Male spotted bowerbirds perform vigorous courtship dances to visiting females on elaborate display arenas. Each arena is built and defended by one dominant male, which commonly tolerates one or more subordinate males. These non-territorial “auxiliary” males are thought to be inexperienced sub-adults. The skills hypothesis suggests that auxiliaries attend established bowers to practice their courtship skills, but little is known about the development of courtship motor performance and which courtship properties are refined with experience. Here we investigate whether auxiliaries are as proficient as bower owners in performing courtship. First, we investigate whether specific courtship moves are used in different contexts within a courtship routine and whether such flexible use of courtship elements is shared both by bower owners and auxiliaries. Second, we examine other fine-scale parameters of courtship dances, in order to further test for possible differences in courtship properties depending on dominance status.

Learning to be attractive: A test of the skills hypothesis in spotted bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus maculatus)

Research suggests that the perception of attractiveness is multimodal, however, it is unclear how visual and auditory cues interact. Voice pitch seems important, as men judge high-pitched female voices to be more attractive, possibly due to their association with youthfulness, fertility, and femininity. We investigated whether an increase in voice pitch in female voices would lead to increased ratings of attractiveness, femininity, and health, and decreased age ratings. In a within-subject design we found higher-pitched female voices were rated more attractive, more feminine, and younger, but not healthier compared to non-manipulated voices. However, when manipulated and control voices were presented simultaneously with synchronized face videos, voice manipulations did not affect the ratings of the faces. These results support the multiple-message hypothesis that voices and faces signal different aspects of an individual’s overall quality. Further experiments will have to examine the effect of face attractiveness manipulations on voice ratings.

The influence of pitch manipulation in female speakers on perceived voice and face attractiveness

Attractiveness research is typically conducted using static photographs of human faces, often cropped or otherwise edited. We present a database of videos of faces, while talking with synchronized audio that will facilitate more ecologically valid, multimodal research into face and voice attractiveness. Our database contains videos, synchronized voice recordings, and photographs of 20 male and 20 female German speakers under different emotional conditions (neutral, sad, happy, angry, flirty). Recordings were simultaneously made from three different angles (frontal, profile, 3/4 view) in front of a green screen. We report the results of a comprehensive validation of this database to make it usable for multisensory empirical aesthetics research, but also for face or emotion research. An online study was conducted to collect ratings on several dimensions including general attractiveness, allowing us to uncover the effects of predictors for facial attractiveness in a natural setting.

Vienna Talking Faces: A multimodal database of synchronized videos (ViTaFa)

Multimodal signals consist of multiple components in multiple sensory channels and are common in animal courtship. Signal components can carry unique or redundant information about the courting animal. The response to such multimodal displays might additionally reveal multisensory integration such that the response to the whole display is not simply the sum of the responses to the individual parts. In this study, we used high-quality audiovisual recordings of courting male ring doves and measured female behavioural responses to video playback. 21 females were split into three conditions: one featured multimodal, audiovisual playback, while in the other two, either the visual or auditory courtship component was occluded using familiar stimuli (foliage; vacuum cleaner sound). We analysed female behaviours associated with sexual stimulation and compared frequency of behaviours across conditions and between playback and control intervals. Additionally, we measured blood levels of oestradiol before and after testing.

Using playback to investigate multimodal signalling of attractiveness in ring doves (Streptopelia risoria)

It has long been debated whether aesthetics is something uniquely human. Our ongoing project aims to empirically address comparative aesthetics in a collaboration between psychologists and biologists. Defining aesthetic responses as approach behaviour associated with sensory pleasure and corresponding physiological states, we are exploring whether humans and non-human animals share similar mechanisms in their evaluation of sexually attractive stimuli. Specifically, we compare humans and ring doves (Streptopelia risoria), a species whose courtship behaviour and physiology have been extensively investigated in behavioural and neuroendocrinology research. Both species form pair bonds, communicate using visual and auditory signals, and can be tested in laboratory conditions with conspecifics or using video and auditory stimuli. Truly comparative work involves using as similar an experimental approach as possible for both human and animal participants. Here we report our comparative methods and experimental paradigms, and some recent results.

Comparative Aesthetics: A novel approach to investigate multimodal attractiveness in humans and animals

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, capacities, or mental states to non-human animals. Numerous factors likely affect our tendency to anthropomorphise (TA). Previous studies, using questionnaire methods found increased TA with phylogenetic distance to other species, while empathy and compassion decreased. We used covert focal observations, typically used to quantify animal behavior, to collect visitor comments at primate enclosures in two European Zoos (Vienna, Nuremberg). We quantified TA as the relative frequency of anthropomorphic vs. non-anthropomorphic comments. We additionally collected questionnaire data to investigate how average perceived resemblance to humans and species aesthetic appeal mediate the relatedness effect on TA. Following our hypotheses, we expect TA to correlate negatively with phylogenetic distance, and positively with increased resemblance and aesthetic perception independently of phylogenetic distance. Using a novel approach, this study provides new insights into human perception of and emotional connection to non-human primates.

Primates watching primates watching primates: Why do we anthropomorphise?

Lab-based comparative investigations of multimodal sexual signalling


**For a full list of posters in this session, click the See All link on the right side of the page.**

Poster Session 1 -  B: Animal Cognition and Communication

poster

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**Dear Colleagues,**

Welcome to the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society! 

This year’s conference brings together the latest research from all Cognitive Science and also highlights this year’s theme **Comparative Cognition: Animal Minds.** 

The program features four plenary speakers: Friederike Range (University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna), Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr University Bochum), Julia Fischer (University of Göttingen), and Erich Jarvis (The Rockefeller University). The keynotes and invited symposia showcase the broad spectrum of ideas that encompass the conference theme of comparative cognition. 

Further, the program includes the Rumelhart Prize keynote presentation by Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago), and symposia to celebrate the winner of the Elman Prize: Wei Ji Ma (New York University), the Heineken Award winner Robert Zatorre (McGill University), and the Robert J. Glushko Dissertation Prizes session.

The program committee for CogSci 2021 received 1,025 submissions, including 710 full papers, 275 member abstracts, 8 publication-based talks, as well as 15 proposals for symposia, and 17 for workshops and tutorials. After a rigorous review process, the committee selected 152 papers for oral presentation and inclusion in the conference proceedings (14.8%), 332 papers for poster presentation and inclusion in the proceedings (32.4%), and 175 papers for poster presentation with inclusion of abstracts in the proceedings (17.1%) We also selected 275 submitted member abstracts. In addition, we accepted 6 publication-based talks, 12 symposia, and 9 workshops and tutorials to make for an exciting and inclusive program.

We hope that you enjoy the conference this year! 

**Your Program Chairs,**
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**Learn more about the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub at the University of Vienna, hosts of CogSci 2021**

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To review the proceedings for the conference or review the searchable program, please visit the [website](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/program/).

CogSci 2021

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.

Poster Session 1 -  C : Cognitive Science

Poster Session 3 -  B: Animal Cognition and Communication

**Session Chair: **Christina Krumpholz 
**Technical Session Chair: **Abby Clements 
**Session Description: ** A large literature on human facial attractiveness has adopted an evolutionary approach (Little et al., 2011). Much less research has examined cues in other modalities, such as smell (Groyecka et al., 2017) and audition (Zäske et al., 2020). Although these different modalities may interact significantly in human mate choice (Feinberg, 2008), it is not yet understood how humans integrate cues from different sensory modalities. In the literature on animal communication, the most prominent theories suggest that different modalities either signal different qualities of an individual (multiple messages hypothesis) or communicate the same information (back-up signal hypothesis; Moller & Pomiankowski, 1993). These theories tend to disregard the possible interaction of different sensory modalities, and the role of multisensory integration.

Click <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kpqECv_rHRNCft4H1TnCmoQyECN-fdMz/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a> for the full symposium description

Cliodhna Quigley

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Presentations

Learning to be attractive: A test of the skills hypothesis in spotted bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus maculatus)

The influence of pitch manipulation in female speakers on perceived voice and face attractiveness

Vienna Talking Faces: A multimodal database of synchronized videos (ViTaFa)

Using playback to investigate multimodal signalling of attractiveness in ring doves (Streptopelia risoria)

Comparative Aesthetics: A novel approach to investigate multimodal attractiveness in humans and animals

Primates watching primates watching primates: Why do we anthropomorphise?

Lab-based comparative investigations of multimodal sexual signalling

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