United States

By 24 months, toddlers can process language incrementally using phonology to disambiguate lexical candidates. Adult research shows incremental processing of word meaning; however, this aspect is unclear in research with toddlers. Thus, we investigated the effect of phonological and semantic competition on word recognition in 18- and 24-month-old toddlers. In a preferential-looking task, toddlers looked at semantic-related (taxonomic or thematic) or unrelated pairs of pictures with different or similar phonological onset. The results showed that the 18-month group looked at the target only when the onset of both pictures was different but not when they were similar -regardless of the type of relationship. By contrast, the 24-month group had a similar look pattern as the 18-month group, only in semantically related but not in unrelated pairs. This research suggests that at 24 months of age, toddlers can interpret language incrementally based on phonological and semantic representations.

CogSci 2023

The Effects of Phonological and Semantic Similarity on Early Word Recognition

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The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference.<br>
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

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The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Language acquisition starts at birth and takes place since early interactions, with specific timings and dynamics. Caregivers may unconsciously reflect gender/sex stereotypes in their communication style, which results in children being infused with expectations about their societal and gender roles ever since. 

In an exploratory study on 48 3-min recordings of free play of 12 Polish mother-infant dyads (5 girls, 7 boys), collected at 2, 3, 8 and 12 months, we asked if such differences are already present in infant-directed speech and in the dynamics of interactive behavior depending on child’s gender. 

We propose a novel analysis, combining semantics, vocabulary content, and vocalizations dynamics (via Recurrence Quantification Analysis). The results suggest potential differences in utilization of infant’s name - data show opposite trends over time, decreasing in the female group and increasing in the male. Similarly, diagonal RQA profiles show minor differences in mother-child interaction dynamics.

Do gender/sex stereotypes shape early social interactions and development?

The study investigates two different ways of guiding an explainee through action demonstration: contrastive and non-contrastive. Their effect was tested on attention to specific action elements (goal) as well as event memory. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants were shown different motion videos that were either contrastive or non-contrastive with respect to segments of movement presentation. As action demonstration is often multimodal, the stimuli were created with respect to their visual and verbal presentation. For visual presentation, a video combined two movements in a contrastive (e.g., Up-motion following a Down-motion) or non-contrastive way (e.g., two Up-motions following each other). For verbal presentation, each video was combined with a sequence of instruction description in form of negative (i.e., contrastive) or assertive (i.e., non-contrastive) guidance. It was found, a) attention to the event goal increased for this condition in later time window, and b) participants’ recall to the event was facilitated when a visually contrastive motion was combined with a verbal contrast.

Contrastiveness in the context of action demonstration: an eye-tracking study on its effects on action perception and action recall

The Interface Transparency Thesis (ITT) proposes that people tend to use a canonical interpretation of linguistic expressions, even when this interpretation is sub-optimal for the task at hand. 
The current paper sought to investigate this claim further by adding a time-pressure manipulation to a quantified sentence verification task, and analysing the results through
a computational model of decision making. 
The results indicate that time pressure -while effectively changing behavioral responses- does not alter cognitive processes associated with quantifier verification, thus supporting the ITT.

Time-pressure Does Not Alter the Bias Towards Canonical Interpretation of Quantifiers

In many lexical and semantic tasks single word stimuli are presented in isolation and it is assumed that responses are a function of the characteristics of the words presented, with no contribution from words that are merely associated with target words. Recent research suggests that semantic characteristics of a target word’s associate may in fact influence target word responses a syntactic classification task. The present study extends that previous research to examine whether lexical and semantic properties of target word associates are recruited during lexical and semantic decision tasks, and whether the type of associate information recruited varies as a function of task. We found that lexical properties of a word associate are related to accuracy in lexical decision, and that semantic properties of a word associate are related to both response time and accuracy in semantic decision. These findings provide new insight about the way word associates contribute to semantic representation and processing, even though they are not actually presented, moving beyond previous assumptions about lexical-semantic processing of single words.

Single words aren't processed in isolation: Effects of associate meanings on lexical and semantic processing

Among the interpersonal verbs, there is a class of causal verbs with implicit causality and implicit consequentiality, which can refer to the cause and effect of an event on the subject or the object of a sentence. The purpose of this study is to interplay among causal verb processing in Chinese to investigate whether focusing or integrating theory is supported. The study collected 36 participants and used an eye tracker in a visual word paradigm are adopted to understand the process of causal verb processing. In addition, a neutral clause was added to sentences for further investigation. The results showed that participants use greater proportion of looks on event on the subject before neutral clause appear. The main conclusions indicated that implicit causality could result in supporting the focus theory for the mental representation processing of causal verbs.

Implicit Causality in Chinese Verbs: The Process of Chinese Causal Verbs

Humans differ in how they experience their own thoughts. Some think they hear sentences in their “mind's ear”, others report seeing thoughts in their “mind’s eye”, while some struggle to find the words to describe their inner world. Here, we test whether individual thought profiles predict comprehension and memory of naturalistic narrative stimuli. We examine whether differences in thought influence the perceptual strength of words in participants' verbal recall for brief podcasts about abstract science topics. Results indicate that scores on two instruments that assess object imagery and vividness of visual imagery were associated with high perceptual strength in free recall statements while scores on the verbal dimension of these instruments were associated with lower perceptual strength in verbal recall for the same materials. Individual differences in thought profiles were not, however, predictive of differences in the accuracy of verbal recall.

Individual Differences in Preferred Thought Formats Predict Features of Narrative Recall

This study aimed to investigate whether people produce spontaneous gestures that reflect the underlying linguistic structures of speech. Participants were asked to convey information about an animation movie using a three-word phrase in Japanese that could be interpreted in two different ways. The results showed that most participants produced gestures while uttering the phrase and the onset of nouns reflected the underlying linguistic structures and verb types. Time-series analysis revealed that occurrence of object action gestures that depict a noun’s movement tended to reflect the linguistic structures. Additionally, we observed that participants produced additional gestures that were not described in the controlled utterance. These results suggest that people spontaneously produce gestures that can both syntactically and semantically disambiguate speech.

Spontaneous co-speech gestures reflect linguistic structures

Modification is required to differentiate potential referents in discourse context and enhances future memory for those referents. Not yet known is whether the type of modifier produced by younger and older adults differentially affects their object memory. We investigated the use of modifiers and whether it affects memory in younger and older adults. Further, it was examined whether the effects vary depending on the type of modifiers produced, namely color versus state. Participants were asked to describe an object that was accompanied by a same-category object of different color or different state, or an unrelated object. A follow-up memory task then assessed their recognition memory. Older adults overspecified more than younger adults. Although modifiers improved memory for both age groups, older adults showed better memory performance. The current finding suggests a link between language production and memory but we did not observe evidence that specific types of modifiers affected memory.

M & M: Modifiers and their Effect on Memory in Younger and Older Adults

It has been argued that cognitive processes such as attention and memory are influenced by motivational salience (high or low predictability of an outcome) rather than valance or value (gain or loss). However, whether this holds for subjective time perception remains unclear. To investigate this, a two-phase study was conducted. First, in a value learning task, a set of neutral faces was imbued with different levels of motivational salience (high or low) crossed with two levels of value (gain, loss). Thus, a specific face could acquire, for example, high motivational salience and low value by repeatedly signaling an 80% chance of losing points. Faces with these learned associations were then presented as an oddball for a varying duration (300-700 ms in steps of 50 ms) in a sequence of standard stimuli previously seen but predictive of no outcome (each presented for 500 ms). Participants assessed if the oddball was longer or shorter than the duration of the standard stimuli. The results show that an oddball associated with a high predictable outcome (80% chance of gain or loss) was perceived to last longer than an oddball associated with a low predictable outcome (20% chance of gain or loss). The present study supports previous studies by showing that a high motivational outcome, rather than valance/value, changes cognitive engagement with a stimulus. Attention may play an essential role in this interaction by modulating the subjective expansion of time.

Learned-predictiveness, not valence, modulates time perception

Perceptual training has been shown to be an effective and rapid way of training people to make simple diagnoses using medical images. However, it appears to be less effective at training people to make more complex diagnoses that require non-binary judgements. In the present study, we investigated whether perceptual training could be augmented to make it more effective and what factors limited its effectiveness. In Experiment 1, we created artificial stimuli that were designed to simulate liver ultrasound images to assess perceptual learning for a complex task that involved judgements on a 7-point scale. Whilst performance improved somewhat with training, we found that incorporating annotations into the training provided no benefits. Additionally, contrary to our expectations, training that was structured in a stepped fashion was detrimental to learning. In Experiment 2, we found that perceptual learning in a simple task with shaded disks was most impacted by the extent to which the brightness levels of each disk were discriminable but that attending to multiple locations did not result in a significant cost to performance. Our findings show that augmenting perceptual training does not increase learning and that learning is less when the relevant features are harder to discriminate.

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The Effects of Phonological and Semantic Similarity on Early Word Recognition

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Do gender/sex stereotypes shape early social interactions and development?

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