Netherlands

In this paper, we offer a Bayesian analysis of the confirmatory value of novel predictions and accommodations of old data in science. We connect this analysis to the accuracy of boundedly rational agents who are not aware of all logical possibilities, and show that by applying the objective-Bayesian principle of minimum information, bounded agents can have accurate beliefs (compared to an ideal agent) if they are aware of all the empirical consequences of their current theories. This, in turn, implies that novel predictions and accommodations have, ceteris paribus, identical confirmatory power, which is a positive result (i) for the potential accuracy of beliefs formed by bounded agents, and (ii) the accuracy of conclusions obtained in scientific disciplines with limited experimental control.

**Authors:**

Rafael Fuchs: Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, LMU Munich; Stephan Hartmann: LMU Munich

CogSci 2024

Novel Predictions for Boundedly Rational Agents: A Bayesian Analysis

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.

You need to log in with the email address you registered with. Access credentials have been sent to your email. 

Please be sure to check your spam and other email folders if you do not see an email confirmation right away.

Please log in to explore this event.

It looks like you are not registered for this event. 

To access the site please register [**here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/registration/). 

Please register!

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

poster

This paper provides an epistemological and methodological
analysis of the practice of using neural language models to
simulate brain language processing. Firstly, neural language
models are introduced; a study case showing how neural language
models are being applied in cognitive neuroscience for
simulative purposes is then presented; after recalling the main
epistemological features of the simulative method in artificial
intelligence, it is finally examined how the simulative method
is modified when using neural language models. In particular,
it is argued that the epistemic opacity of neural language models
requires that the brain itself be used to simulate the model
and to test hypotheses about the model, in what is called here
a co-simulation.

**Authors:**

Nicola Angius: University of Messina; Pietro Perconti: Università di Messina ; Alessio Plebe: University of Messina; Alessandro Acciai: University of Messina

Co-Simulations of Brain Language Processing using Neural Language Models

Sense of Agency (SoA) is a core concept related to our experience as intentional agents in our environment. Explicit and implicit measures have been used to study SoA. Recent findings suggest that the most common implicit measure, namely Temporal Binding (TB), may reflect memory processes rather than SoA. Here, we implemented two TB measures and an explicit measure in a goal-directed extended action task to better understand SoA measures. Participants either watched or produced dot movements to a target of choice and then estimated the duration between two tones that played either upon movement completion (TB1, akin to traditional TB studies) or based on the start and end of movements (TB2). Participants reported stronger explicit SoA during active than passive movements. Results from neither TB version aligned with prediction based on TB-accounts as a reflection of SoA. We discuss memory-based and scaling accounts as alternative interpretations for our data.

**Authors:**

Fatemeh Mahdinia: Rutgers University; Amir Lindor: Rutgers University; Pernille Hemmer: Rutgers University; Robrecht van der Wel: Rutgers University

Sense of Agency: Towards Empirically Driven Measures and Understanding

When we try to explain something, we usually seek input from others. We present a simple theory of how people use the explanations they encounter as both aids to sense-making and clues to the broader landscape of possible explanations. The challenge of coming up with novel explanations draws people to imitate appealing ones (information cascades); this draw increases as less appealing alternatives become more distant (the ``strawman'' effect). Conversely, pairs of divergent high-quality explanations can lead to merging and syncretism, and pairs of low-quality explanations to long-leap exploration. We use a transmission-chain experiment to test, and confirm, these predictions, although, intriguingly, we find little evidence that the imitation that good explanations can trigger actually leads to better outcomes. Our work provides new insight into how collective exploration can be promoted, or stalled, both by what has been found, and by implicit information about what is yet to be discovered.

**Authors:**

Kara Kedrick: Carnegie Mellon University; Kevin J.S. Zollman: Carnegie Mellon University; Simon DeDeo: Carnegie Mellon University

Cascades, Leaps, and Strawmen: How Explanations Evolve

Imagine that a river becomes polluted if two plants generate too much waste. One might be more inclined to say that a plant caused the river to become polluted when it produced more waste than expected. While similar normality effects on causal judgments have been observed in cases with binary variables, little work has focused on cases with continuous variables. To test whether the statistical normality of continuous variables influences causal judgments, we had participants learn statistical norms over repeated iterations of a vignette and make a causal judgment about an instance of that vignette. Following Icard et al. (2017), we manipulated the causal structure and the normality of each cause. By testing whether normality effects on causal judgment generalize to cases with continuous variables, our results help determine whether these effects are central to human cognition, or simply apply to a subset of cases studied thus far.

**Authors:**

Kaylee Miceli: Duke University; Nina Van Rooy: Duke University; Kevin O’Neill: Duke University; Felipe DeBrigard: Duke University

Causation on a continuum: normality effects on causal judgments

Identifying strongly with a salient future self increases future-oriented behaviour. Self-report measures can detect future self-identification variation within and between individuals on the dimensions of vividness, similarity, and positivity. We adapted the Self Association Task (SAT) to detect pre-conscious perceptual processing biases towards future self-related information. Participants were instructed to imagine different versions of their future self which were constructed using one of the three dimensions. The imaginations were followed by the implicit SAT and explicit self-report measures of future self-identification. While a classic self-bias was prominent throughout, similarity constructs of the future self also elicited processing biases on accuracy but not response time performances. As suggested by philosophical theories on self-continuity, the construct of a future self can influence future self-identification and direct future-oriented cognitions and behaviours.

**Authors:**

Michella Feldborg: University of Aberdeen; Jie Sui: University of Aberdeen

Future Self-Identification is Influenced by the Vividness, Similarity, and Positivity of a Future Self Construct

How, and how strongly, do default comprehension inferences shape verbal reasoning? When do they lead to fallacies? We address these questions for reasoning with polysemous verbs (verbs with distinct, but related senses) and ask when their use leads to fallacies of equivocation. The ‘linguistic salience bias hypothesis’ specifies conditions where subordinate uses of unbalanced polysemes trigger defeasible default inferences that are supported only by the dominant sense but influence further cognition, regardless. But does this happen even where the verb is preceded by disambiguating context that invites subordinate interpretations from the start? We present three experimental-philosophy studies that address this question: We use the psycholinguistic cancellation paradigm and fixation time measurements to examine inferences from polysemous appearance verbs. We find that default inferences can beat even preceding contextual information. Beyond their psycholinguistic interest, findings have important philosophical consequences.

**Authors:**

Eugen Fischer: University of East Anglia; Paul Engelhardt: University of East Anglia; Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga: University of East Anglia; Kate Stanton: University of Pittsburgh

Reasoning with Polysemes: When Default Inferences Beat Contextual Information

The conjunction fallacy (CF) describes a pattern where individuals disregard the principles of probability by deeming certain conjunctive statements more probable than the individual parts of those statements. The fallacy may be fruitfully reconstructed as the normatively correct assessment of something else than probability, for instance of inductive confirmation or coherence. We show that these accounts are, however, formally incapable of accounting for CF when information involved in the CF-scenario may be best represented by a probabilistic chain network. We therefore suggest a novel account of CF according to which the fallacious reasoning arises due to an assessment of explanatory power. Our approach accounts for several variations of CF and enables us to formulate novel predictions regarding human reasoning within similar scenarios.

**Authors:**

Borut Trpin: LMU Munich; Stephan Hartmann: LMU Munich

Explaining the Conjunction Fallacy

In this paper, we first introduce the ‘complex hidden profile’, a previously overlooked category of hidden profiles that arises from complex inferential relations among arguments. Second, in order to investigate the conditions under which interrelated
arguments can generate hidden profiles, we introduce a novel Bayesian agent-based framework for collective reasoning with complex argument structures. Finally, we show that hidden profiles are remarkably easy to generate for a large majority of possible argument structures.

**Authors:**

Hendrik Siebe: University of Groningen

Modelling the prevalence of hidden profiles with complex argument structures

Studying physical rotation (i.e., rotation tasks during which figures can be physically rotated, such as through gestures) can offer insights also into problem solving processes at work during mental rotation. We present a novel method for behavioral pattern analysis which we applied to data from 2,999 physical rotation tasks gathered in-class from 50 secondary school students. The method uses normalized, resampled, time-dependent data on angular offsets between figures over time and agglomerative, correlation-based clustering. Each cluster represents a distinct behavioral pattern and its respective prototype a problem solving strategy. Results indicate that multiple strategies were employed: The dominant strategy matches the classical model of mental rotation, in which angular offsets between figures are decreased over time. For the secondary strategy, angular offsets were actually increased. A subsequent analysis shows that the secondary strategy was more frequently used for symmetric figures, possibly indicating problems with correctly matching segments across figures.

**Authors:**

Stefanie Wetzel: highQ Computerlösungen GmbH; Sven Bertel: Flensburg University of Applied Sciences

Data-Driven Analysis of Physical and Mental Rotation Strategies

Procrastination is often characterized as minimal progress initially, with a significant increase in progress shortly before the deadlines. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms underlying this intriguing dynamic feature of procrastination—the time course of progress—remain poorly understood. We investigated this through an experiment where participants worked on a self-paced, week-long online reading task consisting of numerous work units (N = 611). We proposed two models that fit each individual’s time course of progress. Both models consider the time course of progress as the output of sequential decision-making: whether to work now (and, if so, how much) or later. The first, a normative model, calculates the value of making progress using the Bellman equation; the second, a roll-out model, estimates this value by simulating future work progress. We found that the rollout model fit the data much better, suggesting some evidence against people behaving rationally and some evidence for people simulating future work progress.

**Authors:**

Peiyuan Zhang: New York University; Yijun Lin: University of Florida; Falk Lieder: University of California, Los Angeles; Wei Ji Ma: New York University

Premium content

Downloads

Next from CogSci 2024

Co-Simulations of Brain Language Processing using Neural Language Models

Similar lecture

Testing the Maximum Entropy Approach to Awareness Growth in Bayesian Epistemology and Decision Theory

Stay up to date with the latest Underline news!

PRESENTATIONS

CONFERENCES

COMPANY

RESOURCES