Netherlands

While ample work has examined how to increase empathy within situational contexts, little research has focused on how the language used to communicate with others may elicit empathy. Here, we investigate how (Study 1) the degree of a narrator&#39;s culpability and (Study 2) narrative framing of personal narratives (focusing on experienced sensations, emotions, or neither) affects feelings of empathy reported by listeners. Across our two studies, 901 participants read narratives describing common life events, rated their empathy towards the narrator, and were given an option to write a response to the narrator. Our findings indicate that people report less empathy towards narrators that caused their misfortune, although their written responses were more focused on the narrator. By contrast, however, highlighting sensory or emotional details in a narrative did not significantly impact the degree of empathy reported by listeners, yet still affected the language of responses produced by listeners.

**Authors:**

Emma Gueorguieva: The University of Texas at Austin; Tatiana Lau: Toyota Research Institute; Eliana Hadjiandreou: University of Texas at Austin; Desmond Ong: The University of Texas at Austin

CogSci 2024

The Language of an Empathy-Inducing Narrative

EMNLP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with both on-site and fully virtual participation possible. The experience for on-site participants would closely approximate a normal pre-COVID *ACL conference, with 5-6 thematically organized parallel sessions and live Q/A and interactive discussion immediately after the talks. Presentations by virtual participants will be equitably interleaved with those of on-site participants, projected on the auditorium screens as if on-site, and also followed immediately by live Q/A and interactive discussion at a time during reasonable waking hours for the virtual presenter. For all participants, on-site and virtual, who are unable to attend a session due to either time-zone issues or because they are participating in another session live, talk recordings and slides will be available online at a minimum after the live presentation (and in many cases before as well), and questions may be submitted in advance on session-specific discussion boards and answered live in session with the usual visual aids if desired.

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Please Note: The EMNLP registration system is not currently connected to the underline site as we are still in the process of building out EMNLP 2021. You will receive access instructions from underline the week of November 1st. 

Access is given only to EMNLP upon registration, if you have not registered please do so [here](https://2021.emnlp.org/registration).

Registered attendees will receive access the week of November 1st.

EMNLP 2021

EMNLP 2021 is planned to be a hybrid event in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, with both on-site and fully virtual participation possible.

While ample work has examined how to increase empathy within situational contexts, little research has focused on how the language used to communicate with others may elicit empathy. Here, we investigate how (Study 1) the degree of a narrator's culpability and (Study 2) narrative framing of personal narratives (focusing on experienced sensations, emotions, or neither) affects feelings of empathy reported by listeners. Across our two studies, 901 participants read narratives describing common life events, rated their empathy towards the narrator, and were given an option to write a response to the narrator. Our findings indicate that people report less empathy towards narrators that caused their misfortune, although their written responses were more focused on the narrator. By contrast, however, highlighting sensory or emotional details in a narrative did not significantly impact the degree of empathy reported by listeners, yet still affected the language of responses produced by listeners.

**Authors:**

Emma Gueorguieva: The University of Texas at Austin; Tatiana Lau: Toyota Research Institute; Eliana Hadjiandreou: University of Texas at Austin; Desmond Ong: The University of Texas at Austin

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**<br>
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**<br>
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)<br>
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)<br>
1415: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds and the environment](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18016&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Friday, July 26**<br>
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)<br>
1030: [Rumelhart Symposium: Childhood as exploration](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions/18038/lecture/100346-childhood-as-exploration)<br>
1415: [Elman Prize Symposium](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18053&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1600: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics between minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18065&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
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)<br>

**Saturday, July 27**<br>
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)<br>
1000: [Glushko Talks](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18086&searchGroup=lecture)<br>
1500: [Invited Symposium: Dynamics within minds](https://underline.io/events/465/sessions?eventSessionId=18100&searchGroup=lecture)<br>


#### **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**<br>
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**<br>
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.
<br><br>

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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.

Learning with dynamic facial expressions often results in higher face recognition performance than with static images. However, few studies have used both positive and negative facial expressions to investigate the effects of dynamic facial expression information on recognition memory. The present study examined whether the effect of dynamic facial expressions depends on the type of facial expression used during the learning and recognition phases. Participants viewed individuals with smiling or angry expressions in either static or dynamic images in a learning session. Participants then performed a recognition task using static images with neutral, angry, or smiling expressions. The results showed that when tested with the neutral static faces, the advantage of the dynamic expression was observed regardless of the facial expression during learning (Experiment 1). However, when tested with the angry static faces, the dynamic expression advantage was not observed, but the recognition performance was better for the faces learned with the angry static faces (i.e., identical to the faces in the recognition task) (Experiment 2). In the recognition task with the static smiling faces, the advantage of dynamic expression was again observed in addition to the emotion congruency effect (i.e., better performance for the faces learned with the smiling expression) (Experiment 3). These results suggest that the effect of dynamic facial expression information on recognition depends on the type of facial expression during learning and recognition.

**Authors:**

Mika Wakui: Waseda University; Kae Mukai: Waseda University; Chihiro Saegusa: Kao Corporation; Haruko Sugiyama: Kao Corporation; Yoko Tsuchiya: Kao Corporation; Misaki Kawashima: Kao Corporation.; Katsumi Watanabe: Waseda University

Effects of Dynamic Facial Expressions of Positive and Negative Emotions on Recognition Memory

Much of social cognition involves reasoning about others’ minds: predicting their reactions, inferring their feelings, and explaining their behavior. By representing mental contents like beliefs, desires, and emotions, Bayesian theory of mind models have made progress in capturing how humans manage these cognitive feats. But social life is not merely observation: humans must also plan to intervene on these same mental contents. The present work models how people choose interventions to influence others’ emotions. Building on a prior model of people’s intuitive theory of emotions, we model how people use their intuitive theory to evaluate and simulate the effects of different interventions. We apply our model to data from behavioral experiments requiring counterfactual and joint interventions, and show a close alignment with human choices. Our results provide a step towards a potentially unifying explanation for emotion prediction and intervention, suggesting that they could arise from the same underlying generative model.

**Authors:**

Tony Chen: MIT; Sean Dae Houlihan: Dartmouth; Kartik Chandra: MIT; Josh Tenenbaum: MIT; Rebecca Saxe: MIT

Intervening on Emotions by Planning Over a Theory of Mind

We investigated whether inner language enhances memory for events in a naturalistic, non-verbal task where participants constructed simple models from memory after watching an instructional video. Across three experiments, we used linguistic suppression to manipulate access to language and tested its effect on overall memory performance. Results showed that access to inner language consistently affected event memory: when inner language was disrupted at encoding, participants were poorer at recalling the models and remembered fewer events. Critically, the effect of linguistic suppression on memory performance was greater than a control secondary task that did not affect access to language (i.e., poorer performance was not solely due to dual-task effects). These findings support the proposal that inner language enhances event memory via a mechanism of linguistic bootstrapping, which in turn extends theories of event memory and adds to a growing body of evidence that inner language is a highly valuable cognitive tool.

**Authors:**

Louise Connell: Maynooth University; Briony Banks: Lancaster University

Access to inner language enhances memory for events

Does linguistic framing shape memory for consequential events? An influential study by Loftus and Palmer (1974) found that people estimated higher speeds when asked how fast the vehicles involved in an accident were going when they smashed (vs. hit) each other. This finding has proven difficult to replicate, however. Based on a key difference between the original study and previous replications, as well as recent work on linguistic framing, we hypothesized that verbal elaboration and pragmatic inference might moderate this classic effect. In two experiments (N = 1204), participants viewed a brief car accident video. They either wrote a verbal description of the event or did not before answering the verb-framed speed question. Participants who wrote longer descriptions and inferred a greater difference in intensity between the two verb frames were less likely to show the expected framing effect. These findings advance our understanding of how suggestive language influences recollections.

**Authors:**

Kevin J. Holmes: Reed College; Lena Kassin: Reed College; Stephen Flusberg: Vassar College

When does suggestive language shape memory for car accidents? Assessing the role of elaboration and pragmatics in a classic framing effect

It remains controversial whether the visual system encodes abstract relational roles such as Agent and Patient in visual events. The present experiment tested whether abstract role bindings induce priming effects across consecutive events. Each trial included a static target image preceded either by a brief silent video of a priming event or by an audio-visual presentation of an English sentence describing the same event. Example sentence: "The red goat on the left knocked down the blue goat on the right." 64 videos counterbalanced 4 event types: launching, deforming, breaking, and a relationally ambiguous control. The set of static targets were the final frames of the same videos. The role bindings were either repeated, switched, or ambiguous across the target and prime. The dependent variable was the latency on a color-localization task (e.g., whether the red animal was on the left or on the right). Whereas the linguistic primes had no statistically significant effect on the latency of the visual task, the role bindings of the video primes did have an effect: The latency on unambiguous trials (which required role binding) was significantly greater than that on ambiguous trials (on which at least one component lacked clear relational roles). This suggests the visual system is sensitive to (the ambiguity of) the role bindings of abstract relations.

**Authors:**

Alexander Alexandrov Petrov: Ohio State University; Yuhui Du: Ohio State University

Are Abstract Relational Roles Encoded Visually? Evidence from Priming Effects

Traditional event cognition research typically characterises events as continuous, each bounded by a single beginning and a single ending. Daily events, however, often seem to involve discontinuities. For instance, if one is in a meeting that is temporarily interrupted by a phone call, one retains two events—the meeting and the phone call—rather than three, which include the meeting before the phone call, the phone call itself, and the meeting subsequent to the call. This study explores what binds events together across these discontinuities in everyday life. We examined five potential binding factors: place, people, topic, activity, and goal. Fifty-one participants provided data on recent non-contiguous daily life events, revealing that 97% of these events were tied by the 'Activity' aspect, followed by the 'Place' aspect (82%) and 'Goal' aspect (56%). 'People' (48%) and 'Topic' aspects (24%) were less significant in unifying non-contiguous events. The proportion of each event aspect in non-contiguous events suggests a need to expand theories of event cognition to focus on what brings events together rather than solely on what separates them—a perspective often overlooked in cognitive event theories.

**Authors:**

Viviana Sastre Gomez: The University of Melbourne; Rebecca Defina: University of Melbourne; Paul Michael Garrett: University of Melbourne; Jeffrey M. Zacks: Washington University in Saint Louis; Simon Dennis: The University of Melbourne

What binds non-contiguous events together?

Research in event cognition highlights the crucial role of event segmentation in shaping perceptions and memories. Anticipation of event boundaries is influenced by characteristic duration, often assumed to follow normal distributions in daily events. This study replicates recent investigations into event duration using a nightly segmentation approach with continuously captured daily images. Forty-one participants collected images over fourteen days, segmenting them into events. Event durations for various activities were modelled using truncated normal, exponential, gamma, and an exponential-truncated normal mixture model. Our findings align with prior research in event distribution revealing that overall, an exponential or gamma distribution provides a superior fit compared to a truncated normal distribution. Notably, events like sleeping/napping displayed a bimodal distribution, best characterised by a mixture model of exponential and normal components. This suggests that while some pre-planned events have characteristic durations, most daily events lack discernible signs of such durations.

**Authors:**

Viviana Sastre Gomez: The University of Melbourne; Rebecca Defina: University of Melbourne; Paul Michael Garrett: University of Melbourne; Jeffrey M. Zacks: Washington University in Saint Louis; Simon Dennis: The University of Melbourne

Event Distribution in Daily Life: A Replication Study.

The verbal overshadowing effect, a phenomenon where verbal descriptions of an encoded face hinder subsequent recognition, has been linked to the similarity in facial image sets used in recognition tasks. However, the specific aspects of similarity that influence this effect remain underexplored. This study, therefore, employed the Stable Diffusion image-generation model to create image sets that are similar either verbally or nonverbally. Experimental results using these sets revealed the presence of the verbal overshadowing effect in the verbally-similar set, but it was not evident in the nonverbally-similar set. These findings align with existing explanations of the verbal overshadowing effect and contribute to enhancing its predictability.

**Authors:**

Yuki Tsukamura: The University of Tokyo; Kensuke Okada: The University of Tokyo

Exploring the Influence of Verbal and Nonverbal Similarities on the Verbal Overshadowing Effect in Facial Recognition

This study examined how individuals would express their preference or distaste for experiences associated with beverages they found to be delicious or unpalatable using facial expressions. We recorded videos where six individuals were asked to drink their preferred or unpreferred beverages and to make “delicious” or “unpalatable” expressions irrespective of what they drank, resulting in four conditions: (1) “delicious” expression with a preferred beverage (genuine delicious), (2) “unpalatable” expression with an unpreferred beverage (genuine unpalatable), (3) “delicious” expression with an unpreferred beverage (fake delicious), and (4) “unpalatable” expression with a preferred beverage (fake unpalatable). A total of 33 participants watched the videos and estimated the level of deliciousness of the beverage and inferred the emotions of happiness, sadness, and disgust conveyed by the actor. The results showed genuine and fake delicious expressions conveyed more deliciousness than genuine and fake unpalatable expressions. The participants interpreted that the drink was more unpalatable when observing fake expressions than when observing genuine unpalatable expressions. There was no difference in the evaluation of deliciousness between the genuine and fake delicious expressions. Furthermore, fake unpalatable expressions were rated as containing more disgust than genuine unpalatable expressions. These results suggest that individuals exaggerate disgust when making fake and unpalatable expressions.

**Authors:**

Kae Mukai: Faculty of Science and Engineering; kensuke nakazato: Faculty of Science and Engineering; Katsumi Watanabe: Waseda University

Intentional facial expression variation per taste preference for beverages

The study of mind perception, particularly how one perceives the mental states of ``others'' has received considerable interest in cognitive science. The present study contributes to the investigation of mind perception in a human-robot interaction context, by testing a humanoid robot and a human and their communicative and noncommunicative actions. We examine mind perception across its two primary dimensions: Agency and Experience and in their High and Low ends. The novelty of our study lies in its real-time and implicit nature---both identified as crucial elements in current debates within the field. Our results indicate that testing physically present and active agents, as well as exposing participants to various types of live actions, influences mental capacity attributions across different capacities. Additionally, the integration of behavioral measurements alongside verbal data holds promise for a detailed interpretation of the mind perception process.

**Authors:**

Tuğçe Nur Pekçetin: Middle East Technical University; Şeyda Evsen: Bilkent University; Serkan Pekçetin: Middle East Technical University; Cengiz Acarturk: Jagiellonian University; Burcu A. Urgen: Bilkent University

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