Netherlands

The ability to act purposefully demands formulating intentions in the form of mental representation of actions required to achieve a purpose. Moreover, goal-directed behavior also needs apt control of attentional mechanisms for its completion. Here, by deploying a selective attention task for stimuli presented in intended/unintended orthogonal feature, we attempted to understand the underlying mechanisms of how our intentions to get self-decided outcomes modulate attentional control. Results show a processing advantage for intended outcomes and no disadvantage for unintended or unselected outcomes compared to a neutral outcome. The findings support the role of intention in monitoring and control of action outcomes as suggested by dynamic theory of intention.

**Authors:**

Niteesh Deep Sharma: Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; Devpriya Kumar: Indian Institute of Technology; Narayanan Srinivasan: Indian Institute of Technology

CogSci 2024

Your intentions matter! The selection of an orthogonal feature of an intended object influences attentional control.

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**
<div style="position:relative;padding-top:0;width:900px;height:500px;"><iframe style="position:absolute;border:none;width:100%;height:100%;left:0;top:0;" src="https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/cble/" seamless="seamless" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="true" ></iframe></div>


**The Program Book can be downloaded [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yRVp1cBqRnAbdYi4GXWV_pZeyWNsRquv/view?usp=sharing).**

#### **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.

One hypothesis for the exploration-to-exploitation developmental shift posits that children's heightened exploration can be driven by stimulus perceptual novelty through a bottom-up mechanism. A challenge to test this hypothesis has been the conflation of perceptual novelty and epistemic uncertainty, making it difficult to examine its independent effect. The current study decoupled perceptual novelty and uncertainty to provide new evidence that perceptual novelty alone drives early exploration. Specifically, we conducted two experiments in which children and adults were instructed to collect rewards from different options. Computational modeling was employed to compare children' and adults' exploration strategies. The results revealed that unlike adults, children were more likely to choose the option with perceptual novelty even when it had low reward values and no epistemic uncertainty. However, their novelty-preference attenuated when stimulus perceptual novelty was hidden rather visible, indicating that perceptual novelty drives heightened exploration in early development in a bottom-up manner.

**Authors:**

Mengcun Gao: The Ohio State University; Vladimir Sloutsky: The Ohio State University

Novelty Drives Exploration in Early Development in a Bottom-up Manner

Prior research has shown that children are highly responsive to adults' attention, benefit from its presence and suffer in its absence. Undivided attention is socially favorable and crucial for learning. However, not much is known about the extent to which children make decisions and plans to engage adult attention. In Experiment 1, we looked at whether children (mean: 5;11 range: 4;0-7;11) could distinguish attentive and distracted adults in a minimal contrast where attention was all that varied and they were otherwise matched on affect, contingent responding and other cues. Six and seven-year-olds but not younger children preferred the attentive adults. In Experiment 2, we looked at whether children (mean: 5;11 range: 4;0-7;11) tracked the co-variation between adults’ attentiveness and the content of the interaction and found again that older, but not younger, children used the covariation information to plan interventions to engage the adult’s attention. These results suggest that young children may respond to adult’s attention but not successfully track it across either agents or contexts; by contrast, six and seven-year-olds value attention and make decisions and plan interventions to engage it.

**Authors:**

Shengyi Wu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Laura Schulz: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Children track variability in adult attention and plan interventions accordingly

Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is known to be associated with racing thoughts. Christoff et al. (2016) posit that the main determinant of the dynamics of spontaneous thoughts is the presence of constraints on cognition, be it automatic or deliberate. In the present project, we operationalized the unfolding of spontaneous thoughts with a word generation paradigm (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2021; Benedek et al., 2012; Jung, 1910): participants had to generate series of 10-30 words aloud, following a metronome. We set out to contrast two levels of constraint on associations (strong and weak) to test their impact on the dynamics of thoughts, and to relate it to sub-clinical ADHD-like symptomatology. Using reaction times and semantic metrics, we show that the participants who scored higher on an ADHD diagnostic questionnaire produced words that were less related, but only in the "weak constraint" condition - akin to free thoughts.

**Authors:**

Adrien Kérébel: Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS); Jerome Sackur: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales

Dynamics of spontaneous thoughts and its link to the attentional profile

Bilingual infants and toddlers show increased attention capture by faces compared to monolinguals (Mercure et al., 2018; Mousley et al., 2023). A reason for this heightened sensitivity may be that facial information help navigate complex communicative environments: Quick speaker recognition helps predict which language is impending. Efficient processing of emotional facial expression provides a head-start in intention-reading (Wu et al., 2021). 
We explore if bilinguals’ increased social orienting extends into the preschool years and if it makes them more efficient face processors. Study 1 tested 3-4-year-old monolinguals and bilinguals on a visual search task featuring social (faces) and non-social (fruit) targets. In study 2, an independent sample of preschoolers took part in a face-matching paradigm. Participants were asked to tap on the two faces that were “most alike” among four options. Faces either matched on “more communicatively relevant” (identity, emotional facial expression) or “less communicatively relevant” dimensions (sex, ethnicity).

**Authors:**

Ricarda Brieke: University College London (UCL); Chunru Wang: UCL; Lasana Harris: UCL

Does Bilingualism Affect Face Perception in Preschoolers?

The photo-taking-impairment effect refers to the detrimental impact photo-taking has on one’s memory for the photographed object. We explored the role of two mechanisms that have been said to underlie the effect, namely offloading and attentional disengagement. In this online study 107 undergraduate students were shown 3x5 paintings and were instructed to simply observe them, take a picture that would be available for later usage, or take a picture and delete it. Afterwards, they were presented with a visual details multiple-choice test. It was expected that if attentional disengagement was the mechanism underlying the photo-taking-impairment effect, then the effect would not be present in the current study. This expectation was due to the non-distracting nature of the photo taking task that was used in the study. The results were in line with the expectations and did not indicate the presence of the photo-taking-impairment effect. Consequentially, it supported the hypothesis that attentional disengagement, rather than offloading, is the mechanism underlying this effect.

**Authors:**

Simon Braun: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Marc Croes: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Rugile Vaitkunaite: Erasmus University Rotterdam; Steven Verheyen: Erasmus University Rotterdam

Does Taking Photographs Impair Your Memory? The Role of Attentional Disengagement

The spatial context of everyday speech to children is remarkably consistent. Words tend to repeatedly occur in the same locations, and these words are learned earlier than those which are more scattered in use. Yet little is known about how spatial contextualization influences this process. Does more constrained spatial context itself lead to better word learning? Or does it simply correlate with other informative cues in the input? Here, we assess how word learning is influenced by different levels of spatial contextualization in naturalistic scenes. We use different teaching methods (other-directed versus self-guided) as a proxy for distinguishing how the need for inductive inference mediates reliance on spatial context. We found that greater spatial contextualization led to better word learning, but only when inductive inference was needed. Fixation patterns during familiarization further showed that learners paid more attention to objects with more contextualized labels when learning was self-guided. Overall, these findings suggest that learners can leverage spatial context to support word learning in the absence of rich linguistic input.

**Authors:**

Sophie Domanski: University of Maryland; Yi Ting Huang: University of Maryland

Using Spatial Context to Facilitate Inductive Inference for Word Learning

Recent research has found that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poorer performance and lower eye movement consistency in face recognition, which may be related to less face processing experience due to lack of social interests. Here we showed that this phenomenon was not observed in visual search tasks, as ASD individuals and matched controls had similar hit rate and precision as well as eye movement behavior when searching for either social (human) or non-social (vehicle) stimuli. However, ASD individuals had longer search time and made more and longer fixations, suggesting difficulties in identifying potential targets. This deficit was not limited to social stimuli, supporting a domain-general view of deficits in ASD. Our findings have important implications for understanding the core mechanisms underlying social-cognitive impairment in ASD.

**Authors:**

Alice Yang: University of Hong Kong; Janet Hsiao: Hong Kong University of Science & Technology

Real-World Visual Search in individuals with ASD

A number of studies have investigated whether cross-modal correspondence effect occurs in purely automatic manner or whether top-down processes can be involved in the processing. The current study addresses the disparity in the research conducting two experiments, using a classical audiovisual cross-modal correspondence paradigm and testing possible involvement of the endogenous component in the effect. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings and showed presence of cross-modal correspondence between pitch and spatial position. However, the effect was significant only in upper spatial position. Experiment 2 showed that task-related pitch probability manipulation made the cross-modal correspondence effect to disappear, however revealing an asymmetrical pattern that was highly dependent on pitch probability and spatial position. Overall, the results suggested a non-automaticity of the cross-modal correspondence effect and a possible involvement of endogenous component in the effect.

**Authors:**

Lazarina Ivanova Georgieva: New Bulgarian University; Armina Janyan: New Bulgarian University

Pitch Expectancy Modulates Cross-Modal Correspondence Effect

Individuals make biased and variable probability judgements. Recent models such as the Bayesian Sampler (Zhu, et al., 2020), Probability Theory Plus Noise (Costello & Watts, 2014), and the Quantum Sequential Sampler (Huang et al., 2023) capture a wide range of effects by assuming people are biased towards indifference (i.e., 0.5). However, in some experiments participants instead showed asymmetric bias, defined as a pull toward non-0.5 values. We investigated asymmetric bias in 5 experiments, where participants judged the probabilities of dice rolls. While participants’ judgements were independent of whether they were in a high or low probability environment or the number of alternative options displayed, participants showed a bias toward low (<0.5) estimates. Furthermore, participants showed the highest variability for judgements below 0.5. This latter effect can be captured by an asymmetric prior in the Bayesian Sampler, but not by the biasing mechanisms in the other models.

**Authors:**

Aidan Tee: University of Warwick; Joakim Sundh: Uppsala University; Adam Sanborn: University of Warwick; Nick Chater: University of Warwick

Capturing Asymmetric Bias in Probability Judgements

Judgements about others’ behavior is often made based on the relative rank of that behavior. We investigated this in the new domain of pro-environmental behavior, specifically for the categories of energy and water consumption, food (meat) consumption and transport choice. Using unimodal and bimodal distributions, we experimentally manipulated three fictional individuals’ (common points) rank positions while keeping their absolute frequency of behaviors constant. Consistent with previous literature, participants’ judgements about these people’s pro-environmental behavior differed based on their rank position. Rank effects were not moderated by the perceived importance of others’ behavior, the perceived visibility of the behavior, or the perceived level of control. The results of this experiment are in line with a Decision by Sampling account of judgments of pro-environmental behavior, and set a foundation for future research seeking to conduct behavioral interventions (such as rank-based nudges) within this domain. Prior to this, however, future studies should investigate whether the smaller effect sizes found in this experiment, compared to those seen in previous research, are attributable to methodological differences, or the domain itself.

**Authors:**

Harry D. Coulson: University College London; Adam Harris: University College London

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