Finding and exploiting loopholes is a familiar facet of fable, law, and everyday life. But cognitive, computational, and empirical work on this behavior remains scarce. Engaging with loopholes requires a nuanced understanding of goals, social ambiguity, and value alignment. We trace loophole behavior to early childhood, and we propose that exploiting loopholes results from a conflict in actors' goals combined with a pressure to cooperate. A survey of 260 parents reporting on 425 children reveals that loophole behavior is prevalent, frequent, and diverse in daily parent-child interactions, emerging around ages five to six and tapering off from around ages nine to ten into adolescence. A further experiment shows that adults consider loophole behavior in children as less costly than non-compliance, and children increasingly differentiate loophole behavior from non-compliance from ages four to ten. We discuss limitations of the current work together with a proposal for a formal framework for loophole behavior.

Loopholes, a Window into Value Alignment and the Learning of Meaning

People engage in intentional misunderstandings to get around direct non-compliance. In other words, they use loopholes. Previous work showed that adults and children consider loophole behavior to be less costly than direct noncompliance (Bridgers, Schulz, & Ullman, 2021), and suggested this is a primary reason for their use: loopholes will land you in less trouble than defiance. However, we propose that this difference between loopholes and defiance will not hold for a specific context: moral violations. We replicate the finding that loopholes are less costly in a neutral context, but find that engaging in loopholes in a moral context is as bad as non-compliance (Experiment 1, N=360). We then use a direct comparison between loopholes and non-compliance (N=150), to investigate whether in some contexts loopholes will be seen as even worse than non-compliance. We discuss possible extensions and limitations, and consider why loopholes in moral violations may be uniquely unacceptable.

Skirting the Sacred: Moral Violations make Intentional Misunderstandings Worse

**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

technical paper

### Looking for Cogsci 2023? Please [click here](https://underline.io/events/405/reception) to switch to 2023 edition.


**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.

This session has no scheduled virtual poster presentation time, but attendees will be able to comment and ask questions about your work/research asynchronously throughout the conference. 

**If you are a virtual poster presenter**, you can leave a message in your poster area chat space to advise times (and time zone) that you will be available either in the chat box, or by setting up your own online meeting room (Zoom, etc.). 
**If you are an attendee**, please check each poster's chat box and arrange time with presenter.

Virtual Posters

poster

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society will take place in Sydney, Australia as a modified hybrid conference. Presentations from the main-session room will be live-streamed every day for all events. This will include all invited talks and award sessions. Recordings of all CogSci 2023 sessions will be made available for on-demand viewing after the conference. 
The in-person component will be held at the International Convention Centre Sydney at Darling Harbour. The Conference will take place Wednesday July 26th – Saturday July 29th, 2023 (Wednesday, July 26th is the Workshops Day).

Join us!

 [**The Program at a Glance can be found here**](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/COgSci-PAAG-V2.pdf)
 [**The Detailed Program can be found here**](https://online.fliphtml5.com/ebtyf/mswz/)
 

#### **CogSci 2023 Program Book**
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CogSci 2023

The 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society presents the latest research across cognitive science and highlights the theme of Cognition in Context.

Tomer D. Ullman

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Presentations

Loopholes, a Window into Value Alignment and the Learning of Meaning

Skirting the Sacred: Moral Violations make Intentional Misunderstandings Worse

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