Over the last 50 years, there have been efforts on behalf of the US government to simplify public legal documents for the benefit of society at large . However, there has been no systematic evaluation of how effective these efforts--collectively referred to as the ``plain language movement''--have been. Here we report the results of a large-scale longitudinal corpus analysis (n$\approx$225 million words), in which we compare every law passed by congress between 1951 to 2009 (as well as concurrent resolutions and proclamations), with a comparably sized sample of English texts from four different genres published during the same time period. We find that laws remain laden with features associated with processing difficulty--including center-embedding, passive voice, low-frequency jargon and capitalization--relative to each of the four baseline genres of English, and that the prevalence of these features has not meaningfully declined since the onset of the plain language movement (in some cases, their prevalence has increased). These findings suggest that top-down efforts to simplify legal language have thus far remained largely ineffectual, despite the apparent tractability of these changes, raising and informing difficult questions of law and public policy.

So much for plain language: An analysis of the accessibility of United States federal laws (1951-2009)

Legal documents, in the form of terms of service agreements and other private contracts, are now an increasingly prevalent part of everyday life. While legal documents have long been acknowledged to be difficult to understand without training, it remains an open question whether the ever-increasing exposure to contracts might have mitigated this difficulty. Moreover, insofar as this difficulty has persisted, there remains no systematic analysis of which linguistic structures contribute most heavily to the processing difficulty of legal texts, nor whether this difficulty is heightened for those with less language experience. Here, we investigate these issues, and in a well-powered experiment find evidence that (a) both recall and comprehension of legal propositions in a contract are hindered by use of a legal register relative to plain-English translations; (b) certain linguistic structures, such as center-embedding, hinder recall to a greater degree than others, such as passive voice; and (c) language experience influences comprehension of legal propositions. Surprisingly, language experience did not influence recall, nor was there an interaction between legal register and language experience on recall or comprehension. These findings suggest that legal language poses heightened difficulties for those with less language experience--who tend to be of lower socioeconomic status and with diminished access to the justice system--and that eliminating complex features of legalese would benefit those of all reading levels.

What did I sign? A study of the impenetrability of legalese in contracts

T13: Applied Language

technical paper

Join us for CogSci2022! Our 44th Annual Conference will be centered around the theme of diversity, with an accompanying range of keynotes and invited speakers who themselves highlight the diversity of our field. Our three symposia are Cognition across Diverse Populations, Cognition within Diverse Societies, and Global Challenges for Cognitive Science. The conference is being offered in a fully hybrid environment for onsite and online attendees.
 
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CogSci 2022

The 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society highlighted research on the theme Cognitive Diversity in addition to the full breadth and diversity of research topics offered by the society’s membership. 





**Session Chair: **Elizabeth Bonawitz 
**Technical Session Chair: **Jonathan Kominsky 
**Session Description: ** The session is comprised of 15 minute talks followed by up to 5 minutes of live Q&A time for each presenter.

IP4: Comprehension

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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.

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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.

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So much for plain language: An analysis of the accessibility of United States federal laws (1951-2009)

What did I sign? A study of the impenetrability of legalese in contracts

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