Most recent papers:

• Information Sampling, Judgment, and the Environment: Application to the Effect of Popularity on Evaluations.
  Gaël Le Mens, Jerker Denrell, Balázs Kovács, Hülya Karaman.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract If people avoid alternatives they dislike, a negative evaluative bias emerges because errors of under‐evaluation are unlikely to be corrected. Prior work that analyzed this mechanism has shown that when the social environment exposes people to avoided alternatives (i.e., it makes them resample them), then evaluations can become systematically more positive. In this paper, we clarify the conditions under which this happens. By analyzing a simple learning model, we show that whether additional exposures induced by the social environment lead to more positive or more negative evaluations depends on how prior evaluations and the social environment interact in driving resampling. We apply these insights to the study of the effect of popularity on evaluations. We show theoretically that increased popularity leads to more positive evaluations when popularity mainly increases the chances of resampling for individuals with low current evaluations. Data on repeat stays at hotels are consistent with this condition: The popularity of a hotel mainly impacts the chances of a repeat stay for individuals with low satisfaction scores. Our results illustrate how a sampling approach can help to explain when and why people tend to like popular alternatives. They also shed new light on the polarization of attitudes across social groups. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  October 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12387   open full text
• Violations of Core Knowledge Shape Early Learning.
  Aimee E. Stahl, Lisa Feigenson.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 15, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on cognitive development has revealed that even the youngest minds detect and respond to events that adults find surprising. These surprise responses suggest that infants have a basic set of “core” expectations about the world that are shared with adults and other species. However, little work has asked what purpose these surprise responses serve. Here we discuss recent evidence that violations of core knowledge offer special opportunities for learning. Infants and young children make predictions about the world on the basis of their core knowledge of objects, quantities, and social entities. We argue that when these predictions fail to match the observed data, infants and children experience an enhanced drive to seek and retain new information. This impact of surprise on learning is not equipotent. Instead, it is directed to entities that are relevant to the surprise itself; this drive propels children—even infants—to form and test new hypotheses about surprising aspects of the world. We briefly consider similarities and differences between these recent findings with infants and children, on the one hand, and findings on prediction errors in humans and non‐human animals, on the other. These comparisons raise open questions that require continued inquiry, but suggest that considering phenomena across species, ages, kinds of surprise, and types of learning will ultimately help to clarify how surprise shapes thought. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  October 15, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12389   open full text
• Writing, Graphic Codes, and Asynchronous Communication.
  Olivier Morin, Piers Kelly, James Winters.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 11, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We present a theoretical framework bearing on the evolution of written communication. We analyze writing as a special kind of graphic code. Like languages, graphic codes consist of stable, conventional mappings between symbols and meanings, but (unlike spoken or signed languages) their symbols consist of enduring images. This gives them the unique capacity to transmit information in one go across time and space. Yet this capacity usually remains quite unexploited, because most graphic codes are insufficiently informative. They may only be used for mnemonic purposes or as props for oral communication in real‐time encounters. Writing systems, unlike other graphic codes, work by encoding a natural language. This allows them to support asynchronous communication in a more powerful and versatile way than any other graphic code. Yet, writing systems will not automatically unlock the capacity to communicate asynchronously. We argue that this capacity is a rarity in non‐literate societies, and not so frequent even in literate ones. Asynchronous communication is intrinsically inefficient because asynchrony constrains the amount of information that the interlocutors share and limits possibilities for repair. This would explain why synchronous, face‐to‐face communication always fosters the development of sophisticated codes (natural languages), but similar codes for asynchronous communication evolve with more difficulties. It also implies that writing cannot have evolved, at first, for supporting asynchronous communication. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  October 11, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12386   open full text
• Editors’ Introduction and Review: Sociolinguistic Variation and Cognitive Science.
  Jean‐Pierre Chevrot, Katie Drager, Paul Foulkes.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Sociolinguists study the interaction between language and society. Variationist sociolinguistics — the subfield of sociolinguistics which is the focus of this issue — uses empirical and quantitative methods to study the production and perception of linguistic variation. Linguistic variation refers to how speakers choose between linguistic forms that say the same thing in different ways, with the variants differing in their social meaning. For example, how frequently someone says fishin’ or fishing depends on a number of factors, such as the speaker's regional and social background and the formality of the speech event. Likewise, if listeners are asked to use a rating scale make judgements about speakers who say fishin’ or fishing, their ratings depend on what other social characteristics are attributed to the speaker. This issue aims to reflect the growing number of interactions that bring variationist sociolinguistics into contact of different branches of cognitive science. After presenting current trends in sociolinguistics, we identify five areas of contact between the two fields: cognitive sociolinguistics, sociolinguistic cognition, acquisition of variation, computational modeling, and a comparative approach of variation in animal communication. We then explain the benefits of interdisciplinary work: fostering the study of variability and cultural diversity in cognition; bringing together data and modeling; understanding the cognitive mechanisms through which sociolinguistic variation is processed; examining indexical meaning; exploring links between different levels of grammar; and improving methods of data collection and analysis. Finally we explain how the articles in this issue contribute to each of these benefits. We conclude by suggesting that sociolinguistics holds a strategic position for facing the challenge of building theories of language through integrating its linguistic, cognitive, and social aspects at the collective and individual levels. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  October 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12384   open full text
• To Say the Least: Where Deceptively Withholding Information Ends and Lying Begins.
  Marta Dynel.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 01, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper aims to distil the essence of deception performed by means of withholding information, a topic hitherto largely neglected in the psychological, linguistic, and philosophical research on deception. First, the key conditions for deceptively withholding information are specified. Second, several notions related to deceptively withholding information are critically addressed with a view to teasing out the main forms of withholding information. Third, it is argued that deceptively withholding information can be conceptualized in pragmatic‐philosophical terms as being based on the violation of Grice's first maxim of Quantity, which is conducive to covertly untruthful meaning, specifically hearer‐inferred what is said that presents the violation of the first maxim of Quality. In order to meet this goal, Gricean and neo‐Gricean scholarship on the first maxim of Quantity and its consequences is revisited. Fourth, a number of linguistic realizations of withholding information are examined. It is argued that some of the examples found in the relevant scholarship, namely those that involve scalar expressions, qualify rather as lies. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  October 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12379   open full text
• Modeling Morality in 3‐D: Decision‐Making, Judgment, and Inference.
  Hongbo Yu, Jenifer Z. Siegel, Molly J. Crockett.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Humans face a fundamental challenge of how to balance selfish interests against moral considerations. Such trade‐offs are implicit in moral decisions about what to do; judgments of whether an action is morally right or wrong; and inferences about the moral character of others. To date, these three dimensions of moral cognition–decision‐making, judgment, and inference–have been studied largely independently, using very different experimental paradigms. However, important aspects of moral cognition occur at the intersection of multiple dimensions; for instance, moral hypocrisy can be conceived as a disconnect between moral decisions and moral judgments. Here we describe the advantages of investigating these three dimensions of moral cognition within a single computational framework. A core component of this framework is harm aversion, a moral sentiment defined as a distaste for harming others. The framework integrates economic utility models of harm aversion with Bayesian reinforcement learning models describing beliefs about others’ harm aversion. We show how this framework can provide novel insights into the mechanisms of moral decision‐making, judgment, and inference. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12382   open full text
• The Sociolinguistic Repetition Task: A New Paradigm for Exploring the Cognitive Coherence of Language Varieties.
  Laurence Buson, Aurélie Nardy, Dominique Muller, Jean‐Pierre Chevrot.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Sociolinguistic studies generally focus on specific sociolinguistic variables. Consequently, they rarely examine whether different sociolinguistic variables have coherent orientation in a specific language variety (a social or a regional dialect) or whether the speakers freely mix sociolinguistic variants. While different attempts have been made to identify coherence and mixing in the production or perception of dialects, our aim is to answer this question at the level of the cognitive representation of varieties. For this purpose, we draw on the phenomenon of sociolinguistic restoration: when they repeat sociolinguistically mixed utterances, people tend to make them homogeneous. The first experiment—a repetition task—reproduced sociolinguistic restoration in an experimental setting. The second experiment—a judgment task—ensured that participants perceived the difference between homogeneous and mixed utterances. We conclude that high‐order coherent representations influence the reconstruction of utterances during the repetition task. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12380   open full text
• Non‐adjacent Dependency Learning in Humans and Other Animals.
  Benjamin Wilson, Michelle Spierings, Andrea Ravignani, Jutta L. Mueller, Toben H. Mintz, Frank Wijnen, Anne Kant, Kenny Smith, Arnaud Rey.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Learning and processing natural language requires the ability to track syntactic relationships between words and phrases in a sentence, which are often separated by intervening material. These nonadjacent dependencies can be studied using artificial grammar learning paradigms and structured sequence processing tasks. These approaches have been used to demonstrate that human adults, infants and some nonhuman animals are able to detect and learn dependencies between nonadjacent elements within a sequence. However, learning nonadjacent dependencies appears to be more cognitively demanding than detecting dependencies between adjacent elements, and only occurs in certain circumstances. In this review, we discuss different types of nonadjacent dependencies in language and in artificial grammar learning experiments, and how these differences might impact learning. We summarize different types of perceptual cues that facilitate learning, by highlighting the relationship between dependent elements bringing them closer together either physically, attentionally, or perceptually. Finally, we review artificial grammar learning experiments in human adults, infants, and nonhuman animals, and discuss how similarities and differences observed across these groups can provide insights into how language is learned across development and how these language‐related abilities might have evolved. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12381   open full text
• Collaborative Remembering in Conversational Narration.
  Neal R. Norrick.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This chapter introduces an epistemic perspective on narration and illustrates, based on data from storytelling in free natural conversation, how collaborative remembering can instantiate distributed cognition: first, when tellers deploy expressions of forgetfulness or explicitly enlist the aid of other participants; second, during various forms of collaborative turn sequencing with rapid speaker shift and a high degree of overlap; third, when conversational participants cooperate to produce a mosaic‐like narrative consisting of their partially separate perspectives and contributions; and fourth, when they weave their voices into a single narrative thread in a Goffmanian team performance. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12378   open full text
• Chunk‐Based Memory Constraints on the Cultural Evolution of Language.
  Erin S. Isbilen, Morten H. Christiansen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In the fields of linguistics and cognitive science, considerable attention has been devoted to the question of how linguistic structure emerged over evolutionary time. Here, we highlight the contribution of a fundamental constraint on processing, the Now‐or‐Never bottleneck. Language takes place in the here and now, with the transience of acoustic speech signals and our exceedingly limited memory for sound sequences requiring immediate processing. To overcome this bottleneck, the cognitive system employs basic chunking mechanisms to rapidly compress and recode incoming linguistic input into increasingly abstract levels of representation, thereby prolonging its retention in memory. Our suggestion is that these chunk‐based memory processes influence linguistic structure across multiple time scales. Chunk‐based memory constraints govern language acquisition and processing on the level of the individual. Through usage, linguistic structures that are more easily chunked will tend to proliferate, thus shaping the cultural evolution of language across generations of language users. This results in a selection of learnable structures, from individual words to multiword sequences that are optimally “chunkable,” so as to better squeeze through the Now‐or‐Never bottleneck. From this perspective, language can be thought of as an adaptive system that culturally evolves to fit learners’ cognitive capabilities, thereby resulting in the structure it bears today. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12376   open full text
• How Culture and Biology Interact to Shape Language and the Language Faculty.
  Kenny Smith.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Recent work suggests that linguistic structure develops through cultural evolution, as a consequence of the repeated cycle of learning and use by which languages persist. This work has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of the cognitive basis for language; in particular, human language and the cognitive capacities underpinning it are likely to have been shaped by co‐evolutionary processes, where the cultural evolution of linguistic systems is shaped by and in turn shapes the biological evolution of the capacities underpinning language learning. I review several models of this co‐evolutionary process, which suggest that the precise relationship between evolved biases in individuals and the structure of linguistic systems depends on the extent to which cultural evolution masks or unmasks individual‐level cognitive biases from selection. I finish by discussing how these co‐evolutionary models might be extended to cases where the biases involved in learning are themselves shaped by experience, as is the case for language. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12377   open full text
• Missed Connections at the Junction of Sociolinguistics and Speech Processing.
  Gerard Docherty, Paul Foulkes, Simon Gonzalez, Nathaniel Mitchell.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 30, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In recent years, significant momentum has built up in efforts to integrate the social with the cognitive in theoretical models of speech production/processing and phonological representation. While acknowledging these advances, we argue that what limits our ability to elaborate models of processing and representation in which social‐indexical properties of speech are effectively integrated is that we remain some way from fully understanding how these properties are manifested within spoken interaction in the first place. We explore some of these limitations, drawing on data from a study of sociophonetic variability in a population of speakers of Australian English. We discuss issues relating to methods for capturing variability in the realization of vowels and consonants, and we highlight the pivotal role of speech style and the challenges that this raises for models of production and processing. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  August 30, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12375   open full text
• Issue Information.
  
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 21, 2018
  --- - - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 485-487, July 2018.
  

  August 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12296   open full text
• Introduction to Volume 10, Issue 3 of topiCS.
  Wayne D. Gray.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 21, 2018
  --- - - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 488-489, July 2018.
  

  August 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12368   open full text
• Neurobiological Mechanisms for Semantic Feature Extraction and Conceptual Flexibility.
  Friedemann Pulvermüller.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Signs and symbols relate to concepts and can be used to speak about objects, actions, and their features. Theories of semantic grounding address the question how the latter two, concepts and real‐world entities, come into play and interlink in symbol learning. Here, a neurobiological model is used to spell out concrete mechanisms of symbol grounding, which implicate the “association” of information about sign and referents and, at the same time, the extraction of semantic features and the formation of abstract representations best described as conjoined and disjoined feature sets that may or may not have a real‐life equivalent. The mechanistic semantic circuits carrying these feature sets are not static conceptual entries, but exhibit rich activation dynamics related to memory, prediction, and contextual modulation. Four key issues in specifying these activation dynamics will be highlighted: (a) the inner structure of semantic circuits, (b) mechanisms of semantic priming, (c) task specificity in semantic activation, and (d) context‐dependent semantic circuit activation in the processing of referential, existential, and universal statements. These linguistic‐semantic examples show that specific mechanisms are required to account for context‐dependent semantic function or conceptual “flexibility.” Static context‐independent concepts as such are insufficient to account for these different semantic functions. Whereas abstract amodal models of concepts did so far not spell out concrete mechanisms for context‐dependent semantic function, neuronal assembly mechanisms offer a workable perspective. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 590-620, July 2018.
  

  August 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12367   open full text
• Memory at the Sharp End: The Costs of Remembering With Others in Forensic Contexts.
  Lorraine Hope, Fiona Gabbert.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 03, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract In many applied contexts where accurate and reliable information informs operational decision‐making, emergency response resource allocation, efficient investigation, judicial process, and, ultimately, the delivery of justice, the costs of unfettered conversational remembering can be high. To date, research has demonstrated that conversations between co‐witnesses in the immediate aftermath of witnessed events and co‐witness retellings of witnessed events often impair both the quality and quantity of information reported subsequently. Given the largely negative impact of conversational remembering on the recall of both individual witnesses and groups of witnesses in this context, this review explores the reasons why these costs occur, the conditions under which costs are exacerbated, and how, in practical terms, the costs can be reduced in order to maximize the accuracy and completeness of witness accounts. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  August 03, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12357   open full text
• Computational Models of Emotion Inference in Theory of Mind: A Review and Roadmap.
  Desmond C. Ong, Jamil Zaki, Noah D. Goodman.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 01, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on social cognition has fruitfully applied computational modeling approaches to explain how observers understand and reason about others’ mental states. By contrast, there has been less work on modeling observers’ understanding of emotional states. We propose an intuitive theory framework to studying affective cognition—how humans reason about emotions—and derive a taxonomy of inferences within affective cognition. Using this taxonomy, we review formal computational modeling work on such inferences, including causal reasoning about how others react to events, reasoning about unseen causes of emotions, reasoning with multiple cues, as well as reasoning from emotions to other mental states. In addition, we provide a roadmap for future research by charting out inferences—such as hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning about emotions—that are ripe for future computational modeling work. This framework proposes unifying these various types of reasoning as Bayesian inference within a common “intuitive Theory of Emotion.” Finally, we end with a discussion of important theoretical and methodological challenges that lie ahead in modeling affective cognition. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  August 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12371   open full text
• How Concrete Do We Get Telling Stories?
  Piek Vossen, Tommaso Caselli, Agata Cybulska.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 31, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Will reading different stories about the same event in the world result in a similar image of the world? Will reading the same story by different people result in a similar proxy for experiencing the story? The answer to both questions is no because language is abstract by definition and relies on our episodic experience to turn a story into a more concrete mental movie. Since our episodic knowledge differs, also the mental movie will be different. Language leaves out details, and this becomes specifically clear when building machines that read texts to represent events and to establish event relations across mentions, such as co‐reference, causality, subevents, scripts, timelines, and storylines. There is a lot of information and knowledge on the event that is not in the text but is needed to reconstruct these relations and understand the story. Machines lack this knowledge and experience and likewise make explicit what it takes to understand stories from text. In this paper, we report on experiments to automatically model event descriptions and instances across different news articles. We will show that event information is scattered over the text but also varies a lot in the degree it abstracts from details, which makes establishing event identity and relations extremely difficult. The variation in granularity of event descriptions seems to vary with pragmatic communicative strategies and defines the problem at different levels of complexity. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 621-640, July 2018.
  

  July 31, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12366   open full text
• Communication in Theory and Research on Transactive Memory Systems: A Literature Review.
  Vesa Peltokorpi, Anthony C. Hood.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 27, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Transactive memory systems (TMS) theory has attracted considerable attention in the scholarly fields of cognitive, organizational, and social psychology; communication; information science; and management. A central theme underlying and connecting these scholarly fields has been the role of interpersonal communication in explaining how members of dyads, groups, and teams learn “who knows what,” specialize in different information domains, and retrieve information from domain experts. However, because theoretical and empirical evidence is scattered across related, yet distinct scholarly fields, it is difficult to determine how and why communication influences TMS and related outcomes. Thus, this paper reviews literature on the relationships between communication, TMS, and outcomes in dyads, groups, and teams, and proposes avenues for future research. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 27, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12359   open full text
• Culture: The Driving Force of Human Cognition.
  Ivan Colagè, Francesco d'Errico.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract It is often, though sometimes only implicitly, assumed that biological/genetic evolution sets neural substrates, that neural substrates fix cognitive abilities, and that cognitive abilities determine the spectrum of cultural practices exhibited by a biological species. We label this view as the “bottom‐up‐only” view. In this paper we will show that such a “chain of dependence” is much looser than usually assumed, especially as far as recent periods (the last 800,000 years vs. the last 7 million years or more) are considered. We will provide evidence and arguments supporting the idea that cultural innovation may have direct and ascertainable effects both on the cognitive capabilities of populations of hominins (via what we call “cultural exaptation”) and on the neural substrates of the individuals in those populations (via what we call “cultural neural reuse”). Together, cultural exaptation and cultural neural reuse may give raise to a plausible general mechanism for cognitive evolution in which culture is the driving force, thus offering a “top‐down‐also” view of human evolution. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12372   open full text
• A Comparative Perspective on the Role of Acoustic Cues in Detecting Language Structure.
  Jutta L. Mueller, Carel ten Cate, Juan M. Toro.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Most human language learners acquire language primarily via the auditory modality. This is one reason why auditory artificial grammars play a prominent role in the investigation of the development and evolutionary roots of human syntax. The present position paper brings together findings from human and non‐human research on the impact of auditory cues on learning about linguistic structures with a special focus on how different types of cues and biases in auditory cognition may contribute to success and failure in artificial grammar learning (AGL). The basis of our argument is the link between auditory cues and syntactic structure across languages and development. Cross‐species comparison suggests that many aspects of auditory cognition that are relevant for language are not human specific and are present even in rather distantly related species. Furthermore, auditory cues and biases impact on learning, which we will discuss in the example of auditory perception and AGL studies. This observation, together with the significant role of auditory cues in language processing, supports the idea that auditory cues served as a bootstrap to syntax during language evolution. Yet this also means that potentially human‐specific syntactic abilities are not due to basic auditory differences between humans and non‐human animals but are based upon more advanced cognitive processes. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12373   open full text
• The Social Function of Autobiographical Stories in the Personal and Virtual World: An Initial Investigation.
  Nicole Alea, Susan Bluck, Emily L. Mroz, Zanique Edwards.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 23, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Receiving another's autobiographical story may serve to elicit feelings of liking and empathy for the story sharer. Research has mostly examined social functions of autobiographical stories for in‐person communications. The current experiment (N = 60) examined whether levels of liking, closeness, and empathy felt for a stranger (female confederate) after receiving her story depended on if (a) the story was received in‐person or through instant message (IM), and (b) the story was positive or negative. Liking and having empathy for the stranger was higher in the in‐person conditions compared to IM conditions. This effect was mediated by how engaged participants were with the story. Participants liked the stranger more after receiving the positive autobiographical story, but they felt more empathy toward her after the negative autobiographical story. The discussion considers parameters of the communication platform and people's perceptions of stories as explanations for the results. Limitations are considered. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 23, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12370   open full text
• From Conversations to Digital Communication: The Mnemonic Consequences of Consuming and Producing Information via Social Media.
  Charles B. Stone, Qi Wang.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 05, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Social media has become one of the most powerful and ubiquitous means by which individuals curate, share, and communicate information with their friends, family, and the world at large. Indeed, 90% of the American adolescents are active social media users, as well as 65% of American adults (Perrin, 2015; see also Duggan & Brenner, 2013). Despite this, psychologists are only beginning to understand the mnemonic consequences associated with social media use. In this article, we will distill this nascent literature by focusing on two primary factors: the type of information (personal vs. public) and the role (producer vs. consumer) individuals play when engaging with social media. In particular, we will highlight research examining induced forgetting for personal information as well as false memories and truthiness for public information. We will end by providing some tentative conclusions and a discussion of areas in need of additional research that will provide a more holistic understanding of the mnemonic consequences associated with social media use. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 05, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12369   open full text
• Honesty Speaks a Second Language.
  Yoella Bereby‐Meyer, Sayuri Hayakawa, Shaul Shalvi, Joanna D. Corey, Albert Costa, Boaz Keysar.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 01, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Theories of dishonest behavior implicitly assume language independence. Here, we investigated this assumption by comparing lying by people using a foreign language versus their native tongue. Participants rolled a die and were paid according to the outcome they reported. Because the outcome was private, they could lie to inflate their profit without risk of repercussions. Participants performed the task either in their native language or in a foreign language. With native speakers of Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, and English, we discovered that, on average, people inflate their earnings less when they use a foreign language. The outcome is explained by a dual system account that suggests that self‐serving dishonesty is an automatic tendency, which is supported by a fast and intuitive system. Because using a foreign language is less intuitive and automatic, it might engage more deliberation and reduce the temptation to lie. These findings challenge theories of ethical behavior to account for the role of the language in shaping ethical behavior. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12360   open full text
• Shedding Light on Keeping People in the Dark.
  Don Fallis.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 01, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract We want to keep hackers in the dark about our passwords and our credit card numbers. We want to keep potential eavesdroppers in the dark about our private communications with friends and business associates. This need for secrecy raises important questions in epistemology (how do we do it?) and in ethics (should we do it?). In order to answer these questions, it would be useful to have a good understanding of the concept of keeping someone in the dark. Several philosophers (e.g., Bok, 1983; Carson, 2010; Mahon, 2009; Scheppele, 1988) have analyzed this concept (or, equivalently, the concept of keeping secrets) in terms of concealing and/or withholding information. However, their analyses incorrectly exclude clear instances of keeping someone in the dark. And more important, they incorrectly focus on possible means of keeping someone in the dark rather than on what it is to keep someone in the dark. In this paper, I argue that you keep X in the dark about a proposition P if and only if you intentionally cause X not to have a true belief that P. In addition, I show how this analysis of keeping someone in the dark can be extended from a categorical belief model of epistemic states to a credence (or degree of belief) model. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  July 01, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12361   open full text
• Storytelling as Adaptive Collective Sensemaking.
  Lucas M. Bietti, Ottilie Tilston, Adrian Bangerter.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 28, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Storytelling represents a key element in the creation and propagation of culture. Three main accounts of the adaptive function of storytelling include (a) manipulating the behavior of the audience to enhance the fitness of the narrator, (b) transmitting survival‐relevant information while avoiding the costs involved in the first‐hand acquisition of that information, and (c) maintaining social bonds or group‐level cooperation. We assess the substantial evidence collected in experimental and ethnographic studies for each account. These accounts do not always appeal to the specific features of storytelling above and beyond language use in general. We propose that the specific adaptive value of storytelling lies in making sense of non‐routine, uncertain, or novel situations, thereby enabling the collaborative development of previously acquired skills and knowledge, but also promoting social cohesion by strengthening intragroup identity and clarifying intergroup relations. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 28, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12358   open full text
• Relations Between Language and Cognition: Evidentiality and Sources of Knowledge.
  Ercenur Ünal, Anna Papafragou.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Understanding and acquiring language involve mapping language onto conceptual representations. Nevertheless, several issues remain unresolved with respect to (a) how such mappings are performed, and (b) whether conceptual representations are susceptible to cross‐linguistic influences. In this article, we discuss these issues focusing on the domain of evidentiality and sources of knowledge. Empirical evidence in this domain yields growing support for the proposal that linguistic categories of evidentiality are tightly linked to, build on, and reflect conceptual representations of sources of knowledge that are shared across speakers of different languages. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12355   open full text
• Editors' Introduction: Abstract Concepts: Structure, Processing, and Modeling.
  Marianna Bolognesi, Gerard Steen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Our ability to deal with abstract concepts is one of the most intriguing faculties of human cognition. Still, we know little about how such concepts are formed, processed, and represented in mind. For example, because abstract concepts do not designate referents that can be experienced through our body, the role of perceptual experiences in shaping their content remains controversial. Current theories suggest a variety of alternative explanations to the question of “how abstract concepts are represented in the human mind.” These views pinpoint specific streams of semantic information that would play a prominent role in shaping the content of abstract concepts, such as situation‐based information (e.g., Barsalou & Wiemer‐Hastings, ), affective information (Kousta, Vigliocco, Vinson, Andrews, & Del Campo, ), and linguistic information (Louwerse, ). Rarely, these theoretical views are directly compared. In this special issue, current views are presented in their most recent and advanced form, and directly compared and discussed in a debate, which is reported at the end of each article. As a result, new exciting questions and challenges arise. These questions and challenges, reported in this introductory article, can arguably pave the way to new empirical studies and theoretical developments on the nature of abstract concepts. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 490-500, July 2018.
  

  June 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12354   open full text
• Functions of Parental Intergenerational Narratives Told by Young People.
  Natalie Merrill, Jordan A. Booker, Robyn Fivush.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Family stories help shape identity and provide a foundation for navigating life events during adolescence and early adulthood. However, little research examines the types of stories passed onto adolescents and emerging adults, the extent to which these stories are retained and accessible, and the potentially influential parental‐ and self‐identity content constructed in telling these stories. Across three samples, we investigate the accessibility and functions of intergenerational narratives that adolescents and emerging adults know of their parents. By examining adolescents’ open‐ended intergenerational stories, emerging adults’ intergenerational stories of parents’ transgression and proud moments, and emerging adults’ intergenerational stories of parents’ self‐defining moments, we systematically describe the functions of various intergenerational stories during adolescence and early adulthood, when identity is in formation. We found that adolescents and emerging adults can readily recount intergenerational stories from parents, and that many of these stories serve to build relationships with the parent, provide insights about parents, provide insights about self, and transmit life lessons. The specific findings by narrative topic and by gender of both participant and parent are discussed. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12356   open full text
• Easy Words: Reference Resolution in a Malevolent Referent World.
  Lila R. Gleitman, John C. Trueswell.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 16, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This article describes early stages in the acquisition of a first vocabulary by infants and young children. It distinguishes two major stages, the first of which operates by a stand‐alone word‐to‐world pairing procedure and the second of which, using the evidence so acquired, builds a domain‐specific syntax‐sensitive structure‐to‐world pairing procedure. As we show, the first stage of learning is slow, restricted in character, and to some extent errorful, whereas the second procedure is determinative, rapid, and essentially errorless. Our central claim here is that the early, referentially based learning procedure succeeds at all because it is reined in by attention‐focusing properties of word‐to‐world timing and related indicants of referential intent. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 16, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12352   open full text
• Memory‐Based Deception Detection: Extending the Cognitive Signature of Lying From Instructed to Self‐Initiated Cheating.
  Linda M. Geven, Gershon Ben‐Shakhar, Merel Kindt, Bruno Verschuere.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 15, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract From a cognitive perspective, lying can be regarded as a complex cognitive process requiring the interplay of several executive functions. Meta‐analytic research on 114 studies encompassing 3,307 participants (Suchotzki, Verschuere, Van Bockstaele, Ben‐Shakhar, & Crombez, ) suggests that computerized paradigms can reliably assess the cognitive burden of lying, with large reaction time differences between lying and truth telling. These studies, however, lack a key ingredient of real‐life deception, namely self‐initiated behavior. Research participants have typically been instructed to commit a mock crime and conceal critical information, whereas in real life, people freely choose whether or not to engage in antisocial behavior. In this study, participants (n = 433) engaged in a trivia quiz and were provided with a monetary incentive for high accuracy performance. Participants were randomly allocated to either a condition where they were instructed to cheat on the quiz (mimicking the typical laboratory set‐up) or to a condition in which they were provided with the opportunity to cheat, yet without explicit instructions to do so. Assessments of their response times in a subsequent Concealed Information Test (CIT) revealed that both instructed cheaters (n = 107) and self‐initiated cheaters (n = 142) showed the expected RT‐slowing for concealed information. The data indicate that the cognitive signature of lying is not restricted to explicitly instructed cheating, but it can also be observed for self‐initiated cheating. These findings are highly encouraging from an ecological validity perspective. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 15, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12353   open full text
• A Simple Computational Theory of General Collective Intelligence.
  Peter M. Krafft.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Researchers have recently demonstrated that group performance across tasks tends to be correlated, motivating the use of a single metric for the general collective intelligence of groups akin to general intelligence metrics for individuals. High general collective intelligence is achieved when a group performs well across a wide variety of tasks. A number of factors have been shown to be predictive of general collective intelligence, but there is sparse formal theory explaining the presence of correlations across tasks, betraying a fundamental gap in our understanding of what general collective intelligence is measuring. Here, we formally argue that general collective intelligence arises from groups achieving commitment to group goals, accurate shared beliefs, and coordinated actions. We then argue for the existence of generic mechanisms that help groups achieve these cognitive alignment conditions. The presence or absence of such mechanisms can potentially explain observed correlations in group performance across tasks. Under our view, general collective intelligence can be conceived as measuring group performance on classes of tasks that have particular combinations of cognitive alignment requirements. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12341   open full text
• Rapid Influence of Word‐Talker Associations on Lexical Access.
  Jonny Kim, Katie Drager.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 14, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Previous work on English and Korean demonstrates that words are more quickly identified as real words when they are produced by a voice congruent with the age of the talkers who are most likely to use the word (Kim, 2016, Laboratory Phonology, 7, 18; Walker & Hay, 2011, Laboratory Phonology, 2, 219–237). However, this previous work presents stimuli blocked by voice, giving the participant ample time to form expectations about the talker and the words that the talker would likely use. To test whether the effect can be observed in the absence of cues to talker age prior to word onset, the current experiment replicates Kim (2016, Laboratory Phonology, 7, 18) but without blocking by talker. Results from the current experiment confirm earlier findings and they demonstrate that the effect can be observed even without the listener having any expectations about the talker prior to hearing the word. We discuss the implications of these results for models of speech perception, suggesting that lexical access is rapidly boosted by socio‐indexical phonetic cues that are congruent with socio‐indexical lexical information. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  June 14, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12351   open full text
• Features of Successful and Unsuccessful Collaborative Memory Conversations in Long‐Married Couples.
  Celia B. Harris, Amanda J. Barnier, John Sutton, Greg Savage.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 30, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract While we often engage in conversational reminiscing with loved ones, the effects of these conversations on our memory performance remain poorly understood. On the one hand, Wegner's transactive memory theory predicts that intimate groups experience benefits from remembering together. On the other hand, research on collaborative recall has shown costs of shared remembering in groups of strangers—at least in terms of number of items recalled—and even in intimate groups there is heterogeneity in outcomes. In the current research, we studied the effects of particular communicative features in determining the outcomes of collaborative recall in intimate groups. We tested 39 older, long‐married couples. They completed a non‐personal recall task (name all the countries in Europe) and a personal recall task (name all your mutual friends), both separately and together. When they collaborated, we recorded their conversation. We coded for specific “communication variables” and obtained measures of “conversational style.” Overall, we found two clusters of communication variables positively associated with collaborative success: (a) cuing each other, responding to cues, and repeating each other; and (b) making positive statements about memory performance and persisting with the task. A negative cluster of behaviors—correcting each other, having uneven expertise, and strategy disagreements—was associated with less interactive, more “monologue” style of collaboration, but not with overall recall performance. We discuss our results in terms of the importance of different conversational processes in driving the heterogeneous outcomes of group remembering in intimate groups, suggesting that a focus on recall output alone limits our understanding of conversational remembering. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 30, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12350   open full text
• Knowing the Meaning of a Word by the Linguistic and Perceptual Company It Keeps.
  Max M. Louwerse.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 30, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Debates on meaning and cognition suggest that an embodied cognition account is exclusive of a symbolic cognition account. Decades of research in the cognitive sciences have, however, shown that these accounts are not at all mutually exclusive. Acknowledging cognition is both symbolic and embodied generates more relevant questions that propel, rather than divide, the cognitive sciences: questions such as how computational symbolic findings map onto experimental embodied findings, and under what conditions cognition is relatively more symbolic or embodied in nature. The current paper revisits the Symbol Interdependency Hypothesis, which argues that language encodes perceptual information and that language users rely on these language statistics in cognitive processes. It argues that the claim that words are abstract, amodal, and arbitrary symbols and therefore must always be grounded to become meaningful is an oversimplification of the language system. Instead, language has evolved such that it maps onto the perceptual system, whereby language users rely on language statistics, which allow for bootstrapping meaning also when grounding is limited. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 573-589, July 2018.
  

  May 30, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12349   open full text
• Regularity Extraction Across Species: Associative Learning Mechanisms Shared by Human and Non‐Human Primates.
  Arnaud Rey, Laure Minier, Raphaëlle Malassis, Louisa Bogaerts, Joël Fagot.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 22, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Extracting the regularities of our environment is a core cognitive ability in human and non‐human primates. Comparative studies may provide information of strong heuristic value to constrain the elaboration of computational models of regularity learning. This study illustrates this point by testing human and non‐human primates (Guinea baboons, Papio papio) with the same experimental paradigm, using a novel online learning measure. For local co‐occurrence regularities, we found similar patterns of regularity extraction in baboons and humans. However, only humans extracted the more global sequence structure. It is proposed that only the first result that is common to both species should be used to constrain models of regularity learning. The second result indicates that the extraction of global regularities cannot be accounted for by mere associative learning mechanisms and suggests that humans probably benefit from their language recoding abilities for extracting these regularities. We propose to use a comparative approach to address a series of remaining theoretical questions, which will contribute to the development of a general theory of regularity learning. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 22, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12343   open full text
• Social Transmission of False Memory in Small Groups and Large Networks.
  Raeya Maswood, Suparna Rajaram.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Sharing information and memories is a key feature of social interactions, making social contexts important for developing and transmitting accurate memories and also false memories. False memory transmission can have wide‐ranging effects, including shaping personal memories of individuals as well as collective memories of a network of people. This paper reviews a collection of key findings and explanations in cognitive research on the transmission of false memories in small groups. It also reviews the emerging experimental work on larger networks and collective false memories. Given the reconstructive nature of memory, the abundance of misinformation in everyday life, and the variety of social structures in which people interact, an understanding of transmission of false memories has both scientific and societal implications. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12348   open full text
• Learning and Processing Abstract Words and Concepts: Insights From Typical and Atypical Development.
  Gabriella Vigliocco, Marta Ponari, Courtenay Norbury.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 21, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The paper describes two plausible hypotheses concerning the learning of abstract words and concepts. According to a first hypothesis, children would learn abstract words by extracting co‐occurrences among words in linguistic input, using, for example, mechanisms as described by models of Distributional Semantics. According to a second hypothesis, children would exploit the fact that abstract words tend to have more emotional associations than concrete words to infer that they refer to internal/mental states. Each hypothesis makes specific predictions with regards to when and which abstract words are more likely to be learned; also they make different predictions concerning the impact of developmental disorders. We start by providing a review of work characterizing how abstract words and concepts are learned in development, especially between the ages of 6 and 12. Second, we review some work from our group that tests the two hypotheses above. This work investigates typically developing (TD) children and children with atypical development (developmental language disorders [DLD] and autism spectrum disorder [ASD] with and without language deficits). We conclude that the use of strategies based on emotional information, or on co‐occurrences in language, may play a role at different developmental stages. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 533-549, July 2018.
  

  May 21, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12347   open full text
• Seeing Patterns in Randomness: A Computational Model of Surprise.
  Phil Maguire, Philippe Moser, Rebecca Maguire, Mark T. Keane.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract While seemingly a ubiquitous cognitive process, the precise definition and function of surprise remains elusive. Surprise is often conceptualized as being related to improbability or to contrasts with higher probability expectations. In contrast to this probabilistic view, we argue that surprising observations are those that undermine an existing model, implying an alternative causal origin. Surprises are not merely improbable events; instead, they indicate a breakdown in the model being used to quantify probability. We suggest that the heuristic people rely on to detect such anomalous events is randomness deficiency. Specifically, people experience surprise when they identify patterns where their model implies there should only be random noise. Using algorithmic information theory, we present a novel computational theory which formalizes this notion of surprise as randomness deficiency. We also present empirical evidence that people respond to randomness deficiency in their environment and use it to adjust their beliefs about the causal origins of events. The connection between this pattern‐detection view of surprise and the literature on learning and interestingness is discussed. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12345   open full text
• Morphology and Memory: Toward an Integrated Theory.
  Ray Jackendoff, Jenny Audring.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Framed in psychological terms, the basic question of linguistic theory is what is stored in memory, and in what form. Traditionally, what is stored is divided into grammar and lexicon, where grammar contains the rules and the lexicon is an unstructured list of exceptions. We develop an alternative view in which rules of grammar are simply lexical items that contain variables, and in which rules have two functions. In their generative function, they are used to build novel structures, just as in traditional generative linguistics. In their relational function, they capture generalizations over stored items in the lexicon, a role not seriously explored in traditional linguistic theory. The result is a highly structured lexicon with rich patterns among stored items. We further explore the possibility that this sort of structuring is not specific to language, but appears in other cognitive domains as well, such as the structure of physical objects, of music, and of geographical and social knowledge. The differences among cognitive domains do not lie in this overall texture, but in the materials over which stored relations are defined. The challenge is to develop theories of representation in these other domains comparable to that for language. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12334   open full text
• Changing Words and Sounds: The Roles of Different Cognitive Units in Sound Change.
  Márton Sóskuthy, Paul Foulkes, Vincent Hughes, Bill Haddican.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 17, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This study considers the role of different cognitive units in sound change: phonemes, contextual variants and words. We examine /u/‐fronting and /j/‐dropping in data from three generations of Derby English speakers. We analyze dynamic formant data and auditory judgments, using mixed effects regression methods, including generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). /u/‐fronting is reaching its end‐point, showing complex conditioning by context and a frequency effect that weakens over time. /j/‐dropping is declining, with low‐frequency words showing more innovative variants with /j/ than high‐frequency words. The two processes interact: words with variable /j/‐dropping (new) exhibit more fronting than words that never have /j/ (noodle) even when the /j/ is deleted. These results support models of change that rely on phonetically detailed representations for both word‐ and sound‐level cognitive units. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  May 17, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12346   open full text
• Priming as a Motivating Factor in Sociophonetic Variation and Change.
  Lynn Clark.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Understanding how and why pronunciations vary and change has been a dominant theme in variationist sociolinguistics (Labov, , ). Linguistic variability has also been an area of focus in psychology and cognitive science. Work from these two fields has shown that where variation exists in language, an alternative form, once used, persists in working memory and has a greater chance of reuse (Bock, ; Bock & Loebell, ; Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, ). While there have been efforts to connect priming research with sociolinguistics at the level of grammar (Poplack, ; Travis, ), there has been less work which explicitly considers the potential role of priming as a motivating factor in accent variation and change. This paper explores the role of priming in a socially conditioned sound change. There are two main findings: (a) phonetic variants with the same voicing tend to cluster together in naturally occurring speech and (b) repetition of phonetic form interacts with widely attested sociolinguistic predictors of variation. I argue that there are benefits to both cognitive science and sociolinguistics from this synergy: Incorporating research from cognitive science into sociolinguistics provides us with a better understanding of the factors underpinning a sound change in progress; incorporating insights from sociolinguistics into cognitive science shows that priming does not always operate in the same way for all speakers. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  April 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12338   open full text
• Can Strategic Ignorance Explain the Evolution of Love?
  Adam Bear, David G. Rand.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 24, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract People's devotion to, and love for, their romantic partners poses an evolutionary puzzle: Why is it better to stop your search for other partners once you enter a serious relationship when you could continue to search for somebody better? A recent formal model based on “strategic ignorance” suggests that such behavior can be adaptive and favored by natural selection, so long as you can signal your unwillingness to “look” for other potential mates to your current partner. Here, we re‐examine this conclusion with a more detailed model designed to capture specific features of romantic relationships. We find, surprisingly, that devotion does not typically evolve in our model: Selection favors agents who choose to “look” while in relationships and who allow their partners to do the same. Non‐looking is only expected to evolve if there is an extremely large cost associated with being left by your partner. Our results therefore raise questions about the role of strategic ignorance in explaining the evolution of love. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  April 24, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12342   open full text
• Implicit Statistical Learning: A Tale of Two Literatures.
  Morten H. Christiansen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Implicit learning and statistical learning are two contemporary approaches to the long‐standing question in psychology and cognitive science of how organisms pick up on patterned regularities in their environment. Although both approaches focus on the learner's ability to use distributional properties to discover patterns in the input, the relevant research has largely been published in separate literatures and with surprisingly little cross‐pollination between them. This has resulted in apparently opposing perspectives on the computations involved in learning, pitting chunk‐based learning against probabilistic learning. In this paper, I trace the nearly century‐long historical pedigree of the two approaches to learning and argue for their integration under the heading of “implicit statistical learning.” Building on basic insights from the memory literature, I sketch a framework for statistically based chunking that aims to provide a unified basis for understanding implicit statistical learning. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  April 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12332   open full text
• The Emotions of Abstract Words: A Distributional Semantic Analysis.
  Alessandro Lenci, Gianluca E. Lebani, Lucia C. Passaro.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 06, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Recent psycholinguistic and neuroscientific research has emphasized the crucial role of emotions for abstract words, which would be grounded by affective experience, instead of a sensorimotor one. The hypothesis of affective embodiment has been proposed as an alternative to the idea that abstract words are linguistically coded and that linguistic processing plays a key role in their acquisition and processing. In this paper, we use distributional semantic models to explore the complex interplay between linguistic and affective information in the representation of abstract words. Distributional analyses on Italian norming data show that abstract words have more affective content and tend to co‐occur with contexts with higher emotive values, according to affective statistical indices estimated in terms of distributional similarity with a restricted number of seed words strongly associated with a set of basic emotions. Therefore, the strong affective content of abstract words might just be an indirect byproduct of co‐occurrence statistics. This is consistent with a version of representational pluralism in which concepts that are fully embodied either at the sensorimotor or at the affective level live side‐by‐side with concepts only indirectly embodied via their linguistic associations with other embodied words. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 550-572, July 2018.
  

  April 06, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12335   open full text
• Linking Cognitive and Social Aspects of Sound Change Using Agent‐Based Modeling.
  Jonathan Harrington, Felicitas Kleber, Ulrich Reubold, Florian Schiel, Mary Stevens.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 27, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract The paper defines the core components of an interactive‐phonetic (IP) sound change model. The starting point for the IP‐model is that a phonological category is often skewed phonetically in a certain direction by the production and perception of speech. A prediction of the model is that sound change is likely to come about as a result of perceiving phonetic variants in the direction of the skew and at the probabilistic edge of the listener's phonological category. The results of agent‐based computational simulations applied to the sound change in progress, /u/‐fronting in Standard Southern British, were consistent with this hypothesis. The model was extended to sound changes involving splits and mergers by using the interaction between the agents to drive the phonological reclassification of perceived speech signals. The simulations showed no evidence of any acoustic change when this extended model was applied to Australian English data in which /s/ has been shown to retract due to coarticulation in /str/ clusters. Some agents nevertheless varied in their phonological categorizations during interaction between /str/ and /ʃtr/: This vacillation may represent the potential for sound change to occur. The general conclusion is that many types of sound change are the outcome of how phonetic distributions are oriented with respect to each other, their association to phonological classes, and how these types of information vary between speakers that happen to interact with each other. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  March 27, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12329   open full text
• Sociolinguistic Perception as Inference Under Uncertainty.
  Dave F. Kleinschmidt, Kodi Weatherholtz, T. Florian Jaeger.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 15, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Social and linguistic perceptions are linked. On one hand, talker identity affects speech perception. On the other hand, speech itself provides information about a talker's identity. Here, we propose that the same probabilistic knowledge might underlie both socially conditioned linguistic inferences and linguistically conditioned social inferences. Our computational–level approach—the ideal adapter—starts from the idea that listeners use probabilistic knowledge of covariation between social, linguistic, and acoustic cues in order to infer the most likely explanation of the speech signals they hear. As a first step toward understanding social inferences in this framework, we use a simple ideal observer model to show that it would be possible to infer aspects of a talker's identity using cue distributions based on actual speech production data. This suggests the possibility of a single formal framework for social and linguistic inferences and the interactions between them. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  March 15, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12331   open full text
• A Social Approach to Rule Dynamics Using an Agent‐Based Model.
  Christine Cuskley, Vittorio Loreto, Simon Kirby.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 08, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract A well‐trod debate at the nexus of cognitive science and linguistics, the so‐called past tense debate, has examined how rules and exceptions are individually acquired (McClelland & Patterson, ; Pinker & Ullman, ). However, this debate focuses primarily on individual mechanisms in learning, saying little about how rules and exceptions function from a sociolinguistic perspective. To remedy this, we use agent‐based models to examine how rules and exceptions function across populations. We expand on earlier work by considering how repeated interaction and cultural transmission across speakers affects the dynamics of rules and exceptions in language, measuring linguistic outcomes within a social system rather than focusing individual learning outcomes. We consider how population turnover and growth effect linguistic rule dynamics in large and small populations, showing that this method has considerable potential particularly in probing the mechanisms underlying the linguistic niche hypothesis (Lupyan & Dale, ). - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  March 08, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12327   open full text
• Sociophonetics: The Role of Words, the Role of Context, and the Role of Words in Context.
  Jennifer Hay.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract This paper synthesizes a wide range of literature from sociolinguistics and cognitive psychology, to argue for a central role for the “word” as a vehicle of language variation and change. Three crucially interlinked strands of research are reviewed—the role of context in associative learning, the word‐level storage of phonetic and contextual detail, and the phonetic consequences of skewed distributions of words across different contexts. I argue that the human capacity for associative learning, combined with attention to fine‐phonetic detail at the level of the word, plays a significant role in predicting a range of subtle but systematically robust observed socioindexical patterns in speech production and perception. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  March 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12326   open full text
• Abstract Concepts and Pictures of Real‐World Situations Activate One Another.
  Ken McRae, Daniel Nedjadrasul, Raymond Pau, Bethany Pui‐Hei Lo, Lisa King.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 02, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Abstract concepts typically are defined in terms of lacking physical or perceptual referents. We argue instead that they are not devoid of perceptual information because knowledge of real‐world situations is an important component of learning and using many abstract concepts. Although the relationship between perceptual information and abstract concepts is less straightforward than for concrete concepts, situation‐based perceptual knowledge is part of many abstract concepts. In Experiment 1, participants made lexical decisions to abstract words that were preceded by related and unrelated pictures of situations. For example, share was preceded by a picture of two girls sharing a cob of corn. When pictures were presented for 500 ms, latencies did not differ. However, when pictures were presented for 1,000 ms, decision latencies were significantly shorter for abstract words preceded by related versus unrelated pictures. Because the abstract concepts corresponded to the pictured situation as a whole, rather than a single concrete object or entity, the necessary relational processing takes time. In Experiment 2, on each trial, an abstract word was presented for 250 ms, immediately followed by a picture. Participants indicated whether or not the picture showed a normal situation. Decision latencies were significantly shorter for pictures preceded by related versus unrelated abstract words. Our experiments provide evidence that knowledge of events and situations is important for learning and using at least some types of abstract concepts. That is, abstract concepts are grounded in situations, but in a more complex manner than for concrete concepts. Although people's understanding of abstract concepts certainly includes knowledge gained from language describing situations and events for which those concepts are relevant, sensory and motor information experienced during real‐life events is important as well. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 518-532, July 2018.
  

  March 02, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12328   open full text
• The Unforeseen Consequences of Interacting With Non‐Native Speakers.
  Shiri Lev‐Ari, Emily Ho, Boaz Keysar.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Sociolinguistic research shows that listeners' expectations of speakers influence their interpretation of the speech, yet this is often ignored in cognitive models of language comprehension. Here, we focus on the case of interactions between native and non‐native speakers. Previous literature shows that listeners process the language of non‐native speakers in less detail, because they expect them to have lower linguistic competence. We show that processing the language of non‐native speakers increases lexical competition and access in general, not only of the non‐native speaker's speech, and that this leads to poorer memory of one's own speech during the interaction. We further find that the degree to which people adjust their processing to non‐native speakers is related to the degree to which they adjust their speech to them. We discuss implications for cognitive models of language processing and sociolinguistic research on attitudes. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  February 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12325   open full text
• Surprise, Recipes for Surprise, and Social Influence.
  Jeffrey Loewenstein.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 07, 2018
  --- - |2 Abstract Surprising people can provide an opening for influencing them. Surprises garner attention, are arousing, are memorable, and can prompt shifts in understanding. Less noted is that, as a result, surprises can serve to persuade others by leading them to shifts in attitudes. Furthermore, because stories, pictures, and music can generate surprises and those can be widely shared, surprise can have broad social influence. People also tend to share surprising items with others, as anyone on social media has discovered. This means that in addition to broadcasting surprising information, surprising items can also spread through networks. The joint result is that surprise not only has individual effects on beliefs and attitudes but also collective effects on the content of culture. Items that generate surprise need not be random or accidental. There are predictable methods or recipes for generating surprise. One such recipe is discussed, the repetition‐break plot structure, to explore the psychological and social possibilities of examining surprise. Recipes for surprise offer a useful means for understanding how surprise works and offer prospects for harnessing surprise to a wide array of ends. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  February 07, 2018   doi: 10.1111/tops.12312   open full text
• Curb Your Embodiment.
  Diane Pecher.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 07, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract To explain how abstract concepts are grounded in sensory‐motor experiences, several theories have been proposed. I will discuss two of these proposals, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Situated Cognition, and argue why they do not fully explain grounding. A central idea in Conceptual Metaphor Theory is that image schemas ground abstract concepts in concrete experiences. Image schemas might themselves be abstractions, however, and therefore do not solve the grounding problem. Moreover, image schemas are too simple to explain the full richness of abstract concepts. Situated cognition might provide such richness. Research in our laboratory, however, has shown that even for concrete concepts, sensory‐motor grounding is task dependent. Therefore, it is questionable whether abstract concepts can be significantly grounded in sensory‐motor processing. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 501-517, July 2018.
  

  December 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12311   open full text
• A Contrast‐Based Computational Model of Surprise and Its Applications.
  Luis Macedo, Amílcar Cardoso.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 19, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract We review our work on a contrast‐based computational model of surprise and its applications. The review is contextualized within related research from psychology, philosophy, and particularly artificial intelligence. Influenced by psychological theories of surprise, the model assumes that surprise‐eliciting events initiate a series of cognitive processes that begin with the appraisal of the event as unexpected, continue with the interruption of ongoing activity and the focusing of attention on the unexpected event, and culminate in the analysis and evaluation of the event and the revision of beliefs. It is assumed that the intensity of surprise elicited by an event is a nonlinear function of the difference or contrast between the subjective probability of the event and that of the most probable alternative event (which is usually the expected event); and that the agent's behavior is partly controlled by actual and anticipated surprise. We describe applications of artificial agents that incorporate the proposed surprise model in three domains: the exploration of unknown environments, creativity, and intelligent transportation systems. These applications demonstrate the importance of surprise for decision making, active learning, creative reasoning, and selective attention. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  November 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12310   open full text
• The Role of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Prediction Error and Signaling Surprise.
  William H. Alexander, Joshua W. Brown.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 13, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In the past two decades, reinforcement learning (RL) has become a popular framework for understanding brain function. A key component of RL models, prediction error, has been associated with neural signals throughout the brain, including subcortical nuclei, primary sensory cortices, and prefrontal cortex. Depending on the location in which activity is observed, the functional interpretation of prediction error may change: Prediction errors may reflect a discrepancy in the anticipated and actual value of reward, a signal indicating the salience or novelty of a stimulus, and many other interpretations. Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has long been recognized as a region involved in processing behavioral error, and recent computational models of the region have expanded this interpretation to include a more general role for the region in predicting likely events, broadly construed, and signaling deviations between expected and observed events. Ongoing modeling work investigating the interaction between ACC and additional regions involved in cognitive control suggests an even broader role for cingulate in computing a hierarchically structured surprise signal critical for learning models of the environment. The result is a predictive coding model of the frontal lobes, suggesting that predictive coding may be a unifying computational principle across the neocortex. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  November 13, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12307   open full text
• The Cognitive‐Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence.
  Rainer Reisenzein, Gernot Horstmann, Achim Schützwohl.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 23, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive‐evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema‐discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema‐discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition‐change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema‐discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self‐report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise. - Topics in Cognitive Science, EarlyView.
  

  September 23, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12292   open full text
• Promoting Sketching in Introductory Geoscience Courses: CogSketch Geoscience Worksheets.
  Bridget Garnier, Maria Chang, Carol Ormand, Bryan Matlen, Basil Tikoff, Thomas F. Shipley.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 23, 2017
  Research from cognitive science and geoscience education has shown that sketching can improve spatial thinking skills and facilitate solving spatially complex problems. Yet sketching is rarely implemented in introductory geosciences courses, due to time needed to grade sketches and lack of materials that incorporate cognitive science research. Here, we report a design‐centered, collaborative effort, between geoscientists, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, to characterize spatial learning challenges in geoscience and to design sketch activities that use a sketch‐understanding program, CogSketch. We developed 26 CogSketch worksheets that use cognitive science–based principles to scaffold problem solving of spatially complex geoscience problems and report observations of an implementation in an introductory geoscience course where students used CogSketch or human‐graded paper worksheets. Overall, this research highlights the principles of interdisciplinary design between cognitive scientists, geoscientists, and AI researchers that can inform the collaborative design process for others aiming to develop effective educational materials.

  September 23, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12291   open full text
• Sketching Biological Phenomena and Mechanisms.
  Benjamin Sheredos, William Bechtel.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 15, 2017
  In many fields of biology, both the phenomena to be explained and the mechanisms proposed to explain them are commonly presented in diagrams. Our interest is in how scientists construct such diagrams. Researchers begin with evidence, typically developed experimentally and presented in data graphs. To arrive at a robust diagram of the phenomenon or the mechanism, they must integrate a variety of data to construct a single, coherent representation. This process often begins as the researchers create a first sketch, and it continues over an extended period as they revise the sketch until they arrive at a diagram they find acceptable. We illustrate this process by examining the sketches developed in the course of two research projects directed at understanding the generation of circadian rhythms in cyanobacteria. One identified a new aspect of the phenomenon itself, whereas the other aimed to develop a new mechanistic account. In both cases, the research resulted in a paper in which the conclusion was presented in a diagram that the authors deemed adequate to convey it. These diagrams violate some of the normative “cognitive design principles” advanced by cognitive scientists as constraints on successful visual communication. We suggest that scientists’ sketching is instead governed by norms of success that are broadly explanatory: conveying the phenomenon or mechanism.

  September 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12290   open full text
• On the Relation Between Marr's Levels: A Response to Blokpoel (2017).
  Richard P. Cooper, David Peebles.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 13, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract Blokpoel reminds us of the importance of consistency of function across Marr's levels, but we argue that the approach to ensuring consistency that he advocates—a strict relation through exact implementation of the higher level function at the lower level—is unnecessarily restrictive. We show that it forces overcomplication of the computational level (by requiring it to incorporate concerns from lower levels) and results in the sacrifice of the distinct responsibilities associated with each level. We propose an alternative, no less rigorous, potential characterization of the relation between levels. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 649-653, July 2018.
  

  July 13, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12283   open full text
• Sculpting Computational‐Level Models.
  Mark Blokpoel.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 27, 2017
  --- - |2 Abstract In this commentary, I advocate for strict relations between Marr's levels of analysis. Under a strict relationship, each level is exactly implemented by the subordinate level. This yields two benefits. First, it brings consistency for multilevel explanations. Second, similar to how a sculptor chisels away superfluous marble, a modeler can chisel a computational‐level model by applying constraints. By sculpting the model, one restricts the (potentially infinitely large) set of possible algorithmic‐ and implementational‐level theories. - Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 10, Issue 3, Page 641-648, July 2018.
  

  June 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12282   open full text
• Grammatical Constructions as Relational Categories.
  Micah B. Goldwater.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 26, 2017
  This paper argues that grammatical constructions, specifically argument structure constructions that determine the “who did what to whom” part of sentence meaning and how this meaning is expressed syntactically, can be considered a kind of relational category. That is, grammatical constructions are represented as the abstraction of the syntactic and semantic relations of the exemplar utterances that are expressed in that construction, and it enables the generation of novel exemplars. To support this argument, I review evidence that there are parallel behavioral patterns between how children learn relational categories generally and how they learn grammatical constructions specifically. Then, I discuss computational simulations of how grammatical constructions are abstracted from exemplar sentences using a domain‐general relational cognitive architecture. Last, I review evidence from adult language processing that shows parallel behavioral patterns with expert behavior from other cognitive domains. After reviewing the evidence, I consider how to integrate this account with other theories of language development.

  June 26, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12272   open full text
• Anchoring on Self and Others During Social Inferences.
  Daniel F. X. Willard, Arthur B. Markman.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 21, 2017
  When making inferences about similar others, people anchor and adjust away from themselves (Tamir & Mitchell, 2013). However, research on relational self theory (Andersen & Chen, 2002) suggests the possibility of using knowledge about others as an anchor when they are more similar to a target. We investigated whether social inferences are made on the basis of significant other knowledge through an anchoring and adjustment process, and whether anchoring on a significant other is more effortful than anchoring on the self. Participants answered questions about their likes and habits, as well as the likes and habits of a significant other, a target similar to their significant other, and a yoked control. We found that prediction differences between the significant other and similar target led to longer response times, and we found the opposite effect for self and target differences, suggesting anchoring and adjustment from the significant other rather than the self. These effects were moderated by the source‐relative salience of the dimension being evaluated. The evidence was mixed with respect to the question of whether anchoring on a significant other is more effortful than anchoring on the self.

  June 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12275   open full text
• New Space–Time Metaphors Foster New Nonlinguistic Representations.
  Rose K. Hendricks, Lera Boroditsky.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 21, 2017
  What is the role of language in constructing knowledge? In this article, we ask whether learning new relational language can create new ways of thinking. In Experiment 1, we taught English speakers to talk about time using new vertical linguistic metaphors, saying things like “breakfast is above dinner” or “breakfast is below dinner” (depending on condition). In Experiment 2, rather than teaching people new metaphors, we relied on the left–right representations of time that our American college student participants have already internalized through a lifetime of visuospatial experience reading and writing text from left to right. In both experiments, we asked whether the representations (whether newly acquired from metaphor or acquired over many years of visuospatial experience) are susceptible to verbal interference. We found that (a) learning new metaphors created new space–time associations that could be detected in a nonlinguistic implicit association task; (b) these newly learned representations were not susceptible to verbal interference; and (c) with respect to both verbal and visual interference, representations newly learned from linguistic metaphor behaved just like those on the left–right axis that our participants had acquired through years of visuospatial experience. Taken together, these results suggest that learning new relational language can be a powerful tool in constructing new representations and expanding our cognitive repertoire.

  June 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12279   open full text
• Representation and Computation in Cognitive Models.
  Kenneth D. Forbus, Chen Liang, Irina Rabkina.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 21, 2017
  One of the central issues in cognitive science is the nature of human representations. We argue that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities. We start by examining some common misconceptions found in discussions of representations and models. Next we examine evidence that symbolic representations are essential for capturing human cognitive capabilities, drawing on the analogy literature. Then we examine fundamental limitations of feature vectors and other distributed representations that, despite their recent successes on various practical problems, suggest that they are insufficient to capture many aspects of human cognition. After that, we describe the implications for cognitive architecture of our view that analogy is central, and we speculate on roles for hybrid approaches. We close with an analogy that might help bridge the gap.

  June 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12277   open full text
• Sketching the Invisible to Predict the Visible: From Drawing to Modeling in Chemistry.
  Melanie M. Cooper, Mike Stieff, Dane DeSutter.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 21, 2017
  Sketching as a scientific practice goes beyond the simple act of inscribing diagrams onto paper. Scientists produce a wide range of representations through sketching, as it is tightly coupled to model‐based reasoning. Chemists in particular make extensive use of sketches to reason about chemical phenomena and to communicate their ideas. However, the chemical sciences have a unique problem in that chemists deal with the unseen world of the atomic‐molecular level. Using sketches, chemists strive to develop causal mechanisms that emerge from the structure and behavior of molecular‐level entities, to explain observations of the macroscopic visible world. Interpreting these representations and constructing sketches of molecular‐level processes is a crucial component of student learning in the modern chemistry classroom. Sketches also serve as an important component of assessment in the chemistry classroom as student sketches give insight into developing mental models, which allows instructors to observe how students are thinking about a process. In this paper we discuss how sketching can be used to promote such model‐based reasoning in chemistry and discuss two case studies of curricular projects, CLUE and The Connected Chemistry Curriculum, that have demonstrated a benefit of this approach. We show how sketching activities can be centrally integrated into classroom norms to promote model‐based reasoning both with and without component visualizations. Importantly, each of these projects deploys sketching in support of other types of inquiry activities, such as making predictions or depicting models to support a claim; sketching is not an isolated activity but is used as a tool to support model‐based reasoning in the discipline.

  June 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12285   open full text
• When Gesture Becomes Analogy.
  Kensy Cooperrider, Susan Goldin‐Meadow.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 18, 2017
  Analogy researchers do not often examine gesture, and gesture researchers do not often borrow ideas from the study of analogy. One borrowable idea from the world of analogy is the importance of distinguishing between attributes and relations. Gentner (, ) observed that some metaphors highlight attributes and others highlight relations, and called the latter analogies. Mirroring this logic, we observe that some metaphoric gestures represent attributes and others represent relations, and propose to call the latter analogical gestures. We provide examples of such analogical gestures and show how they relate to the categories of iconic and metaphoric gestures described previously. Analogical gestures represent different types of relations and different degrees of relational complexity, and sometimes cohere into larger analogical models. Treating analogical gestures as a distinct phenomenon prompts new questions and predictions, and illustrates one way that the study of gesture and the study of analogy can be mutually informative.

  June 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12276   open full text
• Analogy and Abstraction.
  Dedre Gentner, Christian Hoyos.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 16, 2017
  A central question in human development is how young children gain knowledge so fast. We propose that analogical generalization drives much of this early learning and allows children to generate new abstractions from experience. In this paper, we review evidence for analogical generalization in both children and adults. We discuss how analogical processes interact with the child's changing knowledge base to predict the course of learning, from conservative to domain‐general understanding. This line of research leads to challenges to existing assumptions about learning. It shows that (a) it is not enough to consider the distribution of examples given to learners; one must consider the processes learners are applying; (b) contrary to the general assumption, maximizing variability is not always the best route for maximizing generalization and transfer.

  June 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12278   open full text
• The Role of Multiword Building Blocks in Explaining L1–L2 Differences.
  Inbal Arnon, Morten H. Christiansen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 16, 2017
  Why are children better language learners than adults despite being worse at a range of other cognitive tasks? Here, we explore the role of multiword sequences in explaining L1–L2 differences in learning. In particular, we propose that children and adults differ in their reliance on such multiword units (MWUs) in learning, and that this difference affects learning strategies and outcomes, and leads to difficulty in learning certain grammatical relations. In the first part, we review recent findings that suggest that MWUs play a facilitative role in learning. We then discuss the implications of these findings for L1–L2 differences: We hypothesize that adults are both less likely to extract MWUs and less capable of benefiting from them in the process of learning. In the next section, we draw on psycholinguistic, developmental, and computational findings to support these predictions. We end with a discussion of the relation between this proposal and other accounts of L1–L2 difficulty.

  June 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12271   open full text
• Structure Mapping and Vocabularies for Thinking.
  Jeffrey Loewenstein.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 02, 2017
  While extremes tend to capture attention, the ordinary is often most of the story. So it may be with the structure‐mapping process. The structure‐mapping process can account for such pinnacles of thinking as analogy and metaphor, which can lead to overlooking the mundane, incremental use of structure mapping. Consequently, the current discussion shifts focus to the value of close comparisons between literally similar items for the development of knowledge. The intent is to foster greater integration between process and content as well as between individuals and collectives. The payoff is identifying some undue simplifications and some promising new directions.

  June 02, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12280   open full text
• Analogy Lays the Foundation for Two Crucial Aspects of Symbolic Development: Intention and Correspondence.
  Lei Yuan, David H. Uttal.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 08, 2017
  We argue that analogical reasoning, particularly Gentner's (1983, 2010) structure‐mapping theory, provides an integrative theoretical framework through which we can better understand the development of symbol use. Analogical reasoning can contribute both to the understanding of others’ intentions and the establishment of correspondences between symbols and their referents, two crucial components of symbolic understanding. We review relevant research on the development of symbolic representations, intentionality, comparison, and similarity, and demonstrate how structure‐mapping theory can shed light on several ostensibly disparate findings in the literature. Focusing on visual symbols (e.g., scale models, photographs, and maps), we argue that analogy underlies and supports the understanding of both intention and correspondence, which may enter into a reciprocal bootstrapping process that leads children to gain the prodigious human capacity of symbol use.

  May 08, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12273   open full text
• Computational Investigations of Multiword Chunks in Language Learning.
  Stewart M. McCauley, Morten H. Christiansen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 08, 2017
  Second‐language learners rarely arrive at native proficiency in a number of linguistic domains, including morphological and syntactic processing. Previous approaches to understanding the different outcomes of first‐ versus second‐language learning have focused on cognitive and neural factors. In contrast, we explore the possibility that children and adults may rely on different linguistic units throughout the course of language learning, with specific focus on the granularity of those units. Following recent psycholinguistic evidence for the role of multiword chunks in online language processing, we explore the hypothesis that children rely more heavily on multiword units in language learning than do adults learning a second language. To this end, we take an initial step toward using large‐scale, corpus‐based computational modeling as a tool for exploring the granularity of speakers' linguistic units. Employing a computational model of language learning, the Chunk‐Based Learner, we compare the usefulness of chunk‐based knowledge in accounting for the speech of second‐language learners versus children and adults speaking their first language. Our findings suggest that while multiword units are likely to play a role in second‐language learning, adults may learn less useful chunks, rely on them to a lesser extent, and arrive at them through different means than children learning a first language.

  May 08, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12258   open full text
• Multiunit Sequences in First Language Acquisition.
  Anna Theakston, Elena Lieven.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 19, 2017
  Theoretical and empirical reasons suggest that children build their language not only out of individual words but also out of multiunit strings. These are the basis for the development of schemas containing slots. The slots are putative categories that build in abstraction while the schemas eventually connect to other schemas in terms of both meaning and form. Evidence comes from the nature of the input, the ways in which children construct novel utterances, the systematic errors that children make, and the computational modeling of children's grammars. However, much of this research is on English, which is unusual in its rigid word order and impoverished inflectional morphology. We summarize these results and explore their implications for languages with more flexible word order and/or much richer inflectional morphology.

  April 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12268   open full text
• The Cognitive Science of Sketch Worksheets.
  Kenneth D. Forbus, Maria Chang, Matthew McLure, Madeline Usher.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 29, 2017
  Computational modeling of sketch understanding is interesting both scientifically and for creating systems that interact with people more naturally. Scientifically, understanding sketches requires modeling aspects of visual processing, spatial representations, and conceptual knowledge in an integrated way. Software that can understand sketches is starting to be used in classrooms, and it could have a potentially revolutionary impact as the models and technologies become more advanced. This paper looks at one such effort, Sketch Worksheets, which have been used in multiple classroom experiments already, with students ranging from elementary school to college. Sketch Worksheets are a software equivalent of pencil and paper worksheets commonly found in classrooms, but they provide on‐the‐spot feedback based on what students draw. They are built on the CogSketch platform, which provides qualitative visual and spatial representations and analogical processing based on computational models of human cognition. This paper explores three issues. First, we examine how research from cognitive science and artificial intelligence, combined with the constraints of creating new kinds of educational software, led to the representations and processing in CogSketch. Second, we examine how these capabilities have been used in Sketch Worksheets, drawing upon experiments with fifth‐grade students in biology and college students in engineering design and in geoscience. Finally, we examine some open issues in sketch understanding that need to be addressed to better model high‐level aspects of vision, and for sketch understanding systems to reach their full potential for supporting education.

  March 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12262   open full text
• Structure Mapping for Social Learning.
  Stella Christie.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 22, 2017
  Analogical reasoning is a foundational tool for human learning, allowing learners to recognize relational structures in new events and domains. Here I sketch some grounds for understanding and applying analogical reasoning in social learning. The social world is fundamentally characterized by relations between people, with common relational structures—such as kinships and social hierarchies—forming social units that dictate social behaviors. Just as young learners use analogical reasoning for learning relational structures in other domains—spatial relations, verbs, relational categories—analogical reasoning ought to be a useful cognitive tool for acquiring social relations and structures.

  March 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12264   open full text
• Why Sketching May Aid Learning From Science Texts: Contrasting Sketching With Written Explanations.
  Katharina Scheiter, Katrin Schleinschok, Shaaron Ainsworth.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 22, 2017
  The goal of this study was to explore two accounts for why sketching during learning from text is helpful: (1) sketching acts like other constructive strategies such as self‐explanation because it helps learners to identify relevant information and generate inferences; or (2) that in addition to these general effects, sketching has more specific benefits due to the pictorial representation that is constructed. Seventy‐three seventh‐graders (32 girls, M = 12.82 years) were first taught how to either create sketches or self‐explain while studying science texts. During a subsequent learning phase, all students were asked to read an expository text about the greenhouse effect. Finally, they were asked to write down everything they remembered and then answer transfer questions. Strategy quality during learning was assessed as the number of key concepts that had either been sketched or mentioned in the self‐explanations. The results showed that at an overall performance level there were only marginal group differences. However, a more in‐depth analysis revealed that whereas no group differences emerged for students implementing either strategy poorly, the sketching group clearly outperformed the self‐explanation group for students who applied the strategies with higher quality. Furthermore, higher sketching quality was strongly related to better learning outcomes. Thus, the study's results are more in line with the second account: Sketching can have a beneficial effect on learning above and beyond generating written explanations; at least, if well deployed.

  March 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12261   open full text
• Idiom Variation: Experimental Data and a Blueprint of a Computational Model.
  Kristina Geeraert, John Newman, R. Harald Baayen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 20, 2017
  Corpus surveys have shown that the exact forms with which idioms are realized are subject to variation. We report a rating experiment showing that such alternative realizations have varying degrees of acceptability. Idiom variation challenges processing theories associating idioms with fixed multi‐word form units (Bobrow & Bell, 1973), fixed configurations of words (Cacciari & Tabossi, 1988), or fixed superlemmas (Sprenger, Levelt, & Kempen, 2006), as they do not explain how it can be that speakers produce variant forms that listeners can still make sense of. A computational model simulating comprehension with naive discriminative learning is introduced that provides an explanation for the different degrees of acceptability of several idiom variant types. Implications for multi‐word units in general are discussed.

  March 20, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12263   open full text
• Multiword Constructions in the Grammar.
  Peter W. Culicover, Ray Jackendoff, Jenny Audring.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 07, 2017
  There is ample evidence that speakers’ linguistic knowledge extends well beyond what can be described in terms of rules of compositional interpretation stated over combinations of single words. We explore a range of multiword constructions (MWCs) to get a handle both on the extent of the phenomenon and on the grammatical constraints that may govern it. We consider idioms of various sorts, collocations, compounds, light verbs, syntactic nuts, and assorted other constructions, as well as morphology. Our conclusion is that MWCs highlight the central role that grammar plays in licensing MWCs in the lexicon and the creation of novel MWCs, and they help to clarify how the lexicon articulates with the rest of the grammar.

  March 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12255   open full text
• Thinking About Multiword Constructions: Usage‐Based Approaches to Acquisition and Processing.
  Nick C. Ellis, Dave C. Ogden.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 24, 2017
  Usage‐based approaches to language hold that we learn multiword expressions as patterns of language from language usage, and that knowledge of these patterns underlies fluent language processing. This paper explores these claims by focusing upon verb–argument constructions (VACs) such as “V(erb) about n(oun phrase).” These are productive constructions that bind syntax, lexis, and semantics. It presents (a) analyses of usage patterns of English VACs in terms of their grammatical form, semantics, lexical constituency, and distribution patterns in large corpora; (b) patterns of VAC usage in child‐directed speech and child language acquisition; and (c) investigations of VAC free‐association and psycholinguistic studies of online processing. We conclude that VACs are highly patterned in usage, that this patterning drives language acquisition, and that language processing is sensitive to the forms of the syntagmatic construction and their distributional statistics, the contingency of their association with meaning, and spreading activation and prototypicality effects in semantic reference. Language users have rich implicit knowledge of the statistics of multiword sequences.

  February 24, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12256   open full text
• “The Gaze Heuristic:” Biography of an Adaptively Rational Decision Process.
  Robert P. Hamlin.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 21, 2017
  This article is a case study that describes the natural and human history of the gaze heuristic. The gaze heuristic is an interception heuristic that utilizes a single input (deviation from a constant angle of approach) repeatedly as a task is performed. Its architecture, advantages, and limitations are described in detail. A history of the gaze heuristic is then presented. In natural history, the gaze heuristic is the only known technique used by predators to intercept prey. In human history the gaze heuristic was discovered accidentally by Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter command just prior to World War II. As it was never discovered by the Luftwaffe, the technique conferred a decisive advantage upon the RAF throughout the war. After the end of the war in America, German technology was combined with the British heuristic to create the Sidewinder AIM9 missile, the most successful autonomous weapon ever built. There are no plans to withdraw it or replace its guiding gaze heuristic. The case study demonstrates that the gaze heuristic is a specific heuristic type that takes a single best input at the best time (take the best2). Its use is an adaptively rational response to specific, rapidly evolving decision environments that has allowed those animals/humans/machines who use it to survive, prosper, and multiply relative to those who do not.

  February 21, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12253   open full text
• Formulaic Sequences as a Regulatory Mechanism for Cognitive Perturbations During the Achievement of Social Goals.
  Alison Wray.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 15, 2017
  This paper explores two questions central to understanding the nature of formulaic sequences: (1) What are they for? and (2) What determines how many there are? The “Communicative Impact” model draws into a single account how language is shaped by cognitive processing on the one hand and socio‐interactional function on the other: Formulaic sequences play a range of coordinated roles in neutralizing unanticipated perturbations in the cognitive management of language, so the speaker's socio‐interactional goals can still be achieved. One role involves compensatory actions to sustain fluency. However, these actions are themselves context‐sensitive, so the balance of types of formulaic sequence will vary according to situation. The model applies equally to temporary cognitive pressure and chronic problems such as dementia and limited linguistic competency in a foreign language.

  February 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12257   open full text
• Master Maker: Understanding Gaming Skill Through Practice and Habit From Gameplay Behavior.
  Jeff Huang, Eddie Yan, Gifford Cheung, Nachiappan Nagappan, Thomas Zimmermann.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 15, 2017
  The study of expertise is difficult to do in a laboratory environment due to the challenge of finding people at different skill levels and the lack of time for participants to acquire mastery. In this paper, we report on two studies that analyze naturalistic gameplay data using cohort analysis to better understand how skill relates to practice and habit. Two cohorts are analyzed, each from two different games (Halo Reach and StarCraft 2). Our work follows skill progression through 7 months of Halo matches for a holistic perspective, but also explores low‐level in‐game habits when controlling game units in StarCraft 2. Players who played moderately frequently without long breaks were able to gain skill the most efficiently. What set the highest performers apart was their ability to gain skill more rapidly and without dips compared to other players. At the beginning of matches, top players habitually warmed up by selecting and re‐selecting groups of units repeatedly in a meaningless cycle. They exhibited unique routines during their play that aided them when under pressure.

  February 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12251   open full text
• Using Video Game Telemetry Data to Research Motor Chunking, Action Latencies, and Complex Cognitive‐Motor Skill Learning.
  Joseph J. Thompson, C. M. McColeman, Ekaterina R. Stepanova, Mark R. Blair.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 07, 2017
  Many theories of complex cognitive‐motor skill learning are built on the notion that basic cognitive processes group actions into easy‐to‐perform sequences. The present work examines predictions derived from laboratory‐based studies of motor chunking and motor preparation using data collected from the real‐time strategy video game StarCraft 2. We examined 996,163 action sequences in the telemetry data of 3,317 players across seven levels of skill. As predicted, the latency to the first action (thought to be the beginning of a chunked sequence) is delayed relative to the other actions in the group. Other predictions, inspired by the memory drum theory of Henry and Rogers, received only weak support.

  February 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12254   open full text
• Mario Becomes Cognitive.
  Fabian Schrodt, Jan Kneissler, Stephan Ehrenfeld, Martin V. Butz.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. February 07, 2017
  In line with Allen Newell's challenge to develop complete cognitive architectures, and motivated by a recent proposal for a unifying subsymbolic computational theory of cognition, we introduce the cognitive control architecture SEMLINCS. SEMLINCS models the development of an embodied cognitive agent that learns discrete production rule‐like structures from its own, autonomously gathered, continuous sensorimotor experiences. Moreover, the agent uses the developing knowledge to plan and control environmental interactions in a versatile, goal‐directed, and self‐motivated manner. Thus, in contrast to several well‐known symbolic cognitive architectures, SEMLINCS is not provided with production rules and the involved symbols, but it learns them. In this paper, the actual implementation of SEMLINCS causes learning and self‐motivated, autonomous behavioral control of the game figure Mario in a clone of the computer game Super Mario Bros. Our evaluations highlight the successful development of behavioral versatility as well as the learning of suitable production rules and the involved symbols from sensorimotor experiences. Moreover, knowledge‐ and motivation‐dependent individualizations of the agents’ behavioral tendencies are shown. Finally, interaction sequences can be planned on the sensorimotor‐grounded production rule level. Current limitations directly point toward the need for several further enhancements, which may be integrated into SEMLINCS in the near future. Overall, SEMLINCS may be viewed as an architecture that allows the functional and computational modeling of embodied cognitive development, whereby the current main focus lies on the development of production rules from sensorimotor experiences.

  February 07, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12252   open full text
• Visual Working Memory Resources Are Best Characterized as Dynamic, Quantifiable Mnemonic Traces.
  Bella Z. Veksler, Rachel Boyd, Christopher W. Myers, Glenn Gunzelmann, Hansjörg Neth, Wayne D. Gray.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. January 09, 2017
  Visual working memory (VWM) is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot‐based and continuous‐resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain regarding the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye‐tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot‐based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous‐resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation.

  January 09, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12248   open full text
• An Account of Interference in Associative Memory: Learning the Fan Effect.
  Robert Thomson, Anthony M. Harrison, J. Gregory Trafton, Laura M. Hiatt.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. January 05, 2017
  Associative learning is an essential feature of human cognition, accounting for the influence of priming and interference effects on memory recall. Here, we extend our account of associative learning that learns asymmetric item‐to‐item associations over time via experience (Thomson, Pyke, Trafton, & Hiatt, 2015) by including link maturation to balance associations between longer‐term stability while still accounting for short‐term variability. This account, combined with an existing account of activation strengthening and decay, predicts both human response times and error rates for the fan effect (Anderson, 1974; Anderson & Reder, 1999) for both target and foil stimuli.

  January 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12244   open full text
• Color Relationalism and Relativism.
  Alex Byrne, David R. Hilbert.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. January 05, 2017
  This paper critically examines color relationalism and color relativism, two theories of color that are allegedly supported by variation in normal human color vision. We mostly discuss color relationalism, defended at length in Jonathan Cohen's The Red and the Real, and argue that the theory has insuperable problems.

  January 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12243   open full text
• A Neural Dynamic Model Generates Descriptions of Object‐Oriented Actions.
  Mathis Richter, Jonas Lins, Gregor Schöner.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. January 05, 2017
  Describing actions entails that relations between objects are discovered. A pervasively neural account of this process requires that fundamental problems are solved: the neural pointer problem, the binding problem, and the problem of generating discrete processing steps from time‐continuous neural processes. We present a prototypical solution to these problems in a neural dynamic model that comprises dynamic neural fields holding representations close to sensorimotor surfaces as well as dynamic neural nodes holding discrete, language‐like representations. Making the connection between these two types of representations enables the model to describe actions as well as to perceptually ground movement phrases—all based on real visual input. We demonstrate how the dynamic neural processes autonomously generate the processing steps required to describe or ground object‐oriented actions. By solving the fundamental problems of neural pointing, binding, and emergent discrete processing, the model may be a first but critical step toward a systematic neural processing account of higher cognition.

  January 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/tops.12240   open full text
• Encoding and Accessing Linguistic Representations in a Dynamically Structured Holographic Memory System.
  Dan Parker, Daniel Lantz.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 31, 2016
  This paper presents a computational model that integrates a dynamically structured holographic memory system into the ACT‐R cognitive architecture to explain how linguistic representations are encoded and accessed in memory. ACT‐R currently serves as the most precise expression of the moment‐by‐moment working memory retrievals that support sentence comprehension. The ACT‐R model of sentence comprehension is able to capture a range of linguistic phenomena, but there are cases where the model makes the wrong predictions, such as the over‐prediction of retrieval interference effects during sentence comprehension. Here, we investigate one such case involving the processing of sentences with negative polarity items (NPIs) and consider how a dynamically structured holographic memory system might provide a cognitively plausible and principled explanation of some previously unexplained effects. Specifically, we show that by replacing ACT‐R's declarative memory with a dynamically structured memory, we can explain a wider range of behavioral data involving reading times and judgments of grammaticality. We show that our integrated model provides a better fit to human error rates and response latencies than the original ACT‐R model. These results provide proof‐of‐concept for the unification of two independent computational cognitive frameworks.

  December 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12246   open full text
• Improving With Practice: A Neural Model of Mathematical Development.
  Sean Aubin, Aaron R. Voelker, Chris Eliasmith.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 26, 2016
  The ability to improve in speed and accuracy as a result of repeating some task is an important hallmark of intelligent biological systems. Although gradual behavioral improvements from practice have been modeled in spiking neural networks, few such models have attempted to explain cognitive development of a task as complex as addition. In this work, we model the progression from a counting‐based strategy for addition to a recall‐based strategy. The model consists of two networks working in parallel: a slower basal ganglia loop and a faster cortical network. The slow network methodically computes the count from one digit given another, corresponding to the addition of two digits, whereas the fast network gradually “memorizes” the output from the slow network. The faster network eventually learns how to add the same digits that initially drove the behavior of the slower network. Performance of this model is demonstrated by simulating a fully spiking neural network that includes basal ganglia, thalamus, and various cortical areas. Consequently, the model incorporates various neuroanatomical data, in terms of brain areas used for calculation and makes psychologically testable predictions related to frequency of rehearsal. Furthermore, the model replicates developmental progression through addition strategies in terms of reaction times and accuracy, and naturally explains observed symptoms of dyscalculia.

  December 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12242   open full text
• Towards Modeling False Memory With Computational Knowledge Bases.
  Justin Li, Emma Kohanyi.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 21, 2016
  One challenge to creating realistic cognitive models of memory is the inability to account for the vast common–sense knowledge of human participants. Large computational knowledge bases such as WordNet and DBpedia may offer a solution to this problem but may pose other challenges. This paper explores some of these difficulties through a semantic network spreading activation model of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory task. In three experiments, we show that these knowledge bases only capture a subset of human associations, while irrelevant information introduces noise and makes efficient modeling difficult. We conclude that the contents of these knowledge bases must be augmented and, more important, that the algorithms must be refined and optimized, before large knowledge bases can be widely used for cognitive modeling.

  December 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12245   open full text
• The Effects of Guanfacine and Phenylephrine on a Spiking Neuron Model of Working Memory.
  Peter Duggins, Terrence C. Stewart, Xuan Choo, Chris Eliasmith.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 21, 2016
  We use a spiking neural network model of working memory (WM) capable of performing the spatial delayed response task (DRT) to investigate two drugs that affect WM: guanfacine (GFC) and phenylephrine (PHE). In this model, the loss of information over time results from changes in the spiking neural activity through recurrent connections. We reproduce the standard forgetting curve and then show that this curve changes in the presence of GFC and PHE, whose application is simulated by manipulating functional, neural, and biophysical properties of the model. In particular, applying GFC causes increased activity in neurons that are sensitive to the information currently being remembered, while applying PHE leads to decreased activity in these same neurons. Interestingly, these differential effects emerge from network‐level interactions because GFC and PHE affect all neurons equally. We compare our model to both electrophysiological data from neurons in monkey dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and to behavioral evidence from monkeys performing the DRT.

  December 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12247   open full text
• The Myth of Color Sensations, or How Not to See a Yellow Banana.
  Pete Mandik.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 21, 2016
  I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high‐level, conceptualized knowledge concerning, for example, object identity, likely lighting conditions, and material composition of the distal stimulus. Such explanations obviate the need to appeal to nonconceputal mental links in the causal chains eventuating in conceptualized color discriminations.

  December 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12238   open full text
• Canalization of Language Structure From Environmental Constraints: A Computational Model of Word Learning From Multiple Cues.
  Padraic Monaghan.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 18, 2016
  There is substantial variation in language experience, yet there is surprising similarity in the language structure acquired. Constraints on language structure may be external modulators that result in this canalization of language structure, or else they may derive from the broader, communicative environment in which language is acquired. In this paper, the latter perspective is tested for its adequacy in explaining robustness of language learning to environmental variation. A computational model of word learning from cross‐situational, multimodal information was constructed and tested. Key to the model's robustness was the presence of multiple, individually unreliable information sources to support learning. This “degeneracy” in the language system has a detrimental effect on learning, compared to a noise‐free environment, but has a critically important effect on acquisition of a canalized system that is resistant to environmental noise in communication.

  December 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12239   open full text
• Color Processing in Synesthesia: What Synesthesia Can and Cannot Tell Us About Mechanisms of Color Processing.
  Agnieszka B. Janik McErlean, Michael J. Banissy.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. December 10, 2016
  Synesthetic experiences of color have been traditionally conceptualized as a perceptual phenomenon. However, recent evidence suggests a role of higher order cognition in the formation of synesthetic experiences. Here, we discuss how synesthetic experiences of color differ from and influence veridical color processing, and how non‐perceptual processes such as imagery and color memory might play a role in eliciting synesthetic color experience.

  December 10, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12237   open full text
• Video Gaming as Practical Accomplishment: Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, and Play.
  Stuart Reeves, Christian Greiffenhagen, Eric Laurier.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 30, 2016
  Accounts of video game play developed from an ethnomethodological and conversation analytic (EMCA) perspective remain relatively scarce. This study collects together an emerging, if scattered, body of research which focuses on the material, practical “work” of video game players. The study offers an example‐driven explication of an EMCA perspective on video game play phenomena. The materials are arranged as a “tactical zoom.” We start very much “outside” the game, beginning with a wide view of how massive‐multiplayer online games are played within dedicated gaming spaces; here, we find multiple players, machines, and many different sorts of activities going on (besides playing the game). Still remaining somewhat distanced from the play of the game itself, we then take a closer look at the players themselves by examining a notionally simpler setting involving pairs taking part in a football game at a games console. As we draw closer to the technical details of play, we narrow our focus further still to examine a player and spectator situated “at the screen” but jointly analyzing play as the player competes in an online first‐person shooter. Finally, we go “inside” the game entirely and look at the conduct of avatars on‐screen via screen recordings of a massively multiplayer online game. Having worked through specific examples, we provide an elaboration of a selection of core topics of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis that is used to situate some of the unstated orientations in the presentation of data fragments. In this way, recurrent issues raised in the fragments are shown as coherent, interconnected phenomena. In closing, we suggest caution regarding the way game play phenomena have been analyzed in this study, while remarking on challenges present for the development of further EMCA‐oriented research on video game play.

  November 30, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12234   open full text
• Comprehending 3D Diagrams: Sketching to Support Spatial Reasoning.
  Kristin M. Gagnier, Kinnari Atit, Carol J. Ormand, Thomas F. Shipley.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 25, 2016
  Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines commonly illustrate 3D relationships in diagrams, yet these are often challenging for students. Failing to understand diagrams can hinder success in STEM because scientific practice requires understanding and creating diagrammatic representations. We explore a new approach to improving student understanding of diagrams that convey 3D relations that is based on students generating their own predictive diagrams. Participants' comprehension of 3D spatial diagrams was measured in a pre‐ and post‐design where students selected the correct 2D slice through 3D geologic block diagrams. Generating sketches that predicated the internal structure of a model led to greater improvement in diagram understanding than visualizing the interior of the model without sketching, or sketching the model without attempting to predict unseen spatial relations. In addition, we found a positive correlation between sketched diagram accuracy and improvement on the diagram comprehension measure. Results suggest that generating a predictive diagram facilitates students' abilities to make inferences about spatial relationships in diagrams. Implications for use of sketching in supporting STEM learning are discussed.

  November 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12233   open full text
• Applying Aspects of the Expert Performance Approach to Better Understand the Structure of Skill and Mechanisms of Skill Acquisition in Video Games.
  Walter R. Boot, Anna Sumner, Tyler J. Towne, Paola Rodriguez, K. Anders Ericsson.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 20, 2016
  Video games are ideal platforms for the study of skill acquisition for a variety of reasons. However, our understanding of the development of skill and the cognitive representations that support skilled performance can be limited by a focus on game scores. We present an alternative approach to the study of skill acquisition in video games based on the tools of the Expert Performance Approach. Our investigation was motivated by a detailed analysis of the behaviors responsible for the superior performance of one of the highest scoring players of the video game Space Fortress (Towne, Boot, & Ericsson, ). This analysis revealed how certain behaviors contributed to his exceptional performance. In this study, we recruited a participant for a similar training regimen, but we collected concurrent and retrospective verbal protocol data throughout training. Protocol analysis revealed insights into strategies, errors, mental representations, and shifting game priorities. We argue that these insights into the developing representations that guided skilled performance could only easily have been derived from the tools of the Expert Performance Approach. We propose that the described approach could be applied to understand performance and skill acquisition in many different video games (and other short‐ to medium‐term skill acquisition paradigms) and help reveal mechanisms of transfer from gameplay to other measures of laboratory and real‐world performance.

  November 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12230   open full text
• Cognitive Analysis of Educational Games: The Number Game.
  Han L. J. Maas, Enkhbold Nyamsuren.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 20, 2016
  We analyze the cognitive strategies underlying performance in the Number task, a Math game that requires both arithmetic fluency and mathematical creativity. In this game all elements in a set of numbers (for instance, 2, 5, 9) have to be used precisely once to create a target number (for instance, 27) with basic arithmetic operations (solution: [5−2] × 9). We argue that some instances of this game are NP complete, by showing its relation to the well‐known Partition problem. We propose heuristics based on the distinction in forward and backward reasoning. The Number Game is part of Math Garden, a popular online educational platform for practicing and monitoring math skills using innovations in computerized adaptive testing. These educational games generate enormous amounts of rich data on children's cognitive development. We found converging evidence for the use of forward proximity heuristics in the data of Math Garden, consisting of more than 20 million answers to 1,700 items. Item difficulties and the structure of correct answers were analyzed.

  November 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12231   open full text
• Testing Sleep Consolidation in Skill Learning: A Field Study Using an Online Game.
  Tom Stafford, Erwin Haasnoot.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. November 20, 2016
  Using an observational sample of players of a simple online game (n > 1.2 million), we are able to trace the development of skill in that game. Information on playing time, and player location, allows us to estimate time of day during which practice took place. We compare those whose breaks in practice probably contained a night's sleep and those whose breaks in practice probably did not contain a night's sleep. Our analysis confirms experimental evidence showing a benefit of spacing for skill learning, but it fails to find any additional benefit of sleeping during a break from practice. We discuss reasons why the well‐established phenomenon of sleep consolidation might not manifest in an observational study of skill development. We put the spacing effect into the context of the other known influences on skill learning: improvement with practice, and individual differences in initial performance. Analysis of performance data from games allows experimental results to be demonstrated outside of the lab and for experimental phenomenon to be put in the context of the performance of the whole task.

  November 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12232   open full text
• Interrogating Feature Learning Models to Discover Insights Into the Development of Human Expertise in a Real‐Time, Dynamic Decision‐Making Task.
  Catherine Sibert, Wayne D. Gray, John K. Lindstedt.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 31, 2016
  Tetris provides a difficult, dynamic task environment within which some people are novices and others, after years of work and practice, become extreme experts. Here we study two core skills; namely, (a) choosing the goal or objective function that will maximize performance and (b)a feature‐based analysis of the current game board to determine where to place the currently falling zoid (i.e., Tetris piece) so as to maximize the goal. In Study 1, we build cross‐entropy reinforcement learning (CERL) models (Szita & Lorincz, 2006) to determine whether different goals result in different feature weights. Two of these optimization strategies quickly rise to performance plateaus, whereas two others continue toward higher but more jagged (i.e., variable) heights. In Study 2, we compare the zoid placement decisions made by our best CERL models with those made by 67 human players. Across 370,131 human game episodes, two CERL models picked the same zoid placements as our lowest scoring human for 43% of the placements and as our three best scoring experts for 65% of the placements. Our findings suggest that people focus on maximizing points, not number of lines cleared or number of levels reached. They also show that goal choice influences the choice of zoid placements for CERLs and suggest that the same is true of humans. Tetris has a repetitive task structure that makes Tetris more tractable and more like a traditional experimental psychology paradigm than many more complex games or tasks. Hence, although complex, Tetris is not overwhelmingly complex and presents a right‐sized challenge to cognitive theories, especially those of integrated cognitive systems.

  October 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12225   open full text
• Phenomenal Intentionality and Color Experience.
  Jennifer Matey.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 31, 2016
  Phenomenal intentionality is a view about the representational content of conscious experiences that grounds the content of experiences in their phenomenal character. The view is motivated by evidence from introspection, as well as theoretical considerations and intuitions. This paper discusses one potential problem with the view. The view has difficulty accounting for the intentionality of color experiences. Versions of the view either fail to count things as part of the content of color experience that should be counted, resulting in verdicts that some color experiences are inaccurate which should not be, or they admit properties as part of their contents that ought not to be admitted, resulting in color experiences being considered to be accurate when they ought not to be considered so. This is a problem because color predicates are usefully employed in sciences such as biology, cognitive science, and engineering. They are used in generalizations that take the form of laws governing the presence and behavior of properties. Scientific practice relies on the assumption that the laws governing how entities behave employ terms that refer to actual properties that entities really have. We should therefore assume that there is some consistent set of properties to which our color terms refer.

  October 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12223   open full text
• Is Color Experience Cognitively Penetrable?
  Berit Brogaard, Dimitria E. Gatzia.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 31, 2016
  Is color experience cognitively penetrable? Some philosophers have recently argued that it is. In this paper, we take issue with the claim that color experience is cognitively penetrable. We argue that the notion of cognitive penetration that has recently dominated the literature is flawed since it fails to distinguish between the modulation of perceptual content by non‐perceptual principles and genuine cognitive penetration. We use this distinction to show that studies suggesting that color experience can be modulated by factors of the cognitive system do not establish that color experience is cognitively penetrable. Additionally, we argue that even if color experience turns out to be modulated by color‐related beliefs and knowledge beyond non‐perceptual principles, it does not follow that color experience is cognitively penetrable since the experiences of determinate hues involve post‐perceptual processes. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications that these ideas may have on debates in philosophy.

  October 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12221   open full text
• Perceptual Pragmatism and the Naturalized Ontology of Color.
  Mazviita Chirimuuta.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 31, 2016
  This paper considers whether there can be any such thing as a naturalized metaphysics of color—any distillation of the commitments of perceptual science with regard to color ontology. I first make some observations about the kinds of philosophical commitments that sometimes bubble to the surface in the psychology and neuroscience of color. Unsurprisingly, because of the range of opinions expressed, an ontology of color cannot simply be read off from scientists’ definitions and theoretical statements. I next consider two alternative routes. First, conceptual pluralism inspired by Mark Wilson's analysis of scientific representation. I argue that these findings leave the prospects for a naturalized color ontology rather dim. Second, I outline a naturalized epistemology of perception. I ask how the correctness and informativeness of perceptual states is understood by contemporary perceptual science. I argue that the detectionist ideal of correspondence should be replaced by the pragmatic ideal of usefulness. I argue that this result has significant implications for the metaphysics of color.

  October 31, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12222   open full text
• Explicit and Emergent Mechanisms of Information Status.
  Jennifer E. Arnold.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. October 20, 2016
  It is well established that language production and comprehension are influenced by information status, for example, whether information is given, new, topical, or predictable, and many scholars suggest that an important component of information status is keeping track of what information is in common ground (i.e., what is shared), and what is not. Information status affects both speakers' choices (e.g., word order, pronoun use, prosodic prominence) and how listeners interpret the speaker's meaning (e.g., Chafe, 1994; Prince, 1981). Although there is a wealth of scholarly work on information status (for a review, see Arnold, Kaiser, Kahn, & Kim, 2013), there is no consensus on the mechanisms by which it is used, and in fact relatively little discussion of the underlying representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms. Moreover, a major challenge to understanding information status is that its effects are notoriously variable. This study considers existing proposals about information status, focusing on two questions: (a) how is it represented; and (b) by what mechanisms is it used? I propose that it is important to consider whether representations and mechanisms can be classified as either explicit or emergent. Based on a review of existing evidence, I argue that information status representations are most likely emergent, but the mechanisms by which they are used are both explicit and emergent. This review provides one of the first considerations of information status processing across multiple domains.

  October 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12220   open full text
• Toward Integrative Dynamic Models for Adaptive Perspective Taking.
  Nicholas Duran, Rick Dale, Alexia Galati.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 26, 2016
  In a matter of mere milliseconds, conversational partners can transform their expectations about the world in a way that accords with another person's perspective. At the same time, in similar situations, the exact opposite also appears to be true. Rather than being at odds, these findings suggest that there are multiple contextual and processing constraints that may guide when and how people consider perspective. These constraints are shaped by a host of factors, including the availability of social and environmental cues, and intrinsic biases and cognitive abilities. To explain how these might be integrated in a new way forward, we turn to an adaptive account of interpersonal interaction. This account draws from basic principles of dynamical systems, principles that we argue are already expressed, both implicitly and explicitly, within a broad landscape of existing research. We then showcase an initial attempt to develop a computational framework to instantiate some of these principles. This framework, consisting of what we argue to be important mechanistic insights rendered by neural network models, is based on a promising and long‐standing approach that has yet to take hold in the current domain. We argue that by bridging this gap, new insights into other theoretical accounts, such as the connections between memory and common ground information, might be revealed.

  August 26, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12219   open full text
• Generating References in Naturalistic Face‐to‐Face and Phone‐Mediated Dialog Settings.
  Dominique Knutsen, Christine Ros, Ludovic Le Bigot.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 19, 2016
  During dialog, references are presented, accepted, and potentially reused (depending on their accessibility in memory). Two experiments were conducted to examine reuse in a naturalistic setting (a walk in a familiar environment). In Experiment 1, where the participants interacted face to face, self‐presented references and references accepted through verbatim repetition were reused more. Such biases persisted after the end of the interaction. In Experiment 2, where the participants interacted over the phone, reference reuse mainly depended on whether the participant could see the landmarks being referred to, although this bias seemed to be only transient. Consistent with the memory‐based approach to dialog, these results shed light on how differences in accessibility in memory (due to how these references were initially added to the common ground or the media used) affect the unfolding of the interaction.

  August 19, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12218   open full text
• Revisiting the Memory‐Based Processing Approach to Common Ground.
  William S. Horton, Richard J. Gerrig.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 17, 2016
  Horton and Gerrig (2005a) outlined a memory‐based processing model of conversational common ground that provided a description of how speakers could both strategically and automatically gain access to information about others through domain‐general memory processes acting over ordinary memory traces. In this article, we revisit this account, reviewing empirical findings that address aspects of this memory‐based model. In doing so, we also take the opportunity to clarify what we believe this approach implies about the cognitive psychology of common ground, and just as important, what it does not imply. We also highlight related areas of research demonstrating how general cognitive processes can constrain access to relevant knowledge in ways that shape both language production and comprehension.

  August 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12216   open full text
• Imposing Cognitive Constraints on Reference Production: The Interplay Between Speech and Gesture During Grounding.
  Ingrid Masson‐Carro, Martijn Goudbeek, Emiel Krahmer.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 16, 2016
  Past research has sought to elucidate how speakers and addressees establish common ground in conversation, yet few studies have focused on how visual cues such as co‐speech gestures contribute to this process. Likewise, the effect of cognitive constraints on multimodal grounding remains to be established. This study addresses the relationship between the verbal and gestural modalities during grounding in referential communication. We report data from a collaborative task where repeated references were elicited, and a time constraint was imposed to increase cognitive load. Our results reveal no differential effects of repetition or cognitive load on the semantic‐based gesture rate, suggesting that representational gestures and speech are closely coordinated during grounding. However, gestures and speech differed in their execution, especially under time pressure. We argue that speech and gesture are two complementary streams that might be planned in conjunction but that unfold independently in later stages of language production, with speakers emphasizing the form of their gestures, but not of their words, to better meet the goals of the collaborative task.

  August 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12217   open full text
• Exploring Human Cognition Using Large Image Databases.
  Thomas L. Griffiths, Joshua T. Abbott, Anne S. Hsu.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 04, 2016
  Most cognitive psychology experiments evaluate models of human cognition using a relatively small, well‐controlled set of stimuli. This approach stands in contrast to current work in neuroscience, perception, and computer vision, which have begun to focus on using large databases of natural images. We argue that natural images provide a powerful tool for characterizing the statistical environment in which people operate, for better evaluating psychological theories, and for bringing the insights of cognitive science closer to real applications. We discuss how some of the challenges of using natural images as stimuli in experiments can be addressed through increased sample sizes, using representations from computer vision, and developing new experimental methods. Finally, we illustrate these points by summarizing recent work using large image databases to explore questions about human cognition in four different domains: modeling subjective randomness, defining a quantitative measure of representativeness, identifying prior knowledge used in word learning, and determining the structure of natural categories.

  August 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12209   open full text
• Is There a Free Lunch in Inference?
  Jeffrey N. Rouder, Richard D. Morey, Josine Verhagen, Jordan M. Province, Eric‐Jan Wagenmakers.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. August 04, 2016
  The field of psychology, including cognitive science, is vexed by a crisis of confidence. Although the causes and solutions are varied, we focus here on a common logical problem in inference. The default mode of inference is significance testing, which has a free lunch property where researchers need not make detailed assumptions about the alternative to test the null hypothesis. We present the argument that there is no free lunch; that is, valid testing requires that researchers test the null against a well‐specified alternative. We show how this requirement follows from the basic tenets of conventional and Bayesian probability. Moreover, we show in both the conventional and Bayesian framework that not specifying the alternative may lead to rejections of the null hypothesis with scant evidence. We review both frequentist and Bayesian approaches to specifying alternatives, and we show how such specifications improve inference. The field of cognitive science will benefit because consideration of reasonable alternatives will undoubtedly sharpen the intellectual underpinnings of research.

  August 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12214   open full text
• The Latent Structure of Dictionaries.
  Philippe Vincent‐Lamarre, Alexandre Blondin Massé, Marcos Lopes, Mélanie Lord, Odile Marcotte, Stevan Harnad.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 18, 2016
  How many words—and which ones—are sufficient to define all other words? When dictionaries are analyzed as directed graphs with links from defining words to defined words, they reveal a latent structure. Recursively removing all words that are reachable by definition but that do not define any further words reduces the dictionary to a Kernel of about 10% of its size. This is still not the smallest number of words that can define all the rest. About 75% of the Kernel turns out to be its Core, a “Strongly Connected Subset” of words with a definitional path to and from any pair of its words and no word's definition depending on a word outside the set. But the Core cannot define all the rest of the dictionary. The 25% of the Kernel surrounding the Core consists of small strongly connected subsets of words: the Satellites. The size of the smallest set of words that can define all the rest—the graph's “minimum feedback vertex set” or MinSet—is about 1% of the dictionary, about 15% of the Kernel, and part‐Core/part‐Satellite. But every dictionary has a huge number of MinSets. The Core words are learned earlier, more frequent, and less concrete than the Satellites, which are in turn learned earlier, more frequent, but more concrete than the rest of the Dictionary. In principle, only one MinSet's words would need to be grounded through the sensorimotor capacity to recognize and categorize their referents. In a dual‐code sensorimotor/symbolic model of the mental lexicon, the symbolic code could do all the rest through recombinatory definition.

  July 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12211   open full text
• Searching Choices: Quantifying Decision‐Making Processes Using Search Engine Data.
  Helen Susannah Moat, Christopher Y. Olivola, Nick Chater, Tobias Preis.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 01, 2016
  When making a decision, humans consider two types of information: information they have acquired through their prior experience of the world, and further information they gather to support the decision in question. Here, we present evidence that data from search engines such as Google can help us model both sources of information. We show that statistics from search engines on the frequency of content on the Internet can help us estimate the statistical structure of prior experience; and, specifically, we outline how such statistics can inform psychological theories concerning the valuation of human lives, or choices involving delayed outcomes. Turning to information gathering, we show that search query data might help measure human information gathering, and it may predict subsequent decisions. Such data enable us to compare information gathered across nations, where analyses suggest, for example, a greater focus on the future in countries with a higher per capita GDP. We conclude that search engine data constitute a valuable new resource for cognitive scientists, offering a fascinating new tool for understanding the human decision‐making process.

  June 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12207   open full text
• Testing Theories of Transfer Using Error Rate Learning Curves.
  Kenneth R. Koedinger, Michael V. Yudelson, Philip I. Pavlik.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 27, 2016
  We analyze naturally occurring datasets from student use of educational technologies to explore a long‐standing question of the scope of transfer of learning. We contrast a faculty theory of broad transfer with a component theory of more constrained transfer. To test these theories, we develop statistical models of them. These models use latent variables to represent mental functions that are changed while learning to cause a reduction in error rates for new tasks. Strong versions of these models provide a common explanation for the variance in task difficulty and transfer. Weak versions decouple difficulty and transfer explanations by describing task difficulty with parameters for each unique task. We evaluate these models in terms of both their prediction accuracy on held‐out data and their power in explaining task difficulty and learning transfer. In comparisons across eight datasets, we find that the component models provide both better predictions and better explanations than the faculty models. Weak model variations tend to improve generalization across students, but hurt generalization across items and make a sacrifice to explanatory power. More generally, the approach could be used to identify malleable components of cognitive functions, such as spatial reasoning or executive functions.

  May 27, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12208   open full text
• Missing the Party: Political Categorization and Reasoning in the Absence of Party Label Cues.
  Evan Heit, Stephen P. Nicholson.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 14, 2016
  This research addressed theoretical approaches in political science arguing that the American electorate is either poorly informed or dependent on party label cues, by assessing performance on political judgment tasks when party label information is missing. The research materials were created from the results of a national opinion survey held during a national election. The experiments themselves were run on nationally representative samples of adults, identified from another national electoral survey. Participants saw profiles of simulated individuals, including information about demographics and issue positions, but omitting party labels. In Experiment 1, participants successfully judged the likelihood of party membership based on the profiles. In Experiment 2, participants successfully voted based on their party interests. The results were mediated by participants' political knowledge. Conclusions are drawn with respect to theories from political science and issues in cognitive science regarding categorization and reasoning.

  May 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12206   open full text
• Exploring Psychology in the Field: Steps and Examples From the Used‐Car Market.
  Devin G. Pope.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 14, 2016
  The growing availability of large datasets in a variety of domains presents an opportunity for researchers to use field data to better understand psychological concepts. I discuss, from an empirical economics point of view, steps for how to study cognition in large datasets. I use two recent papers that explore psychology in the used‐car market as motivating examples. These examples help illustrate the potential importance of big data as a way to explore human psychology and cognition.

  May 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12210   open full text
• Does Presentation Order Impact Choice After Delay?
  Jonah Berger.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 11, 2016
  Options are often presented incidentally in a sequence, but does serial position impact choice after delay, and if so, how? We address this question in a consequential real‐world choice domain. Using 25 years of citation data, and a unique identification strategy, we examine the relationship between article order (i.e., position in a journal issue) and citation count. Results indicate that mere serial position affects the prominence that research achieves: Earlier‐listed articles receive more citations. Furthermore, our identification strategy allows us to cast doubt on alternative explanations (i.e., editorial placement) and instead indicate that the effect is driven by psychological processes of attention and memory. These findings deepen the understanding of how presentation order impacts choice, suggest that subtle presentation factors can bias an important scientific metric, and shed light on how psychological processes shape collective outcomes.

  May 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12205   open full text
• Foundations of Intonational Meaning: Anatomical and Physiological Factors.
  Carlos Gussenhoven.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 25, 2016
  Like non‐verbal communication, paralinguistic communication is rooted in anatomical and physiological factors. Paralinguistic form‐meaning relations arise from the way these affect speech production, with some fine‐tuning by the cultural and linguistic context. The effects have been classified as “biological codes,” following the terminological lead of John Ohala's Frequency Code. Intonational morphemes, though arguably non‐arbitrary in principle, are in fact heavily biased toward these paralinguistic meanings. Paralinguistic and linguistic meanings for four biological codes are illustrated. In addition to the Frequency Code, the Effort Code, and the Respiratory Code, the Sirenic Code is introduced here, which is based on the use of whispery phonation, widely seen as being responsible for the signaling and perception of feminine attractiveness and sometimes used to express interrogativity in language. In the context of the evolution of language, the relations between physiological conditions and the resulting paralinguistic and linguistic meanings will need to be clarified.

  March 25, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12197   open full text
• Developmental Plasticity and Language: A Comparative Perspective.
  Ulrike Griebel, Irene M. Pepperberg, D. Kimbrough Oller.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 22, 2016
  The growing field of evo‐devo is increasingly demonstrating the complexity of steps involved in genetic, intracellular regulatory, and extracellular environmental control of the development of phenotypes. A key result of such work is an account for the remarkable plasticity of organismal form in many species based on relatively minor changes in regulation of highly conserved genes and genetic processes. Accounting for behavioral plasticity is of similar potential interest but has received far less attention. Of particular interest is plasticity in communication systems, where human language represents an ultimate target for research. The present paper considers plasticity of language capabilities in a comparative framework, focusing attention on examples of a remarkable fact: Whereas there exist design features of mature human language that have never been observed to occur in non‐humans in the wild, many of these features can be developed to notable extents when non‐humans are enculturated through human training (especially with intensive social interaction). These examples of enculturated developmental plasticity across extremely diverse taxa suggest, consistent with the evo‐devo theme of highly conserved processes in evolution, that human language is founded in part on cognitive capabilities that are indeed ancient and that even modern humans show self‐organized emergence of many language capabilities in the context of rich enculturation, built on the special social/ecological history of the hominin line. Human culture can thus be seen as a regulatory system encouraging language development in the context of a cognitive background with many highly conserved features.

  March 22, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12200   open full text
• Language at Three Timescales: The Role of Real‐Time Processes in Language Development and Evolution.
  Bob McMurray.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 17, 2016
  Evolutionary developmental systems (evo‐devo) theory stresses that selection pressures operate on entire developmental systems rather than just genes. This study extends this approach to language evolution, arguing that selection pressure may operate on two quasi‐independent timescales. First, children clearly must acquire language successfully (as acknowledged in traditional evo‐devo accounts) and evolution must equip them with the tools to do so. Second, while this is developing, they must also communicate with others in the moment using partially developed knowledge. These pressures may require different solutions, and their combination may underlie the evolution of complex mechanisms for language development and processing. I present two case studies to illustrate how the demands of both real‐time communication and language acquisition may be subtly different (and interact). The first case study examines infant‐directed speech (IDS). A recent view is that IDS underwent cultural to statistical learning mechanisms that infants use to acquire the speech categories of their language. However, recent data suggest is it may not have evolved to enhance development, but rather to serve a more real‐time communicative function. The second case study examines the argument for seemingly specialized mechanisms for learning word meanings (e.g., fast‐mapping). Both behavioral and computational work suggest that learning may be much slower and served by general‐purpose mechanisms like associative learning. Fast‐mapping, then, may be a real‐time process meant to serve immediate communication, not learning, by augmenting incomplete vocabulary knowledge with constraints from the current context. Together, these studies suggest that evolutionary accounts consider selection pressure arising from both real‐time communicative demands and from the need for accurate language development.

  March 17, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12201   open full text
• The Co‐evolution of Speech and the Lexicon: The Interaction of Functional Pressures, Redundancy, and Category Variation.
  Bodo Winter, Andrew Wedel.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 14, 2016
  The sound system of a language must be able to support a perceptual contrast between different words in order to signal communicatively relevant meaning distinctions. In this paper, we use a simple agent‐based exemplar model in which the evolution of sound‐category systems is understood as a co‐evolutionary process, where the range of variation within sound categories is constrained by functional pressure to keep different words perceptually distinct. We show that this model can reproduce several observed effects on the range of sound variation. We argue that phonological systems can be seen as finding a relative optimum of variation: Efficient communication is sustained while at the same time, hidden category variation provides pathways for future evolution.

  March 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12202   open full text
• Seeking Synthesis: The Integrative Problem in Understanding Language and Its Evolution.
  Rick Dale, Christopher T. Kello, P. Thomas Schoenemann.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 14, 2016
  We discuss two problems for a general scientific understanding of language, sequences and synergies: how language is an intricately sequenced behavior and how language is manifested as a multidimensionally structured behavior. Though both are central in our understanding, we observe that the former tends to be studied more than the latter. We consider very general conditions that hold in human brain evolution and its computational implications, and identify multimodal and multiscale organization as two key characteristics of emerging cognitive function in our species. This suggests that human brains, and cognitive function specifically, became more adept at integrating diverse information sources and operating at multiple levels for linguistic performance. We argue that framing language evolution, learning, and use in terms of synergies suggests new research questions, and it may be a fruitful direction for new developments in theory and modeling of language as an integrated system.

  March 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12199   open full text
• How Evolution May Work Through Curiosity‐Driven Developmental Process.
  Pierre‐Yves Oudeyer, Linda B. Smith.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 11, 2016
  Infants' own activities create and actively select their learning experiences. Here we review recent models of embodied information seeking and curiosity‐driven learning and show that these mechanisms have deep implications for development and evolution. We discuss how these mechanisms yield self‐organized epigenesis with emergent ordered behavioral and cognitive developmental stages. We describe a robotic experiment that explored the hypothesis that progress in learning, in and for itself, generates intrinsic rewards: The robot learners probabilistically selected experiences according to their potential for reducing uncertainty. In these experiments, curiosity‐driven learning led the robot learner to successively discover object affordances and vocal interaction with its peers. We explain how a learning curriculum adapted to the current constraints of the learning system automatically formed, constraining learning and shaping the developmental trajectory. The observed trajectories in the robot experiment share many properties with those in infant development, including a mixture of regularities and diversities in the developmental patterns. Finally, we argue that such emergent developmental structures can guide and constrain evolution, in particular with regard to the origins of language.

  March 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12196   open full text
• On the Emergence of Syntactic Structures: Quantifying and Modeling Duality of Patterning.
  Vittorio Loreto, Pietro Gravino, Vito D. P. Servedio, Francesca Tria.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 11, 2016
  The complex organization of syntax in hierarchical structures is one of the core design features of human language. Duality of patterning refers, for instance, to the organization of the meaningful elements in a language at two distinct levels: a combinatorial level, where meaningless forms are combined into meaningful forms; and a compositional level, where meaningful forms are composed into larger lexical units. The question remains wide open regarding how such structures could have emerged. The aim of this paper is to address these two aspects in a self‐consistent way. First, we introduce suitable measures to quantify the level of combinatoriality and compositionality in a language, and we present a framework to estimate these observables in human natural languages. Second, we show that a recently introduced multi‐agent modeling scheme, namely the Blending Game, provides a mathematical framework to address the problem of how a population of individuals can bootstrap combinatoriality and compositionality. Theoretical predictions based on this model turn out to be in good agreement with empirical data. It is remarkable that the two sides of duality of patterning emerge simultaneously as a consequence of a pure cultural dynamics in a simulated environment that contains meaningful relations, provided a simple constraint on message transmission fidelity is also considered.

  March 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12193   open full text
• Young Children Treat Robots as Informants.
  Cynthia Breazeal, Paul L. Harris, David DeSteno, Jacqueline M. Kory Westlund, Leah Dickens, Sooyeon Jeong.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 04, 2016
  Children ranging from 3 to 5 years were introduced to two anthropomorphic robots that provided them with information about unfamiliar animals. Children treated the robots as interlocutors. They supplied information to the robots and retained what the robots told them. Children also treated the robots as informants from whom they could seek information. Consistent with studies of children's early sensitivity to an interlocutor's non‐verbal signals, children were especially attentive and receptive to whichever robot displayed the greater non‐verbal contingency. Such selective information seeking is consistent with recent findings showing that although young children learn from others, they are selective with respect to the informants that they question or endorse.

  March 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12192   open full text
• Modeling Co‐evolution of Speech and Biology.
  Bart Boer.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 03, 2016
  Two computer simulations are investigated that model interaction of cultural evolution of language and biological evolution of adaptations to language. Both are agent‐based models in which a population of agents imitates each other using realistic vowels. The agents evolve under selective pressure for good imitation. In one model, the evolution of the vocal tract is modeled; in the other, a cognitive mechanism for perceiving speech accurately is modeled. In both cases, biological adaptations to using and learning speech evolve, even though the system of speech sounds itself changes at a more rapid time scale than biological evolution. However, the fact that the available acoustic space is used maximally (a self‐organized result of cultural evolution) is constant, and therefore biological evolution does have a stable target. This work shows that when cultural and biological traits are continuous, their co‐evolution may lead to cognitive adaptations that are strong enough to detect empirically.

  March 03, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12191   open full text
• Vocal Development as a Guide to Modeling the Evolution of Language.
  D. Kimbrough Oller, Ulrike Griebel, Anne S. Warlaumont.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 02, 2016
  Modeling of evolution and development of language has principally utilized mature units of spoken language, phonemes and words, as both targets and inputs. This approach cannot address the earliest phases of development because young infants are unable to produce such language features. We argue that units of early vocal development—protophones and their primitive illocutionary/perlocutionary forces—should be targeted in evolutionary modeling because they suggest likely units of hominin vocalization/communication shortly after the split from the chimpanzee/bonobo lineage, and because early development of spontaneous vocal capability is a logically necessary step toward vocal language, a root capability without which other crucial steps toward vocal language capability are impossible. Modeling of language evolution/development must account for dynamic change in early communicative units of form/function across time. We argue for interactive contributions of sender/infants and receiver/caregivers in a feedback loop involving both development and evolution and propose to begin computational modeling at the hominin break from the primate communicative background.

  March 02, 2016   doi: 10.1111/tops.12198   open full text
• Division of Labor in Vocabulary Structure: Insights From Corpus Analyses.
  Morten H. Christiansen, Padraic Monaghan.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. September 24, 2015
  Psychologists have used experimental methods to study language for more than a century. However, only with the recent availability of large‐scale linguistic databases has a more complete picture begun to emerge of how language is actually used, and what information is available as input to language acquisition. Analyses of such “big data” have resulted in reappraisals of key assumptions about the nature of language. As an example, we focus on corpus‐based research that has shed new light on the arbitrariness of the sign: the longstanding assumption that the relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary. The results reveal a systematic relationship between the sound of a word and its meaning, which is stronger for early acquired words. Moreover, the analyses further uncover a systematic relationship between words and their lexical categories—nouns and verbs sound differently from each other—affecting how we learn new words and use them in sentences. Together, these results point to a division of labor between arbitrariness and systematicity in sound‐meaning mappings. We conclude by arguing in favor of including “big data” analyses into the language scientist's methodological toolbox.

  September 24, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tops.12164   open full text
• How Language Programs the Mind.
  Gary Lupyan, Benjamin Bergen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. July 17, 2015
  Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution.

  July 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/tops.12155   open full text
• Decision Theory with Resource‐Bounded Agents.
  Joseph Y. Halpern, Rafael Pass, Lior Seeman.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 25, 2014
  There have been two major lines of research aimed at capturing resource‐bounded players in game theory. The first, initiated by Rubinstein (), charges an agent for doing costly computation; the second, initiated by Neyman (), does not charge for computation, but limits the computation that agents can do, typically by modeling agents as finite automata. We review recent work on applying both approaches in the context of decision theory. For the first approach, we take the objects of choice in a decision problem to be Turing machines, and charge players for the “complexity” of the Turing machine chosen (e.g., its running time). This approach can be used to explain well‐known phenomena like first‐impression‐matters biases (i.e., people tend to put more weight on evidence they hear early on) and belief polarization (two people with different prior beliefs, hearing the same evidence, can end up with diametrically opposed conclusions) as the outcomes of quite rational decisions. For the second approach, we model people as finite automata, and provide a simple algorithm that, on a problem that captures a number of settings of interest, provably performs optimally as the number of states in the automaton increases.

  April 25, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12088   open full text
• Computational Rationality: Linking Mechanism and Behavior Through Bounded Utility Maximization.
  Richard L. Lewis, Andrew Howes, Satinder Singh.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 19, 2014
  We propose a framework for including information‐processing bounds in rational analyses. It is an application of bounded optimality (Russell & Subramanian, 1995) to the challenges of developing theories of mechanism and behavior. The framework is based on the idea that behaviors are generated by cognitive mechanisms that are adapted to the structure of not only the environment but also the mind and brain itself. We call the framework computational rationality to emphasize the incorporation of computational mechanism into the definition of rational action. Theories are specified as optimal program problems, defined by an adaptation environment, a bounded machine, and a utility function. Such theories yield different classes of explanation, depending on the extent to which they emphasize adaptation to bounds, and adaptation to some ecology that differs from the immediate local environment. We illustrate this variation with examples from three domains: visual attention in a linguistic task, manual response ordering, and reasoning. We explore the relation of this framework to existing “levels” approaches to explanation, and to other optimality‐based modeling approaches.

  March 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12086   open full text
• Optimality and Some of Its Discontents: Successes and Shortcomings of Existing Models for Binary Decisions.
  Philip Holmes, Jonathan D. Cohen.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 19, 2014
  We review how leaky competing accumulators (LCAs) can be used to model decision making in two‐alternative, forced‐choice tasks, and we show how they reduce to drift diffusion (DD) processes in special cases. As continuum limits of the sequential probability ratio test, DD processes are optimal in producing decisions of specified accuracy in the shortest possible time. Furthermore, the DD model can be used to derive a speed–accuracy trade‐off that optimizes reward rate for a restricted class of two alternative forced‐choice decision tasks. We review findings that compare human performance with this benchmark, and we reveal both approximations to and deviations from optimality. We then discuss three potential sources of deviations from optimality at the psychological level—avoidance of errors, poor time estimation, and minimization of the cost of control—and review recent theoretical and empirical findings that address these possibilities. We also discuss the role of cognitive control in changing environments and in modulating exploitation and exploration. Finally, we consider physiological factors in which nonlinear dynamics may also contribute to deviations from optimality.

  March 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12084   open full text
• Experiential Limitation in Judgment and Decision.
  Ulrike Hahn.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 19, 2014
  The statistics of small samples are often quite different from those of large samples, and this needs to be taken into account in assessing the rationality of human behavior. Specifically, in evaluating human responses to environmental statistics, it is the effective environment that matters; that is, the environment actually experienced by the agent needs to be considered, not simply long‐run frequencies. Significant deviations from long‐run statistics may arise through experiential limitations of the agent that stem from resource constraints and/or information‐processing bounds. The article draws together recent work from a number of areas in judgment and decision making ranging from randomness perception (Hahn & Warren, ), information sampling (Hertwig & Pleskac, ; Kareev et al., ), and consequences of choice for exploration or exploitation (e.g., Denrell, ) to demonstrate how proper consideration of these deviations leads to reevaluation of behaviors that are otherwise deemed irrational.

  March 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12083   open full text
• Rationalizable Irrationalities of Choice.
  Peter Dayan.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 19, 2014
  Although seemingly irrational choice abounds, the rules governing these mis‐steps that might provide hints about the factors limiting normative behavior are unclear. We consider three experimental tasks, which probe different aspects of non‐normative choice under uncertainty. We argue for systematic statistical, algorithmic, and implementational sources of irrationality, including incomplete evaluation of long‐run future utilities, Pavlovian actions, and habits, together with computational and statistical noise and uncertainty. We suggest structural and functional adaptations that minimize their maladaptive effects.

  March 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12082   open full text
• Utility Maximization and Bounds on Human Information Processing.
  Andrew Howes, Richard L. Lewis, Satinder Singh.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 19, 2014
  Utility maximization is a key element of a number of theoretical approaches to explaining human behavior. Among these approaches are rational analysis, ideal observer theory, and signal detection theory. While some examples of these approaches define the utility maximization problem with little reference to the bounds imposed by the organism, others start with, and emphasize approaches in which bounds imposed by the information processing architecture are considered as an explicit part of the utility maximization problem. These latter approaches are the topic of this issue of the journal.

  March 19, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12089   open full text
• An Evolutionary Perspective on Information Processing.
  Peter C. Trimmer, Alasdair I. Houston.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. March 11, 2014
  Behavioral ecologists often assume that natural selection will produce organisms that make optimal decisions. In the context of information processing, this means that the behavior of animals will be consistent with models from fields such as signal detection theory and Bayesian decision theory. We discuss work that applies such models to animal behavior and use the case of Bayesian updating to make the distinction between a description of behavior at the level of optimal decisions and a mechanistic account of how decisions are made. The idea of ecological rationality is that natural selection shapes an animal's decision mechanisms to suit its environment. As a result, decision‐making mechanisms may not perform well outside the context in which they evolved. Although the assumption of ecological rationality is plausible, we argue that the exact nature of the relationship between ecology and cognitive mechanism may not be obvious.

  March 11, 2014   doi: 10.1111/tops.12085   open full text
• Fractal Analysis Illuminates the Form of Connectionist Structural Gradualness.
  Whitney Tabor, Pyeong Whan Cho, Emily Szkudlarek.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 24, 2013
  We examine two connectionist networks—a fractal learning neural network (FLNN) and a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN)—that are trained to process center‐embedded symbol sequences. Previous work provides evidence that connectionist networks trained on infinite‐state languages tend to form fractal encodings. Most such work focuses on simple counting recursion cases (e.g., anbn), which are not comparable to the complex recursive patterns seen in natural language syntax. Here, we consider exponential state growth cases (including mirror recursion), describe a new training scheme that seems to facilitate learning, and note that the connectionist learning of these cases has a continuous metamorphosis property that looks very different from what is achievable with symbolic encodings. We identify a property—ragged progressive generalization—which helps make this difference clearer. We suggest two conclusions. First, the fractal analysis of these more complex learning cases reveals the possibility of comparing connectionist networks and symbolic models of grammatical structure in a principled way—this helps remove the black box character of connectionist networks and indicates how the theory they support is different from symbolic approaches. Second, the findings indicate the value of future, linked mathematical and empirical work on these models—something that is more possible now than it was 10 years ago.

  June 24, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12036   open full text
• LearnLab's DataShop: A Data Repository and Analytics Tool Set for Cognitive Science.
  Kenneth R. Koedinger, John C. Stamper, Brett Leber, Alida Skogsholm.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 19, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12035   open full text
• Introduction to the Issue on Computational Models of Natural Language.
  John Hale, David Reitter.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 19, 2013
  There is no abstract available for this paper.

  June 19, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12038   open full text
• A Model of Language Processing as Hierarchic Sequential Prediction.
  Marten van Schijndel, Andy Exley, William Schuler.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 13, 2013
  Computational models of memory are often expressed as hierarchic sequence models, but the hierarchies in these models are typically fairly shallow, reflecting the tendency for memories of superordinate sequence states to become increasingly conflated. This article describes a broad‐coverage probabilistic sentence processing model that uses a variant of a left‐corner parsing strategy to flatten sentence processing operations in parsing into a similarly shallow hierarchy of learned sequences. The main result of this article is that a broad‐coverage model with constraints on hierarchy depth can process large newspaper corpora with the same accuracy as a state‐of‐the‐art parser not defined in terms of sequential working memory operations.

  June 13, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12034   open full text
• Two Models of Minimalist, Incremental Syntactic Analysis.
  Edward P. Stabler.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 11, 2013
  Minimalist grammars (MGs) and multiple context‐free grammars (MCFGs) are weakly equivalent in the sense that they define the same languages, a large mildly context‐sensitive class that properly includes context‐free languages. But in addition, for each MG, there is an MCFG which is strongly equivalent in the sense that it defines the same language with isomorphic derivations. However, the structure‐building rules of MGs but not MCFGs are defined in a way that generalizes across categories. Consequently, MGs can be exponentially more succinct than their MCFG equivalents, and this difference shows in parsing models too. An incremental, top‐down beam parser for MGs is defined here, sound and complete for all MGs, and hence also capable of parsing all MCFG languages. But since the parser represents its grammar transparently, the relative succinctness of MGs is again evident. Although the determinants of MG structure are narrowly and discretely defined, probabilistic influences from a much broader domain can influence even the earliest analytic steps, allowing frequency and context effects to come early and from almost anywhere, as expected in incremental models.

  June 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12031   open full text
• The Adaptive Nature of Eye Movements in Linguistic Tasks: How Payoff and Architecture Shape Speed‐Accuracy Trade‐Offs.
  Richard L. Lewis, Michael Shvartsman, Satinder Singh.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 11, 2013
  We explore the idea that eye‐movement strategies in reading are precisely adapted to the joint constraints of task structure, task payoff, and processing architecture. We present a model of saccadic control that separates a parametric control policy space from a parametric machine architecture, the latter based on a small set of assumptions derived from research on eye movements in reading (Engbert, Nuthmann, Richter, & Kliegl, 2005; Reichle, Warren, & McConnell, 2009). The eye‐control model is embedded in a decision architecture (a machine and policy space) that is capable of performing a simple linguistic task integrating information across saccades. Model predictions are derived by jointly optimizing the control of eye movements and task decisions under payoffs that quantitatively express different desired speed‐accuracy trade‐offs. The model yields distinct eye‐movement predictions for the same task under different payoffs, including single‐fixation durations, frequency effects, accuracy effects, and list position effects, and their modulation by task payoff. The predictions are compared to—and found to accord with—eye‐movement data obtained from human participants performing the same task under the same payoffs, but they are found not to accord as well when the assumptions concerning payoff optimization and processing architecture are varied. These results extend work on rational analysis of oculomotor control and adaptation of reading strategy (Bicknell & Levy, ; McConkie, Rayner, & Wilson, 1973; Norris, 2009; Wotschack, 2009) by providing evidence for adaptation at low levels of saccadic control that is shaped by quantitatively varying task demands and the dynamics of processing architecture.

  June 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12032   open full text
• How WM Load Influences Linguistic Processing in Adults: A Computational Model of Pronoun Interpretation in Discourse.
  Jacolien Rij, Hedderik Rijn, Petra Hendriks.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 11, 2013
  This paper presents a study of the effect of working memory load on the interpretation of pronouns in different discourse contexts: stories with and without a topic shift. We discuss a computational model (in ACT‐R, Anderson, 2007) to explain how referring expressions are acquired and used. On the basis of simulations of this model, it is predicted that WM constraints only affect adults' pronoun resolution in stories with a topic shift, but not in stories without a topic shift. This latter prediction was tested in an experiment. The results of this experiment confirm that WM load reduces adults' sensitivity to discourse cues signaling a topic shift, thus influencing their interpretation of subsequent pronouns.

  June 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12029   open full text
• Adding Sentence Types to a Model of Syntactic Category Acquisition.
  Stella Frank, Sharon Goldwater, Frank Keller.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 07, 2013
  The acquisition of syntactic categories is a crucial step in the process of acquiring syntax. At this stage, before a full grammar is available, only surface cues are available to the learner. Previous computational models have demonstrated that local contexts are informative for syntactic categorization. However, local contexts are affected by sentence‐level structure. In this paper, we add sentence type as an observed feature to a model of syntactic category acquisition, based on experimental evidence showing that pre‐syntactic children are able to distinguish sentence type using prosody and other cues. The model, a Bayesian Hidden Markov Model, allows for adding sentence type in a few different ways; we find that sentence type can aid syntactic category acquisition if it is used to characterize the differences in word order between sentence types. In these models, knowledge of sentence type permits similar gains to those found by extending the local context.

  June 07, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12030   open full text
• Proportional Hazards Modeling of Saccadic Response Times During Reading.
  Mattias Nilsson, Joakim Nivre.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. June 06, 2013
  In this article we use proportional hazards models to examine how low‐level processes affect the probability of making a saccade over time, through the period of fixation, during reading. We apply the Cox proportional hazards model to investigate how launch distance (relative to word beginning), fixation location (relative to word center), and word frequency affect the hazard of a saccadic response. This model requires that covariates have a constant impact on the hazard over time, the assumption of proportional hazards. We show that this assumption is not supported. The impact of the covariates changes with the time passed since fixation onset. To account for the non‐proportional hazards we fit step functions of time, resulting in a model with time‐varying effects on the hazard. We evaluate the ability to predict the timing of saccades on held‐out fixation data. The model with time‐varying effects performs better in predicting the timing of saccades for fixations as short as 100 ms and as long as 500 ms, when compared both to a baseline model without covariates and a model which assumes constant covariate effects. This result suggests that the time‐varying effects model better recovers the time course of low‐level processes that influence the decision to move the eyes.

  June 06, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12033   open full text
• Cognitive Biases, Linguistic Universals, and Constraint‐Based Grammar Learning.
  Jennifer Culbertson, Paul Smolensky, Colin Wilson.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 23, 2013
  According to classical arguments, language learning is both facilitated and constrained by cognitive biases. These biases are reflected in linguistic typology—the distribution of linguistic patterns across the world's languages—and can be probed with artificial grammar experiments on child and adult learners. Beginning with a widely successful approach to typology (Optimality Theory), and adapting techniques from computational approaches to statistical learning, we develop a Bayesian model of cognitive biases and show that it accounts for the detailed pattern of results of artificial grammar experiments on noun‐phrase word order (Culbertson, Smolensky, & Legendre, 2012). Our proposal has several novel properties that distinguish it from prior work in the domains of linguistic theory, computational cognitive science, and machine learning. This study illustrates how ideas from these domains can be synthesized into a model of language learning in which biases range in strength from hard (absolute) to soft (statistical), and in which language‐specific and domain‐general biases combine to account for data from the macro‐level scale of typological distribution to the micro‐level scale of learning by individuals.

  May 23, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12027   open full text
• Uncertainty Reduction as a Measure of Cognitive Load in Sentence Comprehension.
  Stefan L. Frank.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 16, 2013
  The entropy‐reduction hypothesis claims that the cognitive processing difficulty on a word in sentence context is determined by the word's effect on the uncertainty about the sentence. Here, this hypothesis is tested more thoroughly than has been done before, using a recurrent neural network for estimating entropy and self‐paced reading for obtaining measures of cognitive processing load. Results show a positive relation between reading time on a word and the reduction in entropy due to processing that word, supporting the entropy‐reduction hypothesis. Although this effect is independent from the effect of word surprisal, we find no evidence that these two measures correspond to cognitively distinct processes.

  May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12025   open full text
• A Framework for Modeling the Interaction of Syntactic Processing and Eye Movement Control.
  Felix Engelmann, Shravan Vasishth, Ralf Engbert, Reinhold Kliegl.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. May 16, 2013
  We explore the interaction between oculomotor control and language comprehension on the sentence level using two well‐tested computational accounts of parsing difficulty. Previous work (Boston, Hale, Vasishth, & Kliegl, 2011) has shown that surprisal (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and cue‐based memory retrieval (Lewis & Vasishth, 2005) are significant and complementary predictors of reading time in an eyetracking corpus. It remains an open question how the sentence processor interacts with oculomotor control. Using a simple linking hypothesis proposed in Reichle, Warren, and McConnell (2009), we integrated both measures with the eye movement model EMMA (Salvucci, 2001) inside the cognitive architecture ACT‐R (Anderson et al., 2004). We built a reading model that could initiate short “Time Out regressions” (Mitchell, Shen, Green, & Hodgson, 2008) that compensate for slow postlexical processing. This simple interaction enabled the model to predict the re‐reading of words based on parsing difficulty. The model was evaluated in different configurations on the prediction of frequency effects on the Potsdam Sentence Corpus. The extension of EMMA with postlexical processing improved its predictions and reproduced re‐reading rates and durations with a reasonable fit to the data. This demonstration, based on simple and independently motivated assumptions, serves as a foundational step toward a precise investigation of the interaction between high‐level language processing and eye movement control.

  May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12026   open full text
• Probabilistic Modeling of Discourse‐Aware Sentence Processing.
  Amit Dubey, Frank Keller, Patrick Sturt.
  Topics in Cognitive Science. April 24, 2013
  Probabilistic models of sentence comprehension are increasingly relevant to questions concerning human language processing. However, such models are often limited to syntactic factors. This restriction is unrealistic in light of experimental results suggesting interactions between syntax and other forms of linguistic information in human sentence processing. To address this limitation, this article introduces two sentence processing models that augment a syntactic component with information about discourse co‐reference. The novel combination of probabilistic syntactic components with co‐reference classifiers permits them to more closely mimic human behavior than existing models. The first model uses a deep model of linguistics, based in part on probabilistic logic, allowing it to make qualitative predictions on experimental data; the second model uses shallow processing to make quantitative predictions on a broad‐coverage reading‐time corpus.

  April 24, 2013   doi: 10.1111/tops.12023   open full text