Proceedings of the 25th Annual Cognitive Science Society

Part 1 and 2

Richard Alterman, David Kirsch

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780805849912
• eBook ISBN: 9781317759317
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicologia cognitiva e cognizione

This volume features the complete text of the material presented at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. As in previous years, the symposium included an interesting mixture of papers on many topics from researchers with diverse backgrounds and different goals, presenting a multifaceted view of cognitive science. This volume includes all papers, posters, and summaries of symposia presented at the leading conference that brings cognitive scientists together. The theme of this year's conference was the social, cultural, and contextual elements of cognition, including topics on collaboration, cultural learning, distributed cognition, and interaction.

Member Abstracts

Microlevel analysis constrains models of serial learning.

Kelly M. Addis ([email protected])

Michael J. Kahana ([email protected])

Volen Center for Complex Systems

Brandeis University MS013

Waltham, MA 02454-9110 USA

Models of sequence memory typically rely on either item–to–item associations, or position–to–item associations with a rule for how positions are retrieved and updated. Both classes of models can account for the changes in serial position curves across trials. The serial position curve measures the average recall probability at each list position for successive trials of learning. This function typically shows a large primacy e ect—an advantage for early list items (Drewnowski & Murdock, 1980). The associative chaining model, which relies on item–to–item associations, produces the primacy e ect because the previous recalled item serves as the current recall cue, thus the probability of an error in recall accumulates over output positions. The positional coding model, which uses position–to–item associations, produces the primacy e ect due to edge effects. Items in terminal serial positions can be perturbed to positions in only a single direction, while middle list items can be perturbed to positions in both the forward and backward directions. This results in early list items having a higher probability of recall in the correct serial position.

Serial position curves, however, do not show the behavior of individual items over the course of multiple study-test trials. Extending Tulving’s (1964) analysis of free recall, we present an analysis of sequence learning that tracks the acquisition and forgetting of item and order information at the level of individual items across serial positions. This detailed microanalysis of the learning process reveals that serial lists are learned predominately by gaining items in the correct order (Addis & Kahana, in press). A small number of items are recalled out of order, with the order being corrected on a subsequent learning trial. Information, once recalled, is rarely forgotten.

Applying this analysis to a large serial learning data set, we show that while a basic implementation of the positional coding model ts the data fairly well, the associative chaining model fails to make the appropriate types of errors. Yet both models produce reasonable serial position curves, even when tting to the more detailed analysis. This suggests that overall measures of recall such as serial position curves can obscure important information about the learning process.

We followed up with an experiment that disrupted the acquisition of item–to–position associations but preserved nearest-neighbor associations by requiring participants to learn lists with varied starting positions (e.g., Ebenholtz, 1963). Although a pure positional model could not learn these lists, an associative chaining model is only moderately impaired. These ndings point to the development of hybrid models that incorporate both elements of positional and associative coding.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge support from National Institutes of Health grant MH55687. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael J. Kahana, Volen National Center for Complex Systems, MS 013, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110. E-mail may be sent to [email protected].

References

Addis, K. M. & Kahana, M. J. (in press). Decomposing serial learning: What is missing from the learning curve? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Drewnowski, A. & Murdock, B. B. (1980) The role of auditory features in memory span for words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 319–332.

Ebenholtz, S. M. (1963). Serial learning: Position learning and sequential associations. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 353–362.

Tulving, E. (1964). Intratrial and intertrial retention: Notes towards a theory of free recall verbal learning. Psychological Review, 71, 219–237.

The N400 in Exact and Approximate Mental Arithmetic

Eric C. Anderson ([email protected])

School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College

893 West St., Amherst, MA 01002 USA

Joanna Morris Florack ([email protected])

School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire

College 893 West St., Amherst, MA 01002 USA

Introduction

Recent evidence suggests that people may rely on different mental representations and brain regions when completing certain number processing/tasks (Dehaene Spelke, Pinel, Stanescu, and Tsivkin 1999). For example, solving arithmetic problems that require exact calculation is thought to rely on verbal processing while approximate calculation is thought to rely on visuo-spatial processing.

Event-related potential research has shown that when participants are presented with multiplication problems followed by incongruent possible answers, an N400 component is generated similar to those elicited in language paradigms when subjects are presented with sentences ending with semantically inappropriate words (Niedeggen, Rosier, and Jost, 1999).

This study was designed to combine these two areas of research by trying to elicit an N400 in both exact and approximate addition tasks. If exact arithmetic relies on verbal pathways, it makes sense that a linguistic-like N400 could be generated. However if approximate arithmetic relies on different visio-spatial pathways, it seems likely that approximate addition would not generate an N400.

Methods

Two different mental arithmetic tasks were used to trigger exact and approximate calculation. Addition problems were presented in either Arabic digit (exact condition) or dot quantity (approximate condition) format. A 32 channel NeuroScan cap was used to gather ERP from ten participants who were asked to verify possible solutions that were either correct, incorrect but close to the actual answer, and incorrect and far from the actual answer. For instance, 7 + 9=16 would be a correct answer; 7 + 9 = 14 would be a near incorrect answer, and 7 + 9 = 24 would be a far incorrect answer. Each condition used the same problem set of 42 simple addition problems. Problems were presented on a computer running SuperLab. Timing of stimulus presentation was adapted from Niedeggen et. al (1999).

Results

The ERP data was epoched, baseline corrected, artifact rejected, and averaged for each subject for each electrode in each condition before being analyzed. To test for an N400 effect, the mean voltage amplitude was calculated for the 375–425 ms time window after the possible answer was presented. A three-way ANOVA revealed significant negativity after both foils (near and far) in exact addition but not to foils in approximate addition.

Discussion

As expected, incongruous exact addition problems produced an N400 component similar to N400s observed in linguistic paradigms (figure 1). However, the approximate addition task did not show the same pattern of negativity. These results suggest that exact and approximate addition tasks were represented and or processed in different ways. The presence of an N400 also suggests that solving exact addition problems shares certain properties with language processing that approximate addition does not.

Figure 1: Mean amplitude from 375 to 425 ms.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Neil Stillings and Loel Tronsky.

References

Dehaene, S., Spelke, E., Pinel, P., Stanescu, R., and Tsivkin, S. (1999) Sources of Mathematical Thinking: Behavioral and Brain-Imaging Evidence. Science, 284, 970–974.

Dehaene, S (1997) The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Niedeggen, M., Rosier, F. (1999) N400 Effects Reflect Activation Spread During Retrieval of Arithmetic Facts. Psychological Science, 10, 271–276.

Niedeggen, M., Rosier, F., and Jost, K. (1999) Processing of incongruous mental calculation problems: Evidence for an arithmetic N400 effect. Psychophysiology, 36, 307–324.

A Criterion-Specific Advantage for Small Samples in the Detection of Correlation

Richard B. Anderson ([email protected])

Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH 43403 USA

Michael E. Doherty ([email protected])

Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH 43403 USA

The present work examines the counterintuitive hypothesis that small samples provide better grounds for inferring the existence or non-existence of a population correlation than do larger samples. Researchers have long cited capacity limitation as an explanation for sub-optimal performance (e.g., Miller, 1956; Broadbent, 1958). Yet, recent work (e.g., Kareev, 2000) has challenged the notion that more information is always better—and this challenge takes place in the domain of correlation detection which is, without question, fundamental to learning and cognition. Kareev (e.g., Kareev, 2000) noted that the sampling distribution of the Pearson correlation coefficient is skewed, and that the amount of skew increases as n (the number of elements in each sample) decreases. The top half of Figure 1 illustrates two such distributions (n = 5 and n = 10) sampled from a population with a correlation (ρ) of .56.

Figure 1. Sampling distributions.

Consistent with Kareev’s analyses (e.g., Kareev, 2000), the median and modal correlation (r) in the top half of Figure 1 exceed the value of p, and the proportion of sample rs exceeding an arbitrary criterion, c (the rightmost dashed line in the top half of the figure) is greater when n = 5 than when n = 10. Thus, there appears to be a small-sample advantage for inferring whether ρ = 0 or ρ > 0.

One feature of Kareev’s work, as well as later work by Juslin and Olsson (2000), is that the decision criterion is used not to decide whether ρ = 0 or ρ > 0, but to distinguish “useful” correlations from correlations that are too small to be predictively useful (see Kareev, 2000).

In contrast to previous research, we built a simulation that used a straightforward means of defining various types of correct and incorrect inferences about p. Using a signal detection paradigm, we included samples drawn from populations in which ρ = 0, as well as from populations in which ρ > 0. A false alarm occurred when ρ = 0 and when the sample correlation (r) was either greater than an arbitrary decision criterion, c, or less than –c. Likewise, a hit occurred when p > 0 and when r was either greater than c or less than –c. The criterion wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Table of Contents
• The Effect of Semantic Relatedness and Typicality upon Visual Detection of a Target
• Reconsidering the notion of Dynamic Systems Theory Resources as a Conceptual Framework
• Transposition and Generalization on an Artificial Dimension
• Evaluating the Causal Role of Unobserved Variables
• Did, Made, Had, Said: Capturing Quasi-Regularity in Exceptions
• The Role of Knowledge Support in Creating Noun-Noun Compounds
• The Benefits of Epistemic Action Outweigh the Costs
• Distributed Cognition and Joint Activity in Collaborative Problem Solving
• Perceiving the Infinite and the Infinitesimal World: Unveiling and Optical Diagrams in the Construction of Mathematical Concepts
• Culture and the Subversion of Cognition
• Interpretation of Ambiguous Information in Causal Induction
• Segmenting Ambiguous Events
• Encoding of Elements and Relations of Object Arrangements by Young Children
• The experiential basis of meaning
• Incremental Nonmonotonic Parsing through Semantic Self-Organization
• The Importance of Long-term Memory in Infant Perceptual Categorization
• Inequality between the classes: Phonological and distributional typicality as predictors of lexical processing
• Two wrongs make a right: Learnability and word order consistency
• The Influence of Affect on Risky Behavior: From the Lab to Real World Financial Behavior
• Mechanisms of long-term repetition priming and skill refinement: A probabilistic pathway model
• Policy Shift Through Numerically-Driven Inferencing: An EPIC Experiment About When Base Rates Matter
• Applying Text Comprehension and Active Reading Principles to Adaptive Hyperbooks
• Flexible attention and modality preference in young children
• Global Model Analysis by Landscaping
• Research Laboratories as Evolving Distributed Cognitive Systems
• Representations at Work
• From Prototypes to Exemplars: Representational Shifts in a Probability Judgment Task
• The Meaning(s) of “If’: Conditional Probabilities and Mental Models
• Multiple-Cue Judgment in Individual and Dyadic Learning
• Reduction of Uncertainty in Human Sequential Learning: Evidence from Artificial Grammar Learning
• Grounding Functions of Instrument Plays in Dialogue: a Case-Study of Piano Duos in Joint Practice
• Helping Middle Schoolers Use Cases to Reason: The CASE INTERPRETATION TOOL
• Qualitative Modeling and Similarity in Back of the Envelope Reasoning
• The Role of Coherence in Category-Based Explanation
• The role of space in socially distributed cognition: some issues for cognitive engineering
• Additive or Multiplicative Perceptual Noise? Two Equivalent Forms of the ANCHOR Model
• Can Quirks of Grammar Affect the Way You Think? Grammatical Gender and Object Concepts
• Automatic Landing Technique Assessment using Latent Problem Solving Analysis
• Latent Problem Solving Analysis as an explanation of expertise effects in a complex, dynamic task
• The use of “that” in the Production and Comprehension of Object Relative Clauses
• Why children sometimes say “mice-eater”
• Thinking Graphically: Extracting Local and Global Information
• Constraint Satisfaction Processes in Social Reasoning
• Phonological and Distributional Cues in Syntax Acquisition: Scaling-Up the Connectionist Approach to Multiple-Cue Integration
• Eyetracking and Selective Attention in Category Learning
• Information Aggregation in Groups: The Approach of Simple Group-Heuristics (SIGH)
• Choice set options affect the valuation of risky prospects
• Counterfactual Reasoning: How to Organize a Possible World
• Attending to auditory and visual input with flexibility: Evidence from 4-year-olds
• Computational offloading: Supporting distributed team working through visually augmenting verbal communication
• Category Structure and Recognition Memory
• Toward a Unified Framework for Tracking Cognitive Processes
• Meta-Cognitive Architecture for Team Agents
• Sequence Effects in Solving Knowledge-Rich Problems: The Ambiguous Role of Surface Similarities
• Interactive Processing of Morphosyntactic Features in the Bilingual Lexicon
• Examining the Role of Prediction in Infants’ Physical Knowledge
• Analyzing Effects of Goal Competition and Task Difficulty in Multiple-Task Performance: Volitional Action Control within ACT-R
• Some New Evidence for Concept Stability
• Incubation in Problem Solving as a Context Effect
• Your Task is my Task: Shared Task Representations in Dyadic Interactions
• Do We Really Reason about a Picture as the Referent?
• Accuracy of Tutors’ Assessments of their Students by Tutoring Context
• Causal Models can be Used to Predict Base-Rate Neglect
• Cross-Cultural Differences in the Input to Early Word Learning
• Interventions do not solely benefit causal structure learning: Being told what to do results in worse learning than doing it yourself.
• Unsupervised efficient learning and representation of language structure
• Linguistic Cues Influence Acquisition of Number Words
• No Unified Scales for Perceptual Magnitudes: Evidence from Loudness
• Schema-driven Memory and Structural Alignment
• Accounting For Discovery in a Conginitive Architecture
• Beyond the Bounds of Cognition
• Constructive Perception: A Skill for Coordinating Perception and Conception
• Constraints on Generalization: Why are Past-Tense Irregularization Errors so Rare?
• Learning Causal Laws
• The Concept of Voluntary Motor Control in the Recent Neuroscientific Literature
• Gender Difference in Effects of Conflict on Cognitive Change
• Interaction Organization in Graphical Communication
• Two Reasoning Mechanisms for Solving the Conditional ‘Fallacies’
• Assessment of Resource Coordination Effectiveness Through Analysis of Distributed Cognitive Traces in Team Decision Making
• Two Apparent “Counterexamples” To Marcus: A Closer Look
• Effects of Sequential Context on Judgments and Decisions in Prisoner’s Dilemma Game
• I’ll Never Grow Up: Adult and Child Understanding of Aspect
• How People Represent and Reason from Graphs
• Reasoning from Causal and Noncausal Conditionals: Reasoning from Causal and Noncausal Conditionals: Testing an Integrated Framework
• Speeded categorization: the effects of perceptual processing and decision-making time
• Acquisition of concepts and causal rules in SHRUTI
• Progression of one Student Group’s Work
• Thematic Integration in the Similarity of Abstract and Concrete Items
• When two heads are better than one expert
• Effects of language on color discriminability
• Structural Differences of Physical and Mental Events and Processes
• Dual Processes in the Acquisition of Categorical Concepts
• A theory of rerepresentation in analogical matching
• Conjunctions are easier than disjunctions: A study of logical reasoning problems in the GRE
• Mental metalogic and its empirical justifications: The case of reasoning with quantifiers and predicates
• Causal Induction and the Revision of Belief.
• Sound Symbolism and Early Word Learning in Two Languages
• The Role of Embodied Intention in Early Lexical Acquisition
• Blending of Non-Similar Episodes as a Result of Analogical Mapping with a Third One
• What’s that Thing Called Embodiment?
• Member Abstracts
• Author Index