Cognitive Science[JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
The Ideological Turing Test: A Behavioral Measure of Open-Mindedness and Perspective-Taking.
Brand CO, Brady D, Stafford T
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41084386 · Full text
Understanding our ideological opponents is crucial for the effective exchange of arguments and the avoidance of escalation, and the reduction of conflict. We operationalize the idea of an "Ideological Turing Test" to mea...
Understanding our ideological opponents is crucial for the effective exchange of arguments and the avoidance of escalation, and the reduction of conflict. We operationalize the idea of an "Ideological Turing Test" to measure the accuracy with which people represent the arguments of their ideological opponents. Crucially, this offers a behavioral measure of open-mindedness which goes beyond mere self-report. We recruited 200 participants from opposite sides of three topics with potential for polarization in the UK of the early 2020s (1200 participants total). Participants were asked to provide reasons both for and against their position. Their reasons were then rated by participants from the opposite side. Our criteria for "passing" the test was if an argument was agreed with by opponents to the same extent or higher than arguments made by proponents. We found evidence for high levels of mutual understanding across all three topics. We also found that those who passed were more open-minded toward their opponents, in that they were less likely to rate them as ignorant, immoral, or irrational. Our method provides a behavioral measure of open-mindedness and ability to mimic counterpartisan perspectives that goes beyond self-report measures. Our results offer encouragement that, even in highly polarized debates, high levels of mutual understanding persist.
Scope of Message Planning: Evidence From Production of Sentences With Heavy Sentence-Final NPs.
Konopka AE
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41084385 · Full text
Speaking begins with the generation of a preverbal message. While a common assumption is that the scope of message-level planning (i.e., the size of message-level increments) can be more extensive than the scope of sente...
Speaking begins with the generation of a preverbal message. While a common assumption is that the scope of message-level planning (i.e., the size of message-level increments) can be more extensive than the scope of sentence-level planning, it is unclear how much information is typically encoded at the message level in advance of sentence-level planning during spontaneous production. This study assessed the scope and granularity of early message-level planning in English by tracking production of sentences with light versus heavy sentence-final NPs. Speakers produced SVO sentences to describe pictures showing an agent acting on a patient. Half of the pictures showed one-patient events, eliciting sentences with unmodified patient names (e.g., "The tailor is cutting the dress"), and half showed two-patient events with a target patient and a non-target patient. The presence of a non-target patient required production of a prenominal or postnominal modifier to uniquely identify the target patient (e.g., "The tailor is cutting the long dress" / "the dress with sleeves"). Analyses of speech onsets and eye movements before speech onset showed strong effects of the complexity of the sentence-final character, suggesting that early message-level planning does not proceed strictly word by word (or "from left to right") but instead includes basic information about the identity of both the sentence-initial and sentence-final characters. This is consistent with theories that assume extensive message-level planning before the start of sentence-level encoding and provides new evidence about the level of conceptual detail incorporated into early message plans.
Gestural and Verbal Evidence of Conceptual Representation Differences in Blind and Sighted Individuals.
Mamus E, Speed LJ, Ortega G … +2 more , Majid A, Özyürek A
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41082278 · Full text
This preregistered study examined whether visual experience influences conceptual representations by examining both gestural expression and feature listing. Gestures-mostly driven by analog mappings of visuospatial and m...
This preregistered study examined whether visual experience influences conceptual representations by examining both gestural expression and feature listing. Gestures-mostly driven by analog mappings of visuospatial and motoric experiences onto the body-offer a unique window into conceptual representations and provide complementary information not offered by language-based features, which have been the focus of previous work. Thirty congenitally or early blind and 30 sighted Turkish speakers produced silent gestures and features for concepts from semantic categories that differentially rely on experience in visual (non-manipulable objects and animals) and motor (manipulable objects) information. Blind individuals were less likely than sighted individuals to produce gestures for non-manipulable objects and animals, but not for manipulable objects. Overall, the tendency to use a particular gesture strategy for specific semantic categories was similar across groups. However, blind participants relied less on drawing and personification strategies depicting visuospatial aspects of concepts than sighted participants. Feature-listing revealed that blind participants share considerable conceptual knowledge with sighted participants, but their understanding differs in fine-grained details, particularly for animals. Thus, while concepts appear broadly similar in blind and sighted individuals, this study reveals nuanced differences, too, highlighting the intricate role of visual experience in conceptual representations.
Social Context Matters for Turn-Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children.
Cox C, Fusaroli R, Nielsen YA … +17 more , Cho S, Rocca R, Simonsen A, Knox A, Lyons M, Liberman M, Cieri C, Schillinger S, Lee AL, Hauptmann A, Tena K, Chatham C, Miller JS, Pandey J, Russell AS, Schultz RT, Parish-Morris J
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41082256 · Full text
Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we disentangled different di...
Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we disentangled different dimensions of turn-taking by investigating how the dynamics of child-adult interactions changed according to the activity (task-oriented vs. freer conversation) and the familiarity of the interlocutor (familiar vs. unfamiliar). Twenty-eight autistic children (16 male; = 10.8 years) and 20 age-matched typically developing children (8 male; = 9.6 years) participated in seven task-orientated face-to-face conversations with their caregivers (336 total conversations) and seven more telephone conversations alternately with their caregivers (144 total conversations, 60 with the typical development group) and an experimenter (191 total conversations, 112 with the autism group). By modeling inter-turn response latencies in multi-level Bayesian location-scale models, we found that inter-turn response latencies were consistent across repeated measures within social contexts, but exhibited substantial differences across social contexts. Autistic children exhibited more overlaps, produced faster response latencies and shorter pauses than typically developing children-and these group differences were stronger when conversing with the unfamiliar experimenter. Unfamiliarity also made the relation between individual differences and latencies evident: only in conversations with the experimenter were higher sociocognitive skills and lower social awareness associated with faster responses. Information flow and shared tempo were also influenced by familiarity: children adapted their response latencies to the predictability and tempo of their interlocutor's turn, but only when interacting with their caregivers and not the experimenter. These results highlight the need to construe turn-taking as a multicomponential construct that is shaped by individual differences, interpersonal dynamics, and the affordances of the context.
Can We Really "See" Through Others' Eyes? Evidence of Embodied Visual-Spatial Representation From an Altercentric Viewpoint.
Wang N, Zhang S, Geng H
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41066044 · Publisher ↗
Social interactions often require the ability to "stand in others' shoes" and perceive the world "through others' eyes," but it remains unclear the extent to which we can actually see others' visual worlds. Prior researc...
Social interactions often require the ability to "stand in others' shoes" and perceive the world "through others' eyes," but it remains unclear the extent to which we can actually see others' visual worlds. Prior research has primarily focused on mental-body transformation in visual-spatial perspective taking (VSPT), yet the subsequent visual processing under the adopted perspective has been less explored. Addressing this gap, our study investigated mental representation of the visual scene as a direct outcome of perceiving from another's viewpoint. Using modified VSPT tasks, we paired avatar-perspective trials with self-perspective trials to create opportunities for observing priming effects resulting from potential mental representations formed under the avatar's perspective. We hypothesized that if individuals form embodied representations of visual scenes while explicitly processing stimuli from the avatar's viewpoint, these representations should be stored in memory, and elicit priming effects when later encountering similar scenes from their own perspective. Across four experiments, we provide the first evidence that (1) explicitly engaging in embodied VSPT produces robust mental representations of the visual scene from the adopted perspective, (2) these representations are visual-spatial rather than semantic in nature, and (3) these representations arise from embodied processing rather than from self-perspective strategies. Additionally, our findings reveal that individuals implicitly process visual stimuli from their own perspective during other-perspective tasks, forming distinct but weaker self-perspective representations. Overall, our findings demonstrate the existence of embodied representations in VSPT and offer significant insights into the processing mechanisms involved when we "stand in others' shoes."
What Does Disgust Have to Do With Moral Judgment?
Landy JF
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci · 2025 · PMID 41047371 · Publisher ↗
This primer summarizes the contemporary debate in moral psychology about whether disgust plays a role in moral judgment, and what that role might be. The importance of the debate is explained, then several approaches to...
This primer summarizes the contemporary debate in moral psychology about whether disgust plays a role in moral judgment, and what that role might be. The importance of the debate is explained, then several approaches to studying the issue are reviewed. First, I review experimental studies that induce incidental disgust. Then, I examine other approaches to studying this question, including correlational studies of disgust sensitivity, studies of whether disgust responds to moral content, and research on whether moral transgressions can evoke disgust. I then cast this debate in the philosophical framework of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and present several possible ways of synthesizing conflicting findings and resolving the debate.
Coordinating Attention in Face-to-Face Collaboration: The Dynamics of Gaze, Pointing, and Verbal Reference.
Haraped L, Gerlofs DJ, Huang OC … +4 more , Hickling C, Bischof WF, Sachse P, Kingstone A
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41037789 · Full text
During real-world interactions, people rely on gaze, gestures, and verbal references to coordinate attention and establish shared understanding. Yet, it remains unclear if and how these modalities couple within and betwe...
During real-world interactions, people rely on gaze, gestures, and verbal references to coordinate attention and establish shared understanding. Yet, it remains unclear if and how these modalities couple within and between interacting individuals in face-to-face settings. The current study addressed this issue by analyzing dyadic face-to-face interactions, where participants (n = 52) collaboratively ranked paintings while their gaze, pointing gestures, and verbal references were recorded. Using cross-recurrence quantification analysis, we found that participants readily used pointing gestures to complement gaze and verbal reference cues and that gaze directed toward the partner followed canonical conversational patterns, that is, more looks to the other's face when listening than speaking. Further, gaze, pointing, and verbal references showed significant coupling both within and between individuals, with pointing gestures and verbal references guiding the partner's gaze to shared targets and speaker gaze leading listener gaze. Moreover, simultaneous pointing and verbal referencing led to more sustained attention coupling compared to pointing alone. These findings highlight the multimodal nature of joint attention coordination, extending theories of embodied, interactive cognition by demonstrating how gaze, gestures, and language dynamically integrate into a shared cognitive system.
Between Two Grammatical Gender Systems: Exploring the Impact of Grammatical Gender on Memory Recall in Ukrainian-Russian Simultaneous Bilinguals.
Osypenko O, Brandt S, Athanasopoulos P
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41037787 · Full text
This study examines the impact of grammatical gender on memory recall among simultaneous bilinguals with two three-gendered languages (Ukrainian and Russian). Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals and English monolingual controls...
This study examines the impact of grammatical gender on memory recall among simultaneous bilinguals with two three-gendered languages (Ukrainian and Russian). Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals and English monolingual controls were tested on their ability to remember names assigned to objects with either matching or mismatching grammatical genders across their two languages. Results showed that bilinguals recalled names more accurately when the biological sex of the names was congruent with the grammatical gender of objects in both languages (e.g., recalling a male name assigned to a noun with masculine grammatical gender in both L1s, rather than a female name). English monolinguals, in contrast, showed no difference in recall. However, when grammatical gender mismatched across Ukrainian and Russian, the expected influence of the more proficient language on recall accuracy was not observed. These findings suggest that converging grammatical information from two L1s creates stronger memory associations, enhancing recall accuracy of simultaneous bilinguals. Conversely, mismatching grammatical genders appear to negate this effect. Taken together, these findings highlight the interconnected nature of bilingual conceptual representation.
Does Body-Specificity Stand on Solid Ground? Z-Curving the Association Between Emotional Valence and Lateral Space.
Dapica P, Santiago J, Solana P
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41037785 · Publisher ↗
The body-specificity hypothesis proposes that people with different bodies should also have different conceptual systems. The test case of this hypothesis has been the association of emotional valence (good vs. bad) with...
The body-specificity hypothesis proposes that people with different bodies should also have different conceptual systems. The test case of this hypothesis has been the association of emotional valence (good vs. bad) with lateral space (left vs. right) in people of different handedness. As expected, right-handers tend to associate the good with the right space, whereas left-handers show the opposite association. This body-specific effect has been very influential and followed up by an important number of studies. Here, we undertake a systematic examination of the quality of this literature by means of z-curve analysis. The results show that the expected replicability rate (statistical power) of this literature is reasonably high (71-76%), especially for those studies using binomial tasks and those that entail the severest tests for the hypothesis, whereas it is lower in reaction time studies. Moreover, the presence of publication bias cannot be statistically asserted. All in all, the literature on space-valence body-specificity appears solid, although there is still room for improvement.
Communicating Through Acting: Affording Communicative Intention in Pantomimes.
Gong S, Jiang K, Li JG … +3 more , Karadanaian M, Meng Z, Gao T
Cogn Sci · 2025 Oct · PMID 41037784 · Publisher ↗
How do people intuitively recognize communicative intention in pantomimes, even though such actions kinematically resemble instrumental behaviors directed at changing the world? We focus on two alternative hypotheses: on...
How do people intuitively recognize communicative intention in pantomimes, even though such actions kinematically resemble instrumental behaviors directed at changing the world? We focus on two alternative hypotheses: one posits that instrumental intention competes with communicative intention, such that the weaker the former, the stronger the latter; the other suggests that instrumental intention is nested within communicative intention, such that the presence of the former facilitates the latter. To test these hypotheses, we compiled a video dataset of action-object pairs with varying frequencies in the English corpus. Using the concept of affordance, we qualitatively varied the degree to which a scene visually supports the execution of an action. Across two empirical experiments, we found a nonmonotonic relationship between affordance and communicative ratings: partial affordance, where the scene provides some support for an action's instrumental purpose, elicited the strongest perception of communicative intention. In contrast, full affordance or no affordance resulted in weaker interpretations of communicative intention. We also found that recognizing the instrumental components of pantomime-like actions predicted a higher communicativeness rating. Our study, on top of confirming humans' ability to interpret novel pantomimes, reveals a novel mechanism of communicative intention: recognizing an instrumental goal and perceiving suboptimal conditions for achieving it together enhance the communicative signal. This work contributes toward an integrated theory of pantomimes, demonstrating how the rationality principle not only aids in distinguishing communicative intention but also supports the identification of instrumental content embedded within it.
Cognition in Climate Change: Is It Just a Matter of Time?
Bertoli M, De Cesaris M, Bonventre S … +1 more , Brunetti M
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci · 2025 · PMID 41035391 · Full text
Climate change (CC) is a global phenomenon characterized by long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Aside from natural causes, we have been facing a full-blown climate crisis primarily driven by human acti...
Climate change (CC) is a global phenomenon characterized by long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Aside from natural causes, we have been facing a full-blown climate crisis primarily driven by human activity, leading to increasingly frequent and extreme weather events that put a strain on people's mental capacities. Addressing CC necessitates a temporal perspective as both causes and potential solutions extend beyond the present. However, despite being a significant challenge for humanity, CC is often considered temporally distant, leading to abstract thinking and reduced urgency for action. Considering the diverse dimensions that concur to define CC, this review will explore the link between CC and time cognition, building on insights from cognitive sciences. Upon considering the tangible effects of the anthropogenic CC (Changing Place), we argue that change in the social construction of time is inherent to CC and drifts to the point of affecting psychological well-being (Changing Time). Moreover, considering that time is central to cognition and interlinked with several cognitive functions, we will consider the literature investigating the impact of CC-related eco-anxiety on cognitive abilities within the framework of time cognition. Furthermore, we assess how eco-anxiety and time cognition interact, potentially serving as markers of mental well-being (Changing Thoughts). By framing CC within the realm of time cognition, we offer an interdisciplinary perspective on cognition and well-being, advocating for the integration of cognitive science into climate adaptation and mitigation efforts to foster more effective, psychologically sustainable long-term climate strategies (Changing Future). This article is categorized under: Neuroscience > Cognition.
Schizophrenia Research Under the Framework of Predictive Coding: Body, Language, and Others.
Li L, Li C
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci · 2025 · PMID 41033752 · Publisher ↗
While predictive coding offers a powerful framework for investigating schizophrenia, its therapeutic applications remain nascent. To facilitate a "therapy turn" in the field, this review establishes a model-oriented, ope...
While predictive coding offers a powerful framework for investigating schizophrenia, its therapeutic applications remain nascent. To facilitate a "therapy turn" in the field, this review establishes a model-oriented, operationalist, and comprehensive understanding of schizophrenia. We examine predictive coding models across key domains-embodiment, co-occurrence of over- and under-weighting priors, subjective time processing, language production and comprehension, self-other differentiation, and social interaction. Each model is linked to corresponding clinical impairments and manifestations in schizophrenia. Finally, we propose a roadmap for future research, outlining the rationale and methods for leveraging this framework to develop novel interventions. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Prediction Psychology > Brain Function and Dysfunction.
Broadening Cognitive Science in Nigeria: Foundation for a New Discipline.
Ezeugwu C, Oyekola A, Ayede A … +1 more , Members of the Nigeria Child Development Research Network
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40991866 · Publisher ↗
Cognitive science has matured into an established discipline, and its development has advanced our understanding of the human brain and cognitive processes. Despite these advancements and popularity, the limited establis...
Cognitive science has matured into an established discipline, and its development has advanced our understanding of the human brain and cognitive processes. Despite these advancements and popularity, the limited established norms in the field have been in favor of cognitive universals, which is the idea that cognitive processes are consistent and shared across all humans irrespective of their sociocultural or environmental variations. This has limited the chances of improving and understanding variations in cognitive development, particularly among individuals from the majority of the world's population, and may have increased oversight into the unique characteristics of cognitive adaptations shaped by sociocultural and environmental factors. The objective of this paper is to draw insights from a 2-day workshop organized on broadening cognitive science in Nigeria. Inspired by the discussions from the workshop, we identified critical challenges and opportunities at the researcher, participant, and process levels, offering practical strategies for advancing cognitive science in underrepresented regions. We discussed the challenges facing cognitive science research and strategies to solve these challenges in Nigeria, particularly focusing on emerging themes from our workshop. We then discussed pathways for future directions and concluded with final thoughts.
The Mechanisms of the Masked Priming That Do Not Work Jointly.
Wang Y, Di M, Zhang H … +4 more , Tang Z, Cao J, Liu P, Wang Y
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40991656 · Publisher ↗
Over the past two decades, hundreds of articles have investigated the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon that masked stimuli reduce people's response performance to subsequent compatible stimuli, for example, the negat...
Over the past two decades, hundreds of articles have investigated the mechanisms underlying the phenomenon that masked stimuli reduce people's response performance to subsequent compatible stimuli, for example, the negative compatibility effect (NCE). Whether the NCE results from motor inhibition, object updating, or both is still being debated. We used the digital masked prime task for 3 consecutive days to strengthen stimulus-response associations in relevant and irrelevant contexts (whether the mask consisted of task-relevant features or not) and employed response time distribution analysis to investigate the contributions of motor inhibition and object updating to the NCE. The results showed that the NCE appeared in the irrelevant condition on days 2 and 3, and it increased with response latency on day 3. In contrast, in the relevant condition, the NCE occurred regardless of test day or response latency, and was unaffected by either. These different patterns of results indicated that the cause of the NCE was different in the relevant and irrelevant conditions. In the relevant condition, the results suggested that the NCE was solely due to object updating, whereas in the irrelevant condition, the results indicated that the NCE was solely due to motor inhibition. This study reconciled the previous debate and revealed the mechanisms by which unconscious information influences behavioral performance in different contexts.
The Shape of Blame: The Relationship Between Statistical Norms and Judgments of Blame and Praise.
Bostyn DH, Knobe J
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40984830 · Publisher ↗
For many types of behaviors, whether a specific instance of that behavior is blame- or praiseworthy depends on how much of the behavior is done or how people go about doing it. For instance, for a behavior such as "reply...
For many types of behaviors, whether a specific instance of that behavior is blame- or praiseworthy depends on how much of the behavior is done or how people go about doing it. For instance, for a behavior such as "replying to an email in x days," whether a specific reply is perceived as blameworthy or praiseworthy will depend on how many days have elapsed before the reply. Such behaviors lie on a continuum in which part of the continuum is praiseworthy (replying quickly) and another part of the continuum is blameworthy (replying late). In the current paper, we investigate how judgments of blame and praise on such behaviors relate to people's perceptions of the statistical norms surrounding that behavior (i.e., how quickly people usually reply). We find that people do not base judgments of blame and praise on a comparison to the statistically average quantity. Instead, judgments of blame and praise are related to whether the behavior is perceived as frequent or infrequent. Notably, frequency showed an asymmetric relationship with moral judgments: higher frequency was strongly associated with reduced blame but showed a much weaker association with reduced praise.
Language Universals in Sentence Length: Comparing Sentence Length Distributions of 10 Languages.
Zhou Y, Jiang J, Liu H
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40984826 · Publisher ↗
Sentence length reflects cognitive constraints and stylistic decisions about speech and text segmentation for effective communication, but whether sentence length distributions follow universal patterns across languages...
Sentence length reflects cognitive constraints and stylistic decisions about speech and text segmentation for effective communication, but whether sentence length distributions follow universal patterns across languages and genres remains unclear. This study investigates whether sentence lengths and sub-sentence lengths-defined as the number of words between sentence-ending punctuation marks and between adjacent punctuation marks-follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, whether this reflects linguistic genealogy, and whether the distribution is affected by genre. Given the links between sentence length, cognitive constraints, and stylistic decisions, we predicted that sentence and sub-sentence lengths would follow a unified probabilistic distribution across languages, modulated by linguistic genealogy and genre. Analyzing news texts in 10 languages, we found that sentence and sub-sentence length distributions both conform to a probabilistic model, the Extended Positive Negative Binomial distribution, which was previously shown to capture sentence length distributions in certain languages. To assess whether these differences align with linguistic typology, we performed cluster analysis based on mean length and distribution parameters, with results mirroring known linguistic genealogical relationships. To examine the genre effects, we analyzed sentence and sub-sentence length distributions across three written genres in English and Chinese. Generalized linear models revealed systematic influences of both genre and language, but with varying results on different linguistic levels: genre accounted for more variance in sentence-level metrics, whereas language exerted stronger effects at the sub-sentence level. Sentence and sub-sentence length distributions reflect a universal probabilistic pattern in punctuation-based sentence segmentation, influenced by cognitive constraints and genre-driven adaptability across languages.
Constructing Memories, Episodic and Semantic.
Gentry H
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40952833 · Publisher ↗
What is the nature of semantic memory? Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long held that semantic memory stores invariant knowledge structures to be retrieved as such. In this paper, I argue that this conception...
What is the nature of semantic memory? Philosophers and cognitive scientists have long held that semantic memory stores invariant knowledge structures to be retrieved as such. In this paper, I argue that this conception of semantic memory is likely false. In particular, I argue that if episodic and semantic memory share causal mechanisms, and episodic memory is (re)constructive, then semantic memory is likely constructive too. I review evidence that suggests that episodic and semantic memory are subserved by a domain-general system that supports representing and navigating relations among various kinds of stimuli, including space, time, events, and semantic relations. I then review the supposed hallmark properties of constructivism in episodic memory and show that they appear in semantic memory as well. To increase the inductive support for my proposal, I show how the view predicts some of the evidence others have marshaled in favor of a constructivist semantic memory system. Finally, I close by providing a proof of concept for the view on offer, the semantic pointer architecture.
Do Humans Use Push-Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center-Embedded Sequences?
Ferrigno S, Cheyette SJ, Carey S
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40952769 · Full text
Complex sequences are ubiquitous in human mental life, structuring representations within many different cognitive domains-natural language, music, mathematics, and logic, to name a few. However, the representational and...
Complex sequences are ubiquitous in human mental life, structuring representations within many different cognitive domains-natural language, music, mathematics, and logic, to name a few. However, the representational and computational machinery used to learn abstract grammars and process complex sequences is unknown. Here, we used an artificial grammar learning task to study how adults abstract center-embedded and cross-serial grammars that generalize beyond the level of embedding of the training sequences. We tested untrained generalizations to longer sequence lengths and used error patterns, item-to-item response times, and a Bayesian mixture model to test two possible memory architectures that might underlie the sequence representations of each grammar: stacks and queues. We find that adults learned both grammars, that the cross-serial grammar was easier to learn and produce than the matched center-embedded grammar, and that item-to-item touch times during sequence generation differed systematically between the two types of sequences. Contrary to widely held assumptions, we find no evidence that a stack architecture is used to generate center-embedded sequences in an indexed AB artificial grammar. Instead, the data and modeling converged on the conclusion that both center-embedded and cross-serial sequences are generated using a queue memory architecture. In this study, participants stored items in a first-in-first-out memory architecture and then accessed them via an iterative search over the stored list to generate the matched base pairs of center-embedded or cross-serial sequences.
Acquisition and Utilization of Recursive Rules in Motor Sequence Generation.
Martins MD, Bergmann Z, Leonova E … +3 more , Bianco R, Sammler D, Villringer A
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40893029 · Full text
Recursive hierarchical embedding allows humans to generate multiple hierarchical levels using simple rules. We can acquire recursion from exposure to linguistic and visual examples, but only develop the ability to unders...
Recursive hierarchical embedding allows humans to generate multiple hierarchical levels using simple rules. We can acquire recursion from exposure to linguistic and visual examples, but only develop the ability to understand "multiple-level" structures like "[[second] red] ball]" after mastering "same-level" conjunctions like "[second] and [red] ball." Whether we can also learn recursion in motor production remains unexplored. Here, we tested 40 adults' ability to learn and generate sequences of finger movements using "multiple-level" recursion and "same-level" iteration rules (like linguistic conjunction). Rule order was counterbalanced. First, they learned the generative rules (without explicit rule instructions or feedback) by executing examples of motor sequences based on visual cues displayed on the screen (learning). Second, participants were asked to discriminate between correct and incorrect motor sequences beyond those to which they were previously exposed (discrimination). Finally, they were asked to use the rules to generate new hierarchical levels consistent with the previously given (generation). We repeated the procedure (all three phases) on 2 days, allowing for a night of sleep. We found that most participants could discriminate correct/incorrect sequences based on recursive rules and use recursive rules to generate new hierarchical levels in motor sequences, but mostly on the second day of testing, and when they had acquired iterative before recursive rules. This aligns with previous literature on vision and language and with literature showing that sleep is necessary to generate abstract knowledge of motor sequences. Lastly, we found that the ability to discriminate well-formed motor sequences using recursion was insufficient for motor generativity.
The Development of Early Phonological Networks: An Analysis of Individual Longitudinal Vocabulary Growth.
Kalinowski J, Hansel L, Vystrčilová M … +2 more , Ecker A, Mani N
Cogn Sci · 2025 Sep · PMID 40890989 · Full text
While much work has emphasized the role of the environment in language learning, research equally reports consistent effects of the child's knowledge, in particular, the words known to individual children, in steering fu...
While much work has emphasized the role of the environment in language learning, research equally reports consistent effects of the child's knowledge, in particular, the words known to individual children, in steering further lexical development. Much of this work is based on cross-sectional data, assuming that the words typically known to children at n months predict the words typically known to children at n+x months. Given acknowledged variability in the number of words known to individual children at different ages, a more conclusive analysis of this issue requires examination of individual differences in the words learned by individual children across development, that is, using longitudinal data. In the current study, using longitudinal vocabulary data from children learning Norwegian, we ask whether the phonological connectivity of a word to words that the child already knows or words in the child's environment predicts the likelihood of the child learning that word across development. The results suggest that the early vocabulary grows predominantly in a rich-get-richer manner, where word learning is predicted by the connectivity of a word to already known words. However, word learning is, to a lesser extent, also influenced by the connectivity of a word to words in the child's linguistic environment. Our results highlight the promise of using longitudinal data to better understand the factors that influence vocabulary development.
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