United States

The use of face masks is one of the measures adopted by the general community to stop the transmission of disease during this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This wide use of face masks has indeed been shown to disrupt day-to-day face recognition. People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often have predisposed impairment in face recognition and are expected to be more vulnerable to this disruption in face recognition. When faces were initially learned unobstructed, we showed that people with higher autistic traits had a lower face recognition performance for masked faces. In contrast, there was a stronger facilitation in subsequent face recognition of masked faces in typically developing adults, but not in adults with ASD, when masked faces were learned first—this face recognition facilitation is predicted by a higher level of empathy. This paper also discusses how autistic traits and empathy influence processing of faces with and without face masks.

CogSci 2021

How Face Mask in COVID-19 Pandemic Disrupts Face Learning and Recognition in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

<center>Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence for the Study of STEM Interventions<center>

<CENTER>Translating Critical, Strengths-Based Conceptual Frameworks to STEM Programming Design & Dissemination<CENTER>


 **Sponsored in Partnership by:**
 National Science Foundation, Understanding Interventions, University of Michigan and University of Missouri
 
 
 		
	
Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the inaugural Louis Stokes Regional Center of Excellence for the Study of STEM Interventions ‎‎(LSCRE ‎‎‎‎SOSI) Summer Institute. SOSI is an NSF funded initiative that reflects a collaboration of STEM and STEM Education Scholars ‎and Program Administrators from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Understanding ‎Interventions, Inc., and the University of Michigan.‎ We offer training and development for STEM program administrators, faculty, and other ‎stakeholders ‎in critical, strengths-based theories and evidence-based practices. Key to our work is providing the tools and avenues for our participants to inform their practice and contribute to the body of translational research that facilitate ‎underrepresented students’ success in STEM. Beyond the Summer Institutes, SOSI, through the Understanding Interventions Index, supports resources for access to the STEM research-to-practice translational literature, a database of journals that publish these works, relevant published measures, and the Understanding Interventions Journal as an outlet for dissemination. This work also extends to webinars and workshops held throughout the year as an integral part of the collaboration between SOSI and its partners. 

This 2021 Summer Institute is designed to address participant needs across a range of experience in our concurrent sessions. Concurrent Sessions 1 are tailored for those of us who have professional training outside the social and behavioral sciences but are looking to develop proficiency, scholarship, and utilize methodologies that test theories like Community Cultural Wealth (CCW), Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST) and Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). Concurrent Sessions 2 are tailored to those with some experience in these areas and are looking to engage more deeply. Some sessions like those that address measures, implementation, and outcomes will be joint. For the current topic sessions, participants will not be limited a specific concurrent session but will have the flexibility to attend the session that they feel most appropriate to their level of experience. 

We look forward to an exciting and productive institute as we all leverage our varied experiences, perspectives, and ideas to this growing community of practice. We would also like to extend our deep gratitude to the National Science Foundation for its generous support of this work.


Best,

SOSI Leadership Team

SOSI Virtual Summer Institute 2021

poster

### Looking for Cogsci 2023? Please [click here](https://underline.io/events/405/reception) to switch to 2023 edition.


**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! 

**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**

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/464h1m3iU68" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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.

Dual-process accounts posit that human learning can occur as a consequence of both associative and propositional processes. This can be contrasted with single process accounts that suggest learning is entirely propositional. In this paper, we offer evidence for both associative and propositional processes using a within-subjects two alternative forced choice discrimination paradigm. Stimuli that varied concurrently along two dimensions were created and each participant’s awareness was directed toward one, facilitating rule induction (i.e., propositional processing) on that dimension. Performance on the other dimension was then used to assess associatively-based performance. We report results that are initially inconsistent with both single process and dual-process accounts of discrimination learning. However, we then show how an associative network, that represents stimuli integrally, can predict the performance shown by participants in the experiment, providing evidence for a dual-process account.

Dual Processes on Dual Dimensions: Associative and Propositionally-Mediated Discrimination and Peak Shift.

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

Games have been integral to the development of cognitive science. As experimental tasks, games can provide an ideal environment for studying questions about mental representation, memory, and strategic decision making. Here, we explore the potential of memory matching games as an experimental task by using a simple online version to conceptually replicate two classic effects from the cognitive scientific literature—the picture superiority effect (Paivio & Csapo, 1973) and the word length effect (Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975). We manipulate the Item Format of the game pieces (pictures vs. words) and their Label Length (short vs. long). As expected, we find a picture superiority effect. We do not find the predicted word length effect. We argue that the results of the study, along with several practical properties of the task, sup- port the use of the game for cognitive scientific research.

Exploring mental representation with a memory matching game

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

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.

Temporal Continuity and the Judgment of Actual Causation

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.

How Face Mask in COVID-19 Pandemic Disrupts Face Learning and Recognition in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

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Dual Processes on Dual Dimensions: Associative and Propositionally-Mediated Discrimination and Peak Shift.

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