Netherlands

Spatial demonstratives exist in all languages, but currently there is much debate regarding the parameters that affect their use both between and within languages. In this work, we explore ‘perspective taking’ as a means of accounting for variation in demonstrative use both between and within languages. Analysing primary and secondary data, we test the effects of egocentric distance and addressee position on demonstrative production in speakers of two languages with two purportedly different demonstrative systems: English and Japanese. Based on individual differences between speakers, we propose a framework unifying different theoretical accounts of demonstrative systems in which demonstratives require a spatial reference frame to be chosen prior to the application of a range of routines to select the appropriate term in a given context.

**Authors:**

Harmen Gudde: Utrecht University; Kenny R Coventry: University of East Anglia

CogSci 2024

Spatial Demonstratives and Perspective Taking in Japanese and English

poster

The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was an in-person meeting held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands at the Postillion Hotel & Conference Centre.

**ON-DEMAND PROGRAM ACCESS AFTER THE CONFERENCE** 
Recordings of the invited program are now available. You can access them by clicking on the 'Schedule' icon on the left. Select view by week and navigate to the day and time slot of the recording you wish to view. Click on the time slot to access the recording.

Recordings available (click on each recording to view):

**Thursday, July 25** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Morgan Barense on Enhancing real-world event memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/17997/lecture/99084-dynamics-between-minds-and-the-environment) 
1000: [Gleitman Award Winner Isabelle Dautriche on Language Foundations: Insights from acquisition, communication, cognition, and more](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18000/lecture/99085-gleitman-talk) 
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture) 
1700: [Rumelhart Prize Presentation Speaker Alison Gopnik on Exploit, explore, empower: Three ages and three intelligences](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18028/lecture/99161-rp1-rumelhart-prize-presentation) 

**Friday, July 26** 
0900: [C.L. de Carvalho-Heineken Prize Keynote Speaker Kia Nobre on Focusing in memory](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18035/lecture/99162-hp1-c-l-de-carvalho-heineken-prize-keynote-address) 
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration) 
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture) 
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture) 
1745: [Keynote Speaker Andrea E. Martin on Neural dynamics encode the structure and statistics of language](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18077/lecture/99271-neural-dynamics-encode-the-structure-and-statistics-of-language) 

**Saturday, July 27** 
0900: [Keynote Speaker Gregor Schöner on How higher cognition emerges from the dynamics of strongly interacting neural populations](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18083/lecture/99273-dynamics-within-the-mind) 
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture) 
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture) 


#### **CogSci 2024 Program Book**
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#### **Letter from the President**

Welcome to the 2024 Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Rotterdam! CogSci 2024 brings together a large community of cognitive scientists who have traveled here from around the world, as well as a smaller group of remote presenters. I would like to extend an especially warm welcome to our first-time CogSci meeting attendees, and hope that 
their experience inspires them to join our future meetings for many years to come.

I want to thank this year’s conference co-chairs, Larissa K Samuelson, Stefan Frank, Mariya Toneva, Allyson Mackey, and Eliot Hazeltine, for putting together an amazing series of invited talks and symposia around the theme of Dynamics of Cognition. The co-chairs also deserve credit for handling a record-breaking number of submissions and producing a truly exciting conference program 

Beyond the invited talks and symposia dedicated to this year’s conference theme, I would like to highlight the presentations and events honoring the 
Rumelhart, Elman, Gleitman and C .L . de Carvalho Heineken prize winners, including the Rumelhart reception on Thursday. As you may know, we are recording all of the invited talks and symposia, and all prize-winners’ talks, and will be making this content available after the conference. 

The Cognitive Science Society relies on the volunteer efforts of our Governing Board members who work on matters related to our membership; conference policies; diversity and inclusion, international, and outreach initiatives; prizes and much more. We welcome interest from Society members who would like to become more involved in what we do. The 
Society is deeply grateful to Rick Dale and Andrea Bender, who serve as editors of the two Society journals, Cognitive Science and Topics in Cognitive Science respectively. We especially acknowledge our editors’ generosity in donating their stipends each year to D&I and outreach efforts. 

This year’s Annual Meeting depends critically on the support of Marischal De Armond and his team at Podium Conference Specialists: Sharon Zwack, Cendrine De Vis, Sarah-Kate Burke, and Rachel Waller worked tirelessly to secure the venue and handled a multitude of logistical and organizational issues, from arranging coffee breaks and receptions to making sure that a huge number of posters fits comfortably into the available space. Finally, and importantly, I would like to acknowledge the Cognitive Science Society Executive Officer, Erica Wojcik, for managing the complex and ever expanding sphere of our Society’s activities.

I hope you enjoy this year’s meeting and the many different opportunities to engage with the vibrant community of cognitive scientists gathered here. I also hope you get a chance to explore the great city of Rotterdam with its many attractions, museums, restaurants and scenic views. If you’d like to talk more about our Society, or simply want to say hello, please stop by!

![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/3c66d0e21fff30e204df1138ffd15173.jpeg)

**Anna Papafragou** 
President, Cognitive Science 
Society 2023-2024

**CODE OF CONDUCT** 
By attending the CogSci 2024 Conference, you are required to adhere to the society’s [Code of Conduct](https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-6KkptF0Gn3ZYGJDlpqpwTdImw45Ng0/view?usp=drive_link).

**ABOUT THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE SOCIETY** 
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.

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The 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

This study investigated whether infants use iconicity in speech and gesture to interpret words. Thirty-six 14-17-month-old infants participated in a preferential looking task in which they heard a spoken non-word (e.g., “zudzud”) while observing a small and a large object (e.g., a small and a large square). All infants were presented with an iconic cue for object size (small or large) in 1) the pitch of the spoken non-word (high vs. low), 2) in gesture (small or large), or 3) congruently in both pitch and gesture (e.g., a high pitch and a small gesture indicating a small square). Infants did not show a preference for congruently sized objects in any iconic cue condition. Bayes Factor analyses supported the null hypotheses. In conclusion, we found no evidence that infants link the pitch of spoken non-words, or the iconic gestures accompanying those spoken non-words, to object size.

**Authors:**

Suzanne Aussems: University of Warwick; Lottie Devey Smith: University of Exeter; Sotaro Kita: University of Warwick

Do 14-17-Month-Old Infants Use Iconic Cues to Interpret Words?

All languages have demonstratives—grammatical words like
‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which are a universal tool to establish
joint attention on a referent. Demonstratives are acquired
early, but their mature use has a protracted development, with
recent studies showing that 10- and 11-year-old children do not
yet use demonstratives like adults do. Here we investigated
demonstrative use by teenagers (ages 12-17) and adults with a
focus on two social parameters affecting demonstrative choice
in Spanish: Listener Position and Listener Attention. The results
of two experiments using an online demonstrative-choice
task revealed that teenagers use Spanish demonstratives comparably
to adults in most conditions. However, teenagers seem
to still be adjusting the relative weight of the social parameters
affecting demonstrative choice in Spanish, supporting the view
that acquiring and regularly using demonstratives trains social
cognition through communicative interaction.

**Authors:**

Camilo R. Ronderos: University of Oslo; Yayun Zhang: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; Paula Rubio-Fernández: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

Weighted parameters in demonstrative use: The case of Spanish teens and adults

Theory-of-mind (ToM) plays a critical role in early language acquisition. However, whether ToM continues to support word learning in adults is unknown. This study tests whether engaging nonverbal ToM assists novel word encoding and retention. We examined young adults word learning in direct-mapping and pragmatically-inferred contexts. Each word learning block for each context was proceeded by a brief, non-verbal animation that either primed the ToM system or did not engage ToM. We found that initial pragmatically-inferred meaning mapping was assisted specifically by priming ToM prior to word learning. Long-term word retention was strengthened for both pragmatically-inferred and directly-mapped words,when learning was preceded by a ToM video. These results demonstrate that ToM causally interacts with word learning processes and facilitates both encoding and retention. Our findings strengthen previous arguments that ToM plays a critical role in language development and broaden this to encompass lifelong vocabulary learning.

**Authors:**

Katherine Trice: Northeastern University; Emily Cohen: Northeastern University; Zhenghan Qi: Northeastern University

Engaging Nonverbal Theory-of-Mind Boosts Novel Word Retention in Adults

Second language learners must often learn categories which may not map well with those of their first language. Prepositions often differ between languages, for example, German uses different words for vertically “on” and horizontally “on” which would be novel to an English-speaker. Additionally, learners must contend with varying degrees of noise in the learning environment. A spatial continuum of images was created depicting prepositions such as “above” and “below” (familiar) or horizontal “on” and vertical “on” (novel). We used an artificial preposition learning task in adult English-speakers to explore both the influence of familiarity (familiar or novel) and the degree of statistical regularity in the learning material (noisy or consistent labeling of continuum steps) on learning outcomes. Our results suggest that learners are sensitive to statistics and familiarity and revealed individual differences in the sensitivity to these statistics, suggesting differences in efficiency of learning novel prepositions.

**Authors:**

David Heath: University of Memphis; Stephanie Huette: University of Memphis

Spatial category learning: the influence of noise and familiarity on individuals

The role of gestures in cognition extends beyond communication as people gesture not only when they speak but also think. This also holds for individuals who are blind from birth. However, studies showed that blind speakers produce fewer spontaneous gestures than sighted speakers when describing events. The present study aims to go beyond quantitative measures and gain insight into gesture kinematics. We compared the duration, size, and speed of path gestures (showing the trajectory of a movement) used by 20 blind, 21 blindfolded, and 21 sighted Turkish speakers when describing spatial events. Blind speakers took more time to produce larger gestures than sighted speakers, but the speed of gestures did not differ. The gestures of blindfolded speakers did not differ from those of blind and sighted speakers in any of the measures. These suggest a lifetime of blindness influences the kinematics of gesture production beyond a temporary lack of vision.

**Authors:**

Ezgi Mamus: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; Mounika Kanakanti: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics; Asli Özyürek: Max Planck Institute

Differences in the gesture kinematics of blind, blindfolded, and sighted speakers

Verbal descriptions of spatial configurations open a window to a specific aspect of visual cognition relevant to the interpretation of topological relations in the visual world. The present study reports an experimental investigation of the production of spatial prepositions by human participants while they verbally described visual stimuli within a stimuli battery commonly utilized in relevant research. The analysis of participants’ eye movements revealed a relationship between the variety of spatial terms in the given language and native speakers’ fixation patterns on the stimuli. A broader spectrum of spatial expressions, describing the same visual scene, is related to longer and more frequent fixations on the stimuli. The findings reflect cognitive processes, as indicated by oculomotor control variables, related to the verbal expression of spatial relationships.

**Authors:**

Cengiz Acarturk: Jagiellonian University; Seyma Nur Ertekin: University of Amsterdam

Spatial Term Variety Reflected in Eye Movements on Visual Scenes

Work in psycholinguistics continues to demonstrate new ways in which perspective-taking guides language processing. E.g., recent work shows that, in sentences like “Sophie [told Amanda that]/[asked Amanda if] she likes learning new languages”, readers use perspective reasoning to judge the ambiguous pronoun as near-categorically referring to the subject antecedent in TELL (because Sophie possesses the relevant knowledge) and the object antecedent in ASK (Amanda’s knowledge). Although these patterns demonstrate a robust perspective effect, could they instead arise from shallow lexical cues provided by TELL/ASK? Experiment 1 rules out lexical-cue explanations by showing that preceding context sentences can compel readers to actually reverse the “default” antecedent judgements for TELL/ASK sentences. Experiment 2 further explores the pragmatic basis of perspective-taking in stand-alone sentences by simply varying character information, e.g., “[Susan/Little Susie] asked her mom if she likes blueberries”, where Little Susie (a young child) is less likely to know/remember her food preferences.

**Authors:**

Tiana V. Simovic: University of Toronto; Craig Chambers: University of Toronto

Exploring the flexibility of perspective reasoning: Evidence from pronoun resolution

Do language users predict word forms as readily as they predict semantic features? Previous studies are conflicting, possibly because they did not differentiate between two types of word form relationship: Head and rhyme relationships, sharing onset or offset features with predictable words. Here, we investigated prediction of form and meaning by means of a priming lexical decision task. People read constraining sentences that disconfirmed their expectations, and indicated, at sentence offset, whether a letter string was a word. Targets were predictable but not presented nouns, semantically related nouns, as well as head- and rhyme-related nouns. Unrelated control nouns were also presented. Results showed facilitation for predictable and semantically related words, with no difference between the two. While no effects emerged for rhymes, head-related words showed slowing, indicating suppression of lexical neighbors following prediction of word forms. Our findings align with word recognition models and prediction-by-production models of predictive processing

**Authors:**

Katja Haeuser: Saarland University; Arielle Borovsky: Purdue University

Predictive processing suppresses form-related words with overlapping onsets

We investigate the phenomenon of colexification, where a single wordform is associated with multiple meanings. Previous research on colexificaiton has primarily focused on empirical studies of different properties of the meanings that determine colexification, such as semantic similarity or meaning frequency. Meanwhile, little attention was paid to the wordforms' properties, despite being the original approach advocated by Zipf. Our preregistered study examines whether word length influences word choice for colexification using a novel dyadic communication game (N = 64) and a computational model grounded in the Rational Speech Act (RSA) framework. Contrary to initial predictions, participants did not exhibit a strong preference for efficient colexification (namely colexifying multiple concepts using short words, when long alternatives are available). The results align more closely with a simpler coordination model, where dyads align on a functioning lexical convention with relatively little influence from the efficiency of that convention. Our study highlights the possibility that colexification choices are strongly determined by the pressure for coordination, with weaker influences from semantic similarity or meaning frequency. This is most likely explained by weak pressure for efficiency in our experimental design.

**Authors:**

Alexey Koshevoy: Université Aix-Marseille/CNRS; Isabelle Dautriche: Université Aix-Marseille/CNRS; Olivier Morin: PSL University; Kenny Smith: University of Edinburgh

Coordination, rather than pragmatics, shapes colexification when the pressure for efficiency is low.

A key task in natural language generation (NLG) is Referring Expression Generation (REG), in which a set of properties are selected to describe a target referent. Computational cognitive models of REG typically focus on REG-in-context, where the referring expressions are designed to take into account the conversational context into which they are to be generated. However, in practice, these methods only focus on linguistic context of the text into which they are to be inserted. We argue that to develop robust models of naturalistic human referring, REG will need to move beyond linguistic context, and account for cognitive and environmental context as well. That is, we propose that a cognitivist, interactionist, and situated approach to modeling REG is needed. In this paper, we present GAIA, a Givenness Hierarchy theoretic model of REG, and demonstrate the immediate qualitative benefits of this model over the traditional REG model which it extends.

**Authors:**

Mark Higger: Colorado School of Mines; Tom Williams: Colorado School of Mines

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