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Recognition of animacy is fundamental to human cognition, yet robots complicate this categorization, because they are non-living objects with human-like traits. We examined this categorization of robot animacy using speech balloons from comics, which require connecting to animate “stems” (speakers), or coercing inanimate objects to become animate (e.g., a talking toaster). Participants rated the text-image congruity of silhouettes of humans, inanimate objects, and robots paired with descriptive words placed in either a speech balloon or a label box. Overall, humans and object text-image pairs were rated as more congruent than those with robots. However, a positive correlation suggested human-looking robots with balloons were more congruent than less human-looking ones, but such a graded congruency did not appear with labels. This suggested that speech balloons select for an animate stem compared to labels, but also that intuitions for animacy in robots falls along a gradient depending on their human-like traits.

CogSci 2021

Categorization of robot animacy using implicit visual cues

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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

We investigated the effect of semantic information on word memory, using imageability and sensorimotor strength as predictors, with data from a mega-study of word recognition memory (Cortese et al., 2010; 2015), as well as from an online memory task. Memory performance was analysed in hierarchical linear regressions. Both sensorimotor strength and imageability had an effect on word memory performance, but not as strong as reported in previous literature. However, the effects were smaller when the memory task was unexpected, suggesting that the semantic effects are dependent on memory strategies (or context). Most importantly, different types of sensorimotor strength had a variable effect on memory, which was not in line with the prediction of the semantic richness effect, and highlighted the importance of a multi-dimensional approach to measuring and testing semantic experience, and its effect on cognitive processing. The findings have implications for the use of semantic variables in memory research.

More is not necessarily better – how different aspects of sensorimotor experience affect recognition memory for words

Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) list words can share either semantic relatedness or phonological resemblance with their critical distractor. We review three lines of evidence in which semantic and phonological DRM illusions have been compared: (a) studies in which the two illusions were tracked in populations with different semantic or surface memory abilities; (b) studies that investigated the effects of manipulations that target semantic content or surface content or both; and (c) studies that examined hybrid forms of the illusion in which there was both semantic and surface resemblance between false memories and actual experiences. The three lines of evidence showed that semantic and phonological DRM illusions display dissociative patterns in most instances, indicating that they are two distinct types of false memories. We also discussed how the two major theories of the DRM illusion, fuzzy-trace theory and the activation/monitoring framework, account for the underlying mechanisms for the semantic and phonological illusions.

Semantic and Phonological False Memory: A Review of Theory and Data

Previous studies have manifested a strong relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and cognitive abilities in young children, however, the effects of SES on developed cognitive architecture remain less explored. The current study examined whether and how cognitive processing differs as a function of socioeconomic status in adults. The performance measured individuals from lower and higher SES (29.9 ± 8.2 years, Male = 81, Female = 19) on tests of working memory (Digit Span), visuo-spatial memory (visual retention and recognition) and executive functioning (Stroop test and Koh’s block test). Lower SES adults had significantly lower test scores on all the measures as compared to the higher SES adults. These findings suggest that lower SES individuals exhibit lower cognitive abilities as compared to the individuals associated with higher SES. The current findings append to the previous literature by demonstrating a significant interaction between SES and cognitive processing in adults.

Impact of Socio-Economic Status on Cognitive Processing

Biological motion is a crucial stimulus with social and survival 
value that can be processed incidentally. However, no study 
has examined the factors that would affect bottom-up 
processing of biological motion in depth. In this study, we 
investigated the effect of perceptual load and eccentricity on 
biological motion perception. Human subjects performed a 
letter search task at the center while biological motion in the 
form of point-light displays was displayed as a distractor in the 
periphery. We manipulated the perceptual load at the center as 
well as the eccentricity of the distractor stimuli in the 
periphery. Our results show that when the perceptual load is 
low, people are distracted more by biological motion at near 
eccentricities, whereas when the load is high, the position of 
the distractor does not have any effect. In sum, these results 
suggest that bottom-up perception of biological motion is 
influenced by perceptual load and eccentricity.

Visual Processing of Biological Motion in the Periphery under Attentional Load

According to prediction-based theories, prior learning creates expectations for subsequent learning events. As they learn words, individuals develop accurate and inaccurate expectations about word meaning. Existing research shows that people who shift their gaze to the referent of words more quickly have larger vocabularies. This shifting reflects the processing of accurate expectations about the referents of these words. Is the speed of processing inaccurate expectations also related to vocabulary size? To examine this question, adults learned eight novel word-object mappings during cross-situational word learning (CSWL). The mappings were either consistent or inconsistent with a prior familiarization phase. Early in CSWL, hearing inconsistent words violated expectations about the referent of those words. Shifting from a distractor to the target of an inconsistent word during CSWL was significantly associated with productive and receptive vocabulary. These findings are consistent with prediction-based theories, in which individuals use prediction errors to adjust their expectations.

Overcoming Error: Association between Attentional Reorientation and Vocabulary Size

Machine learning offers techniques for predicting behavior, but has limited capability to use behavior, context, and domain knowledge to infer intentions and predict behavior trajectory (i.e., sequence of directed actions towards reaching goal) of humans in real time to assist in strategic planning. Some existing models of human goal inference (Zhi-Xuan, Mann, Silver, Tenenbaum, & Manshinghka, 2020) possess some of these capabilities, however, these models are typically evaluated in toy worlds, which limits our understanding of how these approaches would generalize to real-world domains. Here, we introduce a novel integration of Bayesian goal inference and a deep learning model used for joint estimation (OpenPose) to address this generalizability problem and evaluate how this integrated approach can infer the goals of humans in real-world environments. This exploration provides an opportunity to evaluate capabilities required for real-time goal inference in real world environments and can highlight benefits and limitations informing future research.

Exploring Online Goal Inference in Real World Environments

Memory is reliably enhanced for information read aloud compared with information read silently—this is known as the production effect. Theoretical accounts of this effect have been largely verbal in nature with very little exception, yet its robustness (and that of related phenomena) suggests that it is worth integrating into existing computational approaches to memory. A leading account of the production effect proposes that production leads to encoding of additional features at study and that these features are available at test to assist retrieval, conferring the observed memory benefit. We implement a version of this account into the Retrieving Effectively from Memory (REM) computational framework and examine its ability to capture key phenomena associated with the production effect. We compare and contrast the current implementation in REM with a pre-existing implementation of this effect in MINERVA2, in addition to discussing alternative conceptualizations and future work.

Modelling the production effect in recognition memory

Understanding how we judge effortfulness promises insight into the myriad choices we make each day. Here, we present research investigating a curious finding: In Dunn et al., 2019, individuals anticipated reading a single rotated word as more effortful than reading two upright words. This contravenes the expectation that the latter will take significantly longer. In Dunn et al. (2019) participants had limited experience engaging in the task beyond judging anticipated effort. In the present investigation participants performed demand selection and forced-choice tasks for which they read either one rotated or two upright words. We analyze results in terms of choice, accuracy, vocal onset time, and task duration. Participants still generally considered reading two words as less effortful (and preferable) to one rotated word but, interestingly, this tendency diminished as the task wore on. We discuss implications for understanding individuals’ effort-based choices.

Cognitive Effort and Preference: A Curious Case of Rotated Words

The Response to Joint Attention (RJA) allows coordinating attention with a partner by following social cues as indicated by the gaze, head turn or gestures. One developmental hypothesis suggests that this ability may initially rely on the perception of head motion and refines until responding to the final gaze direction. The autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present reduced joint attention behaviors, the development of which is the goal of many therapeutic interventions and could benefit from a precise knowledge of how social cues trigger (or fail to trigger) the RJA.
In this study, we test the developmental hypothesis. We developed a computational model simulating gaze following tasks and explored the effect of differences in the amount of information and temporal dynamics of social and non-social cues. Our model is contrasted with previous empirical studies and it describes developmental trajectories of typical and atypical RJA.

Computational Analysis of Social Cues in the Response to Joint Attention, The More the Better

The study of mental representations of concepts has historically focused on the representations of the “average” person. Here, we shift away from this aggregate view and examine the principles of variability across people in conceptual representations. Using a database of millions of sketches by people worldwide, we ask what predicts whether people converge or diverge in their representations of a specific concept, and which kinds of concepts tend to be more or less variable. We find that larger and more dense populations tend to have less variable representations, and concepts high in valence and arousal tend to be less variable across people. Further, two countries tend to have people with more similar conceptual representations when they are linguistically, geographically, and culturally similar. Our work provides the first characterization of the principles of variability in shared meaning across a large, diverse sample of participants.

Categorization of robot animacy using implicit visual cues

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More is not necessarily better – how different aspects of sensorimotor experience affect recognition memory for words

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