Symposia
This year’s program will include several exciting symposia. Here you can find the current updated list of the symposia, organized by topic.
Psychonomic’s Sponsored Symposium
THE POWER OF LANGUAGE USE ON JUDGMENT AND DECISION-MAKING
Organizers: Boaz Keysar1, Zeynep Aslan1, and Janet Geipel2
1University of Chicago, USA, 2University of Exeter, UK
Language is embedded in almost every aspect of our lives. People use language not only to communicate with others but also to think about the world and make decisions. Despite such heavy involvement of language in our daily experiences, understanding the nature of the relationship between language and thought has been a longstanding challenge for cognitive science. An extensive literature describes how speakers of different languages perceive and think about the world differently, demonstrating how different linguistic structures can shape the thought processes of individuals. However, relatively recently, research has shown that other seemingly insignificant elements of language, such as language status (i.e., native or foreign) and language modality (i.e., spoken or written) can influence how people think, judge, and decide. This symposium will present cutting-edge research on how and why such aspects of language systematically influence processes that govern judgment and decision-making.
Keywords: regional language, risk perception, perceived distance, moral judgements, field experiment
Broadbent Symposium
WORD AND SENTENCE READING
Organizer: Jonathan Grainger1
1Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Aix-Marseille University & CNRS, Marseille, France
This symposium is associated with the Broadbent lecture “Orthography, phonology, morphology, and reading”. Jonathan Grainger invited five colleagues to give talks on the general topic of “word and sentence reading”. The presenters are all close colleagues of J. Grainger who have been involved in recent collaborations with him, and who have already established themselves as major players in the field of reading research. The main aim of this symposium was to provide more focused talks that would cover in greater detail some of the topics only briefly covered in the Broadbent lecture, as well as covering more ground than could be covered in one lecture.
Berthelson symposium
Mechanisms of appetitive and aversive control: from cost-benefit integration to computational psychiatry
Organizer: Eliana Vassena1,2
1. Experimental Psychopathology and Treatment, Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2. Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University Medical Center,
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Computational approaches to motivated behavior describe the mechanisms underlying control allocation and decision-making in appetitive contexts (when we strive to obtain rewards) and aversive contexts (when we attempt escaping threats or punishments). Rooted in decades of empirical work, models of control have focused on understanding how environmental and internal factors affect behavior, converging towards a critical tenet: core drivers - such as prospective benefits, punishments and inherent effort - must be integrated. The nature of this integration remains highly debated. Understanding its mechanistic foundation holds the promise to better tackle pathological alterations of motivated control, as observed across neuropsychiatric disorders.
This symposium tackles the mechanisms of integration of critical control drivers: value and (effort)cost of information gathering, tracking of volatile threats, momentary fatigue, integration of reward and punishment, and altered sensitivity to reward and effort. Each talk harnesses the explanatory power of computational modeling to capture motivated control integration in a quantitative precise manner, exploring opportunities and challenges for computational psychiatry applications.
Invited Keynote symposia
Recent advances in research on autobiographical memory
Organizer: Dorthe Berntsen1
1Aarhus University, Denmark
Symposium abstract
From being a relatively understudied area, autobiographical memory now is an aspect of memory that is extensively studied in a range of different domains of psychology, including clinical, developmental, neuropsychological, cognitive, personality and social psychology. This symposium provides a taste of some recent advances in the study of autobiographical memory, focusing on new insights on retrieval processes, the recollective experience of autobiographical memory, and how memory for the personal past relates to other aspects of memory and cognition. The symposium approaches these questions from both developmental, clinical, neurocognitive and individual differences perspectives. Individual talks address how involuntary (spontaneous) versus voluntary (strategic) retrieval forms relate to memory development in early childhood, to positive and negative dimensions of psychosis in schizophrenia and to the ability to imagine the personal future. Talks also address how autobiographical memory should be located in the conceptual space of episodic, semantic, and other commonly studied forms of memory as well as individual differences in the experience of autobiographical memory and how they relate to other mental dispositions.
Theme: Attention
Cognitive or Automatic? Unpacking the Nature of Mismatch Negativity as an ERP Component
Organizers: Thomas Lachmann1, Ann-Kathrin Beck1
1University of Kaiserslautern-Landau
Abstract
Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects the brain's response to unexpected or deviant stimuli. The question of whether MMN is automatic or cognitive in nature is a thoroughly controversial issue in the literature. Some researchers argue that MMN reflects a purely automatic process that occurs pre-attentively and reflects the brain's ability to detect changes in the environment without conscious recognition. Others argue that MMN does reflect cognitive processes that require attention and awareness, as the brain must actively compare the deviant stimulus with previous standard stimuli to detect the mismatch. Recent studies have provided evidence for both automatic and cognitive aspects of MMN. Overall, it seems that MMN is a complex ERP component that involves both automatic and cognitive processes. While MMN can be generated without attention, it may be modulated by attention and cognitive resources, suggesting that the brain may use both automatic and cognitive processes to detect and respond to unexpected stimuli in the environment.
Theme: Attention
INTERACTION OF PERCEPTUAL ATTENTION AND ATTENTION TO INFORMATION HELD IN WORKING MEMORY
Organizers: Agnes Rosner1, Evie Vergauwe2
1 Leibniz University Hannover, 2 University of Geneva
We can attend to information in the world (perceptual attention) and to information we currently keep in working memory (attention to remembered episodes or concepts). It has been proposed that both forms of attention interact on a shared representation in memory, a so-called priority map (Awh, Belopolsky, Theeuwes, 2012; Theeuwes, 2018). So far, this interaction is not well understood. On the one hand, there is convincing evidence that information in working memory can affect perceptual attention. Items held active in working memory can function as search templates for perceptual attention (Oberauer, 2019; Olivers, Peters, Houtkamp, & Roelfsema, 2011). On the other hand, the evidence for an influence of perceptual attention on information currently held active in memory is mixed. This symposium aims to discuss recent research on when and how information held in working memory interacts with perceptual attention and what we can learn about attention to information in memory from studying its interaction with perceptual attention. This symposium will bring together researchers using a variety of behavioral paradigms, ranging from visual search to immediate recall, and methods including eye-tracking and EEG.
Keywords: Attention, Working Memory, Perception, Memory
Theme: Bilingualism
BILINGUAL LEXICO-SYNTACTIC PROCESSING: RECENT UPDATES ON LEXICAL ACCESS, CODE-SWITCHING AND LANGUAGE ATTRITION.
Organizers: Montserrat Comesaña1, Cristina Flores2
1Psychology Research Center (CIPsi), University of Minho, Portugal, 2School of Letters, Arts and Human Sciences (ELACH), University of Minho, Portugal
The way bilinguals access abstract lexical and syntactic representations of both languages and how this access changes across the lifespan has been focus of intense research since the last four decades (Bialystok et al. 2008). The aim is not only to inform and refine theories and models of bilingual language processing and representation but also to identify specific processes that first and second or foreign language teaching should focus on to improve language proficiency or to prevent loss of language competences. In this symposium, we present current studies on this issue, which have focused on different levels of language representation (lexical and morpho-syntactic). Using fine and coarse-grained analyses, the studies investigated lexical access and modelling, code-switching or language attrition, considering the impact of linguistic and non-linguistic factors on language processing in adult bilingual speakers. The aim of this symposium is to contribute to our understanding of bilingual language development by connecting results and discuss recent updates from studies on natural and instructed second language acquisition, code-switching in highly proficient speakers and language attrition in returnee heritage speakers.
Keywords: Bilingualism, lexical access, code-switching, language attrition
Theme: Bilingualism
BEYOND THE TRIED AND TRUE: MOVING BILINGUAL LANGUAGE PRODUCTION RESEARCH FORWARD
Organizer: Alex Titus1
1Radboud University
Bilinguals, by definition, are capable of expressing themselves in more than one language, and they typically do so in rich, dynamic, and contextualized environments. But to what extent does the context in which a bilingual interaction takes place influence the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in bilingual language production? Over the past decades, psychonomic research in this field has commonly made use of experimental paradigms that ignore much of the linguistic, audiovisual, and multimodal richness of everyday interaction. By having leading experts in the field present a series of state-of-the-art approaches to a range of fundamental questions on the representations and processes residing in the bilingual mind, this symposium will showcase how the field of bilingual language production research is moving forward by incorporating context into the experimental equation. The list of talks below covers a diverse range of topics and approaches, while maintaining a consistent theme, thus promising an appealing and productive discussion. As such, it may also serve as a case study to psychonomic researchers in general that aim to find a balance between experimental control and ecological validity in their work.
Keywords: Bilingualism, Executive Control, Language Production, Ecological Validity, Virtual Reality
Theme: Bilingualism
INNOVATIVE EYE-TRACKING APPROACHES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND BILINGUAL PROCESSING RESEARCH
Organizers: Irina Elgort1, Marc Brysbaert2
1Victoria University of Wellington, 2Ghent University
Language researchers have used eye-tracking methods since the beginning of the so-called third era of eye-movement research, which began in the 1970s with the advent of new-generation eye-tracking technologies and software that enabled more efficient and effective data collection, processing, and analysis. This, in turn, facilitated the development of theories and models of reading and language processing behaviour, supported by empirical evidence obtained in eye-movement studies. However, the body of eye-tracking evidence associated with language learning and acquisition is still relatively small, with this research direction starting to gain momentum only recently. Another fast-growing research direction is comparative bilingual eye-tracking studies that aim to amass fine-grained evidence for charting the time course of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) processing and comprehension. The present symposium presents the latest evidence from eye-tracking studies, obtained using innovative methods of data collection and analysis, that illuminates aspects of language acquisition and bilingual processing. The symposium also proposes minimum reporting standards for eye-tracking research in SLA and bilingualism.
Keywords: eye-tracking, eye-movement research, second language acquisition, bilingual processing
Theme: Cognitive modelling
MAPPING MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS IN THE HUMAN NEOCORTEX
Chair: Zohar Tal1
1Proaction Lab, CINEICC, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Our ability to process the rich sensory information we encounter during our everyday lives relies on an effective organization of these inputs at different levels of processing hierarchy. Organizing information in multidimensional spaces is a rather widespread strategy within the brain, for example, in sensory cortices which show topographical mapping of neural preferences along particular sensory dimensions. Recent works have revealed that the organization of more abstract information beyond sensory cortices also follows multidimensionality, as can be found for example in the superimposed mapping of different cognitive dimensions such as numerosity, object size and time duration. In this symposium, we will discuss the fundamental role of multidimensional mapping in the human brain, by presenting a variety of behavioural and neuronal studies focusing on different aspects of mapping multiple dimensions. These include the facilitation of solving sensory ambiguity, cross-modal mapping in the sensory-deprived brain, organization of object knowledge at the behavioural and neuronal levels, with topographically organized mapping of different dimensions of object related information.
Theme: Cognitive Control
UNIFYING PERSPECTIVES ON PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE CONTROL TO UNCOVER PROMISE AND CHALLENGES OF THE DICHOTOMY
Organizer: Giacomo Spinelli1
1University of Milan-Bicocca
In the last decade, the study of goal-oriented behavior has been increasingly influenced by the Dual-Mechanism of Control framework (Braver, 2012, TiCS). This framework proposes a distinction between 1) a proactive mode of processing whereby individuals maintain task-relevant information in an anticipatory fashion, and 2) a reactive mode whereby specific events re-activate task-relevant information on an as-needed basis, with the two modes having distinct behavioral and neural signatures. The proactive/reactive dichotomy has been used in as many areas as attentional control, visual attention, and memory. However, with this success, there has also been a diversification in the characteristics attributed to proactive/reactive control depending on the paradigm and area of study. For example, whereas individual-differences research suggests that proactive control is an effortful mode to engage, other research suggests that proactively anticipating conflict from a distractor is not particularly demanding. This symposium aims to bring together researchers from several areas relevant to proactive/reactive control and converge on a more unitary view of the dichotomy, its promise and the challenges that it faces.
Keywords: proactive control, reactive control, cognitive control, visual attention, memory
Theme: Cognitive Modeling
STATISTICAL MODELING OF TRAINING-RELATED COGNITIVE CHANGES
Organizers: Tanja Könen1, Julia Karbach2
1RWTH Aachen University, Germany, 2University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), Germany
From a theoretical, methodological, and applied perspective, interventions are an informative study design. Cognitive psychology has long acknowledged the importance to not only evaluate whether and how training programs work on average, but also understand which individual, situational, and methodological characteristics make individual outcomes more likely. To advance our understanding of these factors, this symposium gives an overview of different modeling approaches and strategies with applications from multiple cognitive domains (e.g., executive-functioning, processing-speed, or working-memory training). The talks demonstrate (1) latent change modeling to analyze predictors of individual differences in change, (2) multilevel modeling and latent growth curve modeling to analyze the level of single training sessions, (3) diffusion modeling to gain insight into the underlying cognitive processes, and (4) machine learning to predict learning as a function of early training performance. Taken together, these approaches provide valuable correlative information about possible mechanisms moderating (e.g., compensation effects) or fostering training outcomes (e.g., scheduling protocols).
Keywords: Cognitive Training, Cognitive Modeling
Theme: Emotion
STUDYING (EMBODIED) EMOTIONS AND SOCIAL CONNECTEDNESS ACROSS DISCIPLINES
Organizers: Julia Folz1, Christopher Riddell1
1Leiden University
Emotions play a crucial role in building connections with others. The ability to express one’s own and to appropriately respond to others’ emotions has profound implications for social relationships. Different disciplines have examined the link between emotions and social connectedness using different time-scales, methods and considering different populations. While these individual insights are informative within their specific disciplines, an integrative approach can provide a more holistic understanding of this topic. This symposium will therefore feature diverse talks on emotions and social connectedness drawing from clinical, developmental, biological and social psychology. Speaker 1 will begin by introducing the development of basic emotions across ontogeny. Speaker 2 will then zoom in on brain activity related to a specific emotional response - blushing. A more applied perspective on the role of embodied emotions in judging politicians’ trustworthiness will be provided by Speaker 3. Speaker 4 will highlight the role of connectedness to the self and to others in loneliness. Lastly, Speaker 5 will provide new perspectives on affective touch in depersonalization, informing sensory tactile-based interventions.
Keywords: Social Cognition, Emotion, Embodiment, Child Development
Theme: Cognitive Control
FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO COGNITIVE TRAINING GAINS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM RECENT STUDIES IN HEALTHY AND IN CLINICAL POPULATIONS
Mor Nahum1, Julia Föcker2, Aaron Seitz3, Anja Pahor4, Nazanin Derakhshan5
1The Hebrew University, Jerusalem , Israel, 2University of Lincoln, United Kingdom, 3Northeastern University, 4University of Maribor, 5University of Reading, UK
Cognitive training holds promise in improving cognitive function in both healthy and clinical populations, but results related to more broad, generalizable effects, remain inconclusive. To maximize training gains, there is a need to better understand the factors and contexts affecting learning and lead to generalization and transfer, and study moderators of training-related gains. In this symposium, we present recent results from various cognitive training studies and discuss the factors which help maximize training benefits in both clinical and healthy populations. Dr. Seitz will present design principles which result in broader transfer of auditory and visual training to everyday function. Dr. Föcker will discuss how training might facilitate multisensory integration and implications for cognitive tasks. Dr. Pahor will discuss how gamification of working memory training affects learning and transfer of benefits. Dr. Nahum will present data showing that the combination of cognitive training and meta-cognitive goal-setting training boosts functional outcomes in cancer survivors. Finally, Dr. Derakhshan will discuss how using adaptive cognitive training strategies can be employed to build resilience in vulnerable individuals.
Keywords: cognitive training, cognitive control, brain plasticity, generalization, multisensory integration
Theme: Higher Cognitive Functions
HOW INTERNAL SIGNALS INFORM COGNITION
Organizers: Simona Raimo1, Gerardo Salvato2, Louise Kirsch3, Alice Teghil4, Chiara Baiano5
1Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, “Magna Graecia” University of Catanzaro, Catanzaro, Italy, 2Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy; ASST “Grande Ospedale Metropolitano” Niguarda of Milan, Milan, Italy; NeuroMI, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy, 3Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, UMR 8002, Paris, 4epartment of Psychology, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome, Italy, 5San Camillo Hospital, Venice, Italy
The explicit and implicit processing of signals coming from the inside of the body (e.g., temperature, heart rate) represents a pivotal source of information in higher-order mental processes. Despite the increasing interest in the topic, the neural bases and behavioural counterpart of the impact of these signals on cognition and behaviour is still opaque. The aim of the present symposium is to offer different perspectives on the topic by presenting new evidence and insights into the relationship between internal signals and cognition in healthy and pathological populations, from the construction of the bodily self (G. Salvato & S. Raimo) to the perception of time (A. Teghil) and space (L. Kirsch) and decision-making (C. Baiano). This symposium includes speakers from different Universities and career stages, and will shed an integrative perspective on the impact of explicit and implicit perception of signals coming from the inside of the body in higher-order cognitive processes.
Keywords: internal signals, interoception, bodily self, higher order cognition
Invited Keynote symposia
RECENT ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY
Organizer: Dorthe Berntsen1
1Aarhus University, Denmark
Symposium abstract
From being a relatively understudied area, autobiographical memory now is an aspect of memory that is extensively studied in a range of different domains of psychology, including clinical, developmental, neuropsychological, cognitive, personality and social psychology. This symposium provides a taste of some recent advances in the study of autobiographical memory, focusing on new insights on retrieval processes, the recollective experience of autobiographical memory, and how memory for the personal past relates to other aspects of memory and cognition. The symposium approaches these questions from both developmental, clinical, neurocognitive and individual differences perspectives. Individual talks address how involuntary (spontaneous) versus voluntary (strategic) retrieval forms relate to memory development in early childhood, to positive and negative dimensions of psychosis in schizophrenia and to the ability to imagine the personal future. Talks also address how autobiographical memory should be located in the conceptual space of episodic, semantic, and other commonly studied forms of memory as well as individual differences in the experience of autobiographical memory and how they relate to other mental dispositions.
Theme: Higher Cognitive Functions
COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE FACTORS UNDERLYING VACCINE DECISION-MAKING
Organizers: Stephan Lewandowsky1, Angelo Fasce2
1University of Bristol, 2University of Coimbra
Vaccine hesitancy constitutes a long-standing phenomenon that hinders vaccination campaigns around the world. In this symposium, we will explore the cognitive and affective antecedents of vaccine hesitancy, with empirical results from five studies. (1) The validation of a psychometric instrument that is available in four languages and sheds light on the determinants of health professionals’ vaccination behaviours. (2) A study using text modeling and psychological measures to identify distinctive profiles among hesitant individuals, thus enabling more targeted communications. (3) Experimental results, obtained in real consultations, to assess the impact of motivational interviewing on physicians’ communication skills when interacting with hesitant parents with alternative lifestyles. (4) An experiment in which the framing of messages was manipulated to investigate how reactance motivates resistance to scientific information about vaccines. (5) A series of experiments in which the effectiveness of a novel intervention to tackle vaccine hesitancy, based on empathetic rebuttals, was tested. These investigations have been carried out within the framework of two research projects funded by the European Commission: JITSUVAX and VAX.TRUST.
Keywords: vaccine hesitancy, attitude roots, reactance, alternative lifestyles, empathetic refutational interview
Theme: Language
THE ROLE OF PARAFOVEAL PROCESSING DURING READING
Organizer: Aaron Vandendaele1
1Ghent University
When we read, our eyes move quickly from one word to the next, fixating on most of them to identify and process their meaning before moving on. However, it is still unclear how much information readers can extract and process from words that are captured by the parafovea, the area of the eye just outside of the fovea where we focus. This debate, known as the "serial versus parallel processing" debate, has been a topic of discussion in the literature for some time, with different theories ranging from strict seriality (processing one word at a time) to unrestricted parallelism (full processing of multiple words at once). In recent years, both theoretical and methodological advances have revitalized this debate. This symposium aims to present different perspectives and evidence from different sides of the serial versus parallel processing spectrum.
Keywords: parafoveal processing, reading, eye-tracking, serial processing, parallel processing
Theme: Higher Cognitive Functions
COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF CULTURE: LITERACY AS A CULTURAL OBJECT WITH IMPACT OUTSIDE THE WRITTEN DOMAIN
Organizer: Tânia Fernandes1
1Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
The acquisition of cultural functions implies the orchestration of several, already-available cognitive systems. Due to the limits of brain plasticity and their cognitive consequences, such evolutionary-older cognitive systems are also shaped in very specific ways by the cultural functions on which they participate. We will present a line of research which we called Cognitive Science of Culture and will focus on a specific cultural function as a case study, i.e., literacy. We will contribute to the understanding of how literacy modulates visual low-level processes and voice recognition, how learning a particular script shapes brain responses to other visual categories, and how literacy might contribute to increasing the quality and depth of critical thinking. These findings will be discussed in the context of neural plasticity and neural recycling and on how they can contribute for a better understanding of typical and atypical development and the putative deficits found outside the written domain.
Keywords: culture; visual processes; speech processing; non-WEIRD
Theme: Language
WRITING FLUENCY: EXPLORING ITS DEVELOPMENT, IMPACTS, DETERMINING FACTORS, AND VARIABILITY
Organizers: Lisa Haake1, Joachim Grabowski1
1Department of Psychology
Writing fluency has become a crucial component and predictor of individual writing competence that unveils information about the cognitive effort a writer must exert during text composition: When the cognitive demands of a writing task at hand exceed the available resources, writers slow down, pause, or commit errors, thus prompting a less fluent text compilation. In contrast to reading or speaking, for instance, where by and large performance is the result of automatized processes, most writing processes require actively merging retrieved knowledge and skills as fluently as possible. While in the literature the definition of the concept is vague, and its contribution to text quality has not been fully clarified, empirical findings suggest that writing fluency is affected by experience with and knowledge about writing that varies with handwriting/typing skills, linguistic experience, language proficiency, available cognitive resources, and between text genres. The present symposium aims at synthesizing current understandings of and recent findings on the construct of writing fluency. In doing so, we seek to contribute to future directions in teaching and learning how to write.
Keywords: writing fluency, writing process
Theme: Language
WRITTEN PRODUCTION OF WORDS AND SENTENCES
Organizer: Mark Torrance1
1Nottingham Trent University, UK
Language production has historically been studied in speech. Written production differs from spoken production in important ways. Forming letters, by pen and by keyboard, involves complex, motor planning. Writing words requires orthographic retrieval, either through phoneme-to-grapheme mapping or directly via stored orthographic lexemes. Both of these are late-learned and place additional demands on the writer. On the plus side, writers can hesitate at any point during production without damaging communicational effect, and writers have a permanent external representation of what they have just said. Written production is therefore different from spoken production in ways that are cognitively interesting but are as yet not well understood. The research reported in this symposium develops understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that underlie writing, addressing questions about how writers plan finger movements, retrieve or generate correctly spelled words, and plan sentences.
Keywords: language-production, writing, handwriting, sentence-production, lexical-retrieval
Theme: Language
THE PSYCHOLINGUISTICS OF UNDERSTUDIED LANGUAGES
Organizer: Fernanda Ferreira1
1University of California, Davis
Psycholinguistics has been dominated by the study of English and a few closely related Indo-European languages. Very little work has been done on the vast majority of languages across the globe. It has recently been pointed out that such a focus on one (or a few related) language(s) very much hinders cognitive science as a field (Blasi et al, in press). An increased investigation of understudied languages should be valuable for our understanding of what characteristics of language processing and linguistic representation may generalize and what aspects may be specific to particular languages or language groups. This symposium aims to help to diversify psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology more generally and hence to contribute to the development of psycholinguistic theorizing. The talks in the symposium address many issues of language processing and linguistic representation. The languages included in the research reported in this symposium include Hebrew, Murrinhpatha (a non-Pama-Nyungan Australian language), Pitjantjatjara (a Pama-Nyungan Australian language), Papiamentu (an Iberian-lexifier Creole), Hindi, Basque, Japanese, and Yélî Dnye (of Papua New Guinea).
Keywords: linguistic diversity, participant diversity, language processing
Theme: Language
SLEEP AND THE CONSOLIDATION AND UPDATING OF LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE
Organizer: Nicolas Dumay1
1University of Exeter, UK
The notion that sleep and memory consolidation play a key role in language learning and processing has been around for at least two decades. This symposium aims to provide an overview of what we know and do not know, identify current directions in the field, and generate new ideas and ways to solve points of contention. D. Titone opens the ball by evaluating memory models in light of the literature on word acquisition in the native and non-native language. She also shows how prior knowledge and word properties together determine post-sleep memory. A.G. Samuel looks at the persistence of activation in lexical and sublexical representations, and whether sleep has an impact on these long-lasting by-products of perception. N. Dumay examines the influence of sleep on subphonemic mismatch effects in the visual-world paradigm and explores the idea that these index both sublexical plasticity and lexical learning. A. Takashima and C. Ekerdt look at the brain structures underpinning systems-consolidation of spoken words, from a developmental perspective. Finally, G. Gaskell reports on semantic priming and sentence memory experiments and argues that sleep plays a role also in supporting the maintenance and updating of linguistic knowledge.
Keywords: language plasticity, word learning, sleep, memory consolidation, bilingualism
Theme: Language
LEARNING (ABOUT) WORDS AND THEIR MEANINGS
Organizers: Xenia Schmalz1, Tanja C Roembke2, Tatiana Logvinenko3, Heike Mehlhase1, Alexandra Schmitterer4
1Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany, 2Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, 3(1) Sirius University of Science and Technology, Russian Federation, (2) Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany, 4University of Paderborn, Germany; DIPF Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Germany
Reading and spelling relies on the ability to learn, understand, and retrieve words. In this symposium, we present 5 studies focussing on different facets of learning and retrieving word knowledge. In the first two studies, we use experimental learning paradigms to assess how the visual-orthographic characteristics of words affect their learning in German-speaking primary school children. Contributions 3-4 focus on learning the meanings of words, in a behavioural learning study in German-English bilinguals (3) and in an ERP-study with Russian-speaking adolescents (4). The final contribution tracks the structure of semantic-lexical knowledge across childhood in German readers. Thus, we provide an in-depth investigation of various item- and participant-level factors that explain how readers can learn and use words, which is an integral aspect of literacy.
Keywords: Reading, Word learning, Orthographic learning
Theme: Learning
STATISTICAL LEARNING: DEVELOPMENTAL AND EVOLUTIONARY APPROACHES
Organizers: Dezso Németh1, Ágnes Lukács2
1Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon, INSERM, France, 2Department of Cognitive Sciences, Budapest University Of Technology And Economics, Hungary
The symposium will provide insights into empirical developments on the evolutionary and developmental aspects of statistical learning (SL) underlying predictive processing of the brain and many areas of skill learning. Talks will focus on the variability of mechanisms supporting the development of pattern extraction through sensitivity to statistical information, presenting results from probabilistic and deterministic sequence learning, focusing on chunking and cross-situational learning. They will cover a range of experimental methods to examine statistical learning in different populations: in different age groups in typical development across the lifespan, in atypical development (in developmental language disorder), in humans and nonhuman primates (bonobos). The symposium will show state-of-the-art methods and approaches to uncover developmental changes in phylogeny and ontogeny, and also contribute to debates about domain and species generality and specificity of statistical learning.
Keywords: statistical learning, predictive processing, executive functions, memory consolidation, chunking
Theme: Language
APPLYING COMPUTATIONAL METHODS IN READING AND VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION RESEARCH
Organizers: Jana Hasenäcker1, Benjamin Gagl2
1University of Erfurt, Germany, 2University of Cologne, Germany
Recently, computational methods have gained much attention for predicting, simulating, and understanding human behavior. Reading research has traditionally capitalized on experimental approaches but is increasingly complemented by applying mathematical and computational methods developed in computer science. In this symposium, the five presentations combined experimental and computational methods to gain new insights into reading and visual word recognition processes. The talks encompass examples as diverse as orthographic networks to predict word reading performance across development, distributional semantics to explain pseudoword priming, language models to account for eye movement measures, combining computational modeling and machine learning to enhance effects in reading training, and test-retest reliability to investigate individual differences in sentence reading. By showcasing these possibilities for integrating computational and experimental methods, we want to stimulate reading researchers to explore novel possibilities and combinations to increase our understanding of cognitions in reading.
Keywords: Reading, Visual word recognition, Computational methods
Theme: Memory
MINDS WITHOUT IMAGERY: EXPLORING COGNITION AND LANGUAGE IN APHANTASIA
Organizers: Laura Speed1, Ken McRae2
1Radboud Univeristy, 2University of Western Ontario
Recent research has discovered a unique and intriguing condition in which people do not consciously experience visual imagery, called aphantasia. The absence or marked weakening of visual imagery is thought to be experienced by approximately 4% of the population. Although research into this condition is growing, there remains a great deal we do not know about aphantasia. Since visual imagery is a crucial aspect for many cognitive processes including episodic and autobiographical memory, future thinking, and language comprehension, this suggests that cognition and language may be fundamentally (or at least quantitatively) different in people with and without aphantasia. In this symposium we present new research that sheds light on this under-researched condition, allowing a greater understanding of aphantasia and its implications for cognition and language. Across five talks, the authors present behavioural, neural, and interview data that helps elucidate the nature of thought in aphantasia, and how aphantasia can inform theories of language and cognition.
Keywords: aphantasia, mental imagery, language, memory, cognition
Theme: Memory
FEATURES, OBJECTS, AND FEATURE BINDING IN WORKING MEMORY
Organizer: Laura-Isabelle Klatt1
1Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors
At the core of the endeavor to understand the structure of working memory (WM) representations lies the question how separate features, constituting an object, are bound together to allow for a coherent object representation. Moreover, this is tightly linked to the question whether individual features or bound objects determine the capacity limits of working memory. This symposium highlights behavioral, computational, and neural evidence that elucidates how features, objects and feature conjunctions are represented in WM. Suaad Said Al Hadhrami and Paul Bays will talk about the role of location and time in feature binding, respectively. Hiu Wah Cheung will discuss to what extend the automaticity of feature binding depends on whether the to-be-bound information is intrinsic (belonging to the object) or extrinsic (contextual). Further, Laura-Isabelle Klatt will show how cross-modal feature conjunctions are encoded and maintained in WM; thus, providing a multisensory perspective on the binding problem. Finally, Viola Störmer will explore the role of meaningfulness in visual WM, demonstrating that the capacity for simple features increases when those features belong to real-world objects.
Keywords: working memory, feature binding, object representations
Theme: Memory
FACETS OF EPISODIC MEMORY RESEARCH: FROM MEMORY DEVELOPMENT TO EVERYDAY FORGETTING
Organizers: Marcel R. Schreiner1, Julian Quevedo Pütter1
1University of Mannheim
Human episodic memory has been the subject of intense empirical research for over a century due to its fundamental role for everyday functioning across the human lifespan. The complex and multi-faceted characteristics of humans’ “mental time travel” device (Tulving, 1972) have inspired rigorous, creative, and diverse methodological approaches. In this symposium, we aim to showcase the breadth of current episodic memory research. The first contribution addresses the developmental trajectories of memory generalization and specificity. The second contribution investigates whether agency facilitates memory integration, thereby supporting the formation of more coherent memory representations. The third contribution addresses the question of how people encode and retrieve differently valued pieces of information. The fourth contribution grapples with the theoretical implications of the memory-enhancing effect of post-encoding alcohol consumption. The final contribution addresses information storage and retrieval in the context of motivated forgetting of unethical behavior. Together, these contributions show how different methodological approaches are necessary to reach a comprehensive understanding of episodic memory.
Keywords: Episodic Memory, Memory Integration, Retrieval, Forgetting
Theme: Memory
INFORMATION EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE WORKING MEMORY AND LONG-TERM MEMORY SYSTEM
Organizers: Melinda Sabo1, Sam Verschooren2, Eren Günseli3, Ana Rodriguez4, Vanessa M. Loaiza5
1Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, 2Humboldt University, Ghent University, 3Sabancı University, 4University of Zurich, 5University of Essex
Although the strong relationship between working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) is widely acknowledged, important questions concerning the nature of information exchange between the two systems are still unanswered. The current symposium seeks to explore potential solutions to some of these questions. Sam Verschooren will focus on evidence pointing towards the existence of a WM gating mechanism regulating information flow from LTM and perceptual sources. Similarly, Eren Günseli’s talk will explore why reactivating LTM contents to WM might be beneficial when faced with perceptual distractors and how this mechanism might be subject to inter-individual differences. The necessity of reactivating LTM representations to WM will be further emphasized in the talk of Melinda Sabo, who will discuss how attentional selection guides goal-directed memory retrieval with the help of WM. Beyond information exchange, already stored LTM content can also boost WM performance through retrieval of the actual binding episode – a finding, which will be highlighted in the talk of Ana Rodriguez. Finally, Vanessa Loaiza will examine how WM binding deficits occurring in older age can be overcome in the context of a Hebbian learning paradigm.
Keywords: long-term memory, working memory
Theme: Memory
DEFYING THE STANDARDS OF COGNITION: WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION? [TAKE 1]
Organizers: Josefa N. S. Pandeirada1, Sara B. Félix1
1William James Center for Research, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro
This symposium brings together a diverse group of international researchers (USA and Europe) to present the most up-to-date outcomes on various topics (memory and language). At the surface, this might look like a disconcerted event, but they all share one goal: to study cognitive processes under the spotlight of evolutionary principles. Their work uses traditional experimental methods, but their framing, predictions, and discussions, were functionally determined. James Nairne (USA) will present provocative arguments on why and how we should adopt evolutionary considerations in cognitive research. Meike Kroneisen (Germany) will present novel results on survival processing. Gesa Komar (Germany) and Sara Félix (Portugal) will share some of their doctoral projects’ results on the animacy effect in retrospective and prospective memory, respectively. Lastly, Pilar Ferré (Spain) will talk about the influence of animacy and discrete emotions on language processing. We expect this will be the first of many forthcoming symposia that will help the field defy traditional conceptions on how to explore cognition and promote the generation of groundbreaking research avenues.
Keywords: Evolutionary Psychology, Memory, Language
Theme: Memory
DEFYING THE STANDARDS OF COGNITION: WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION? [TAKE 2]
Organizers: Sara B. Félix1, Josefa N. S. Pandeirada1
1William James Center for Research, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
This will be the second symposium reporting work inspired by evolutionary considerations and aligns with the ESCoP’s aim of highlighting emerging ideas. Indeed, evolutionary arguments have been mostly ignored in Cognitive Psychology. The 23rd ESCoP conference affords a remarkable opportunity to discuss them and to share this alternative way of exploring cognition. A diverse group of researchers, at different stages of their careers, from various European Universities, will provide some more examples on how new cognitive phenomena can be uncovered and investigated under this approach. Patrick Bonin will present recent work relating different survival-related dimensions and psycholinguistic variables with memory performance. Edgar Erdfelder and Magda Saraiva will report on two different proximate mechanisms that potentially underlie the survival processing effect in memory. Raoul Bell will tackle a similar issue but with respect to the animacy effect. Finally, Natália Fernandes will present the first data on the mnemonic tuning for contamination in prospective memory. We expect this second symposium on this topic will enlighten the potential of this approach to deepen our knowledge on cognitive operations.
Keywords: Evolutionary psychology, Memory, Bilingualism, Proximate mechanisms
Theme: Memory
HOLDING INFORMATION IN MIND: THE CONTRIBUTION OF ACTION-PLANNING AND NON-MNEMONIC PROCESSES TO WORKING MEMORY PERFORMANCE
Organizers: Candice C. Morey1, Phil Beaman2
1Cardiff University, 2University of Reading
Working memory is supported and sustained by peripheral functions, such as speech production, motor planning, and long-term knowledge, that are neither part of the memory system per se nor exclusively used in service of short-term recall. How much can well-known working memory phenomena be explained by the joint contribution of these peripheral mechanisms without recourse to specialist memory systems? In this symposium, we bring together a collection of new work examining a variety of influences on working memory performance, ranging from motor planning and action preparation to verbal labelling and the dynamics of supporting memoranda. Taken together, our collection of views include questioning whether models of working memory need to posit specialized functions for maintenance, considerations of a limited encoding resource that operates whenever tasks require temporary representation, and the contribution of different types of action plan to long-term learning, and choosing which items to remember.
Keywords: Short-term memory, working memory, response preparation, perception, attention
Theme: Memory
INTERACTIONS OF EXISTING KNOWLEDGE AND MEMORY FOR NEW INFORMATION IN DEVELOPMENT AND AGING: WHAT SUPPORTS WHAT?
Organizers: Zoe Ngo1, Nora Newcombe2
1Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2Temple University
Memory preserves the specific instances of our lives, but also allows us to create generalizable knowledge based on regularities across related experiences. How do the capabilities that support the different kinds of memories evolve across the human lifespan? The five papers in this symposium present new data using behavioral and fMRI techniques, spanning 3 years of age to old age. The first paper examines the contingency between specific memories and novel categorical generalizations in children from 3 to 7 years. The second paper uses three different generalization paradigms to test how generalization differs by age, whether these indices cohere, and how each is related to memory specificity from age 4 to 8. The third paper uses a task battery that measures multiple memory processes as latent constructs in 4–6-year-old children. The forth paper asks how semantically congruency differentially impacts memory consolidation across delays and across age from childhood to young adulthood. The fifth paper characterizes when prior knowledge helps or hinders memories in older adults. Collectively, our symposium provides new insights into the complex interplay between general knowledge and specific memories along the human ontogeny.
Keywords: episodic memory, semantic knowledge, generalization, lifespan
Theme: Neural Measures
FLICKER AND FLUTTER - RECENT ADVANCES IN STUDYING COGNITION USING FREQUENCY TAGGING
Organizers: Katharina Duecker1, Christian Keitel2
1University of Birmingham, 2University of Dundee
Our understanding of human cognition gravely benefits from studying its neurophysiological substrates, but each neuroimaging method has its individual strengths and benefits. EEG/MEG frequency tagging stands out as it allows probing cortical processing in different sensory modalities while emulating natural environments more closely than the classic event-related design. Frequency tagging involves the periodic or quasi-periodic modulation of a stimulus feature, e.g., luminance, to elicit sustained brain responses synchronous to the stimulation rhythm. These responses serve as a fingerprint of cortical processing that can be tracked for multiple stimuli simultaneously. Frequency tagging is highly versatile: The novel Rapid Invisible Frequency Tagging avoids involuntary attentional capture by visual flicker. Also, applying Frequency Tagging to two sensory modalities allows investigating multisensory integrations. Finally, Frequency Tagging may allow for causal interactions with natural rhythms of the brain that have themselves been implicated in cognitive function. Our symposium will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art frequency-tagging research and how it advances our understanding of human cognitive function.
Keywords: attention, language, frequency tagging, neural rhythms, cognition
Theme: Perception
PREFERRED RHYTHMS IN AUDITORY COGNITION
Organizers: Anne Keitel1, Anne Kösem2, Christina Lubinus3, Ayelet N. Landau4, Benedikt Zoefel5
1University of Dundee, 2Lyon Neuroscience Research Center (CRNL), 3Max-Planck-Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, 4The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 5Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CerCo)
The last two decades have seen huge progress in understanding rhythmic neural processes involved in auditory cognition, such as speech comprehension, music listening, or rhythm processing. However, most research has focussed on generic neural processes and has neglected individual variability. Recently, it has been suggested that preferred neural rhythms influence individual cognition by imposing limitations on perceptual processes, or by resulting in optimal auditory-motor regimes. It is therefore important to consider inter-individual and group variability that might lead to consistent differences in cognition. Talks in this symposium will address (1) the role of individual preferred rhythms in speech comprehension (C. Lubinus), (2) and in music tempo preferences (A. Keitel); (3) the impact of spontaneous motor rhythms on sensory processing and joint action (A. Landau); (4) the influence of temporal variability on auditory rhythm perception and associated neural tracking responses (A. Kösem), and (5) preferred rhythms for auditory perception (B. Zoefel). This symposium will bring together novel findings on the role of neural and behavioural preferred rhythms, and will extend the current generic perspective on auditory cognition.
Keywords: auditory processing, brain rhythms, indiividual variability, speech, motor cortex
Theme: Statistics and Methodology
CITIZEN SCIENCE IN COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Organizers: Eva Van den Bussche1, Gethin Hughes2, Bert Reynvoet3
1KU Leuven, 2University of Essex, 3KU Leuven - Campus Kortrijk
Citizen science actively involves non-professional or “citizen” scientists in research at different stages of the research process. The European Commission has highlighted several advantages of citizen science, including an increase in relevance, creativity and transparency of research and its outcomes. It forms an integral part of the EU’s Open Science policy priority. Horizon 2020 led to over 2000 projects involving societal engagement and Horizon Europe will continue on this path. However, whereas fields such as biology and environmental sciences are increasingly using citizen science approaches, this is far less common in psychology and in cognitive psychology in particular. This symposium therefore aims to bring together researchers with experience with citizen science, in cognitive psychology but also in adjoining fields. Because citizen science in cognitive psychology is still extremely rare, this symposium will allow us to explore the possibilities (and pitfalls) of citizen science for our domain, but also to learn from other domains and how they have implemented citizen science. Ultimately, this symposium aims to provide first steps towards an implementation of citizen science in cognitive psychology.
Keywords: citizen science, cognitive psychology, methodology