypothesized that music-like calling might correspond to larger sizes of neural structures corresponding to visual-spatial and motor control capacities, perhaps due to processing overlap. I tested this theory on primates by comparing relative brain component sizes to several spectrographic indexes—song complexity, reappearance diversity [ARDI], and syllable count. Visual and spatial components had moderately positive associations with vocal complexity measures. Areas associated with emotion, arousal, and motivation as well as motor control (especially of head, neck, and eyes) had even stronger associations. Olfaction, however, had negative correlations with all indexes, suggesting an evolutionary trade-off between smell and other brain components during evolution towards signals of greater acoustic complexity.

Primates evolved spectrally complex calls in compensation for reduction in olfactory cognition

Seeking for information is a ubiquitous requirement of life. Here, we studied how chimpanzees––one of humans closest living relatives––explore initially unknown payoff distributions before making a final exploitative draw (see Hertwig et al., 2004). More specifically, across two conditions (stable and changing), chimpanzees (N=15) could explore a risky (outcome variance) and a safe (no variance) assortment, prior to making a decision. In the stable condition, the safe and risky assortment remained on the same side and the food in the same location across trials. In the changing condition, the side of the assortments, as well as the location of the food within the assortments changed. We investigated (1) whether chimpanzees explore changing more than stable environments and (2) which strategies they use to explore their environments. We will discuss our findings in light of the evolutionary roots of human exploration and decision making strategies.

How do chimpanzees explore their environment prior to a risky decision?

Seeking help can be a highly adaptive behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, strategic help-seeking can significantly improve an individual's fitness. However, it has not yet been investigated whether our closest living relatives –chimpanzees– seek help strategically. 

In Study 1, we investigated whether chimpanzees seek help selectively when they need it. Chimpanzees (N=19) sought help when it was necessary, but not if they could solve the problem themselves (Chi2(1)=30.821, p<.001).

In Study 2, we investigated whether chimpanzees seek help strategically: Do they consider action-related costs of potential helpers as much as they consider their own? Chimpanzees (N=14) had a preference for a low-cost option when they had to obtain a reward on their own, but not when they sought help from others (Chi2(1)=7.989, p=.005). 

These findings imply that chimpanzees seek help when they need it, but they do not strategically consider other’s costs when deciding whom to seek help from.

Chimpanzees seek help, but not strategically

Enhanced cognitive ability has been shown to impart fitness advantages to some species by facilitating establishment in new environments. Enhanced cognitive ability may be an adaptation driven during the establishment process in response to new environments or, alternatively, may reflect a species' characteristic. We used an intraspecific-comparative paradigm to examine the cause of a successful mammalian invader and urban dweller, Eastern grey squirrels’ (Sciurus carolinensis) cognitive ability (novel problem solving, motor memory and spatial learning) using well-established tasks. Free-ranging squirrels residing in rural and urban habitats in native environments (US) were compared with their counterparts living in non-native environments (UK). The four groups of squirrels showed comparable performance in most measures, suggesting that the previously reported ‘enhanced’ performance is likely a general characteristic of this species. Despite this, some cognitive abilities such as solving novel problems in grey squirrels has undergone mild variation during the adaptive process in new environments.

Testing the ‘inherent superiority hypothesis’ in behavioural flexibility of grey squirrels.

Collective ritual is virtually omnipresent across past and present human cultures, and analogous behaviors were documented in non-human primates. However, surprisingly little is known about the evolution of ritual in the hominin lineage as well as their underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. Here, we identify similarity, coalitional, and commitment signals as the essential features of collective ritual and argue that these signals evolved to facilitate mutualistic cooperation. We compare evidence for the communicative function of ritual between contemporary hunter-gatherers and non-human primates and discuss the underlying cognitive mechanisms facilitating these signals. Importantly, we will provide experimental evidence from our lab supporting the role of ritual as a platform for cooperative communication. Synthesizing this evidence, we will suggest that between 500 and 300 ka, collective ritual as a repetitively performed communicative act evolved from rudimentary signaling systems to help facilitate mutualistic cooperation and collective action.

Ritualized commitment displays in humans and non-human primates

By re-evaluating Crow (2000)’s claim that “Schizophrenia [is] the price that Homo sapiens pays for language”, we suggest that displacement, the ability to refer to things and situations outside from here and now, partly realized through syntactic operation, could be related to the symptoms of schizophrenia. Mainly supported by episodic memory, displacement has been found in nonhuman animals, but more limited than that in humans. As a conserved subcortical region, the hippocampus plays a key role in episodic memory across species. Evidence in humans suggests that the parietal lobe and basal ganglia are also involved in episodic Memory. We propose that what makes human displacement more developed could rely on the better coordination between the hippocampus and the parietal lobe and basal ganglia. Given that all these areas taking part in language processing, displacement could have served as an interface between episodic memory and language.

Displacement and Evolution: A Neurocognitive and Comparative Perspective

Octopuses challenge many common assumptions and received views about the relationship between the nervous system, cognition, and the mind. Despite the major anatomical and functional differences between the octopus and vertebrate neurocognitive systems—as well as the divergent evolutionary histories of these clades—octopuses have vertebrate-like cognitive and behavioural capacities and even display aspects of putative “mentality” previously thought to be applicable (if at all) only to vertebrates. Octopuses thus raise significant implications for scientific and philosophical studies of the mind, brain, and cognition, e.g., regarding the mechanisms and substrates of cognition, the functions and structure of consciousness, and the implementation of various cognitive routines. Furthermore, the evolutionary and ecological factors that influenced the development of octopus cognition and behaviour warrant a reexamination of presuppositions about how intelligence arises. This presentation provides an overview of some of the implications octopuses raise for cognitive science.

The Octopus: Implications for Cognitive Science

Vocal learning is considered a crucial component of human language. The ability of vocal learning is rare and among birds has been detected only in songbirds, hummingbirds. and parrots. Parrots are probably the most advanced vocal learners who learn new vocalisations throughout their lives and are known for their ability to imitate human speech. Thus parrots present an intriguing model to shed light on how human language evolved. However, only little is know about how widely vocal learning is distributed in Psitticaformes, an avian order comprising 399 species. In the past decade, surveying behaviour from online video repositories have become a promising research tool to investigate animal behaviour. In this study, we conducted a YouTube survey and provided an overview of the phylogenetic distribution of (allospecific) vocal learning in parrots to enhance our undertstanding of the evolution of language. We discuss why some parrot species are better imitators than others.

Phylogenitic map of vocal learning in parrots

Animal reading studies have shown that word/non-word decision behavior can be performed by baboons and pigeons, despite their inability to access phonological and semantic representations. Previous modeling work used different learning models (e.g., deep-learning architectures) to successfully reproduce baboon lexical decisions. More transparent investigations of the implemented representations underlying baboons’ behavior are currently missing, however. Here we apply the highly transparent Speechless Reader Model, which is motivated by human reading and its underlying neurocognitive processes, to existing baboon data. We implemented four variants that comprise different sets of representations—all four models implemented visual-orthographic prediction errors. In addition, one model included prediction errors derived from positional letter frequencies, one prediction errors constrained by specific letter sequences, and finally, a combinatory model combined all three prediction errors. We compared the models’ behavior to that of the baboons and thereby identified one model which most adequately mirrored the animals’ learning success. This model combined the image-based prediction error and the letter-based prediction error that also accounts for the transitional probabilities within the letter sequence. Thus, we can conclude that animals, similarly to humans, use prediction error representations that capture orthographic codes to implement efficient reading-like behavior.

Speechless Reader Model: A neurocognitive model for human reading reveals cognitive underpinnings of baboon lexical decision behavior.

Although representations of countable numerosities, i.e., number of elements in a set, have been deciphered down to single neurons, the neuronal representations of numerosity zero (empty set, ES) remain largely unknown. We probed the behavioural and neuronal markers of numerosity zero in carrion crows. Crows were trained on a numerosity discrimination task with small numerosities including the ES. Behavioural performance functions exhibited a numerical distance effect in one crow, suggesting the quantitative handling of empty set alongside countable numerosities. Single-cell recordings in the nidopallium caudolaterale (NCL) revealed a great proportion of neurons tuned to the ES. NCL neurons integrated the empty set in the neural number line, shown by neuronal distance and size effects. Neuronal representations were behaviourally relevant. These findings mark the first account of neuronal ES representations outside the mammalian taxon. They underline the pivotal role of the NCL not only for numerical-, but general cognition.

Using videos and animations to study zebra finch social behaviors

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