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Cognition

@cognitionjournal.bsky.social
419 followers 111 following 605 posts

EiC team: Johan Wagemans, Ian Dobbins, Ori Friedman, and Katrien Segaert

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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"Cross-modal social attention differs across emotional categories: Evidence from biological motion and gaze cues" Read more here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Happy social signals get a head start—even across the senses. Our new study shows that seeing a happy point-light walker or eye gaze directed to one side helps people respond faster to sounds coming from the same direction. 👀 😊 Modeling suggests this emerges early in processing.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
"The role of pitch in the vocal communication of intentions" 📢New paper from: Pauline Larrouy-Maestri, Dr. Hanna Ringer, David Poeppel, Daniela Sammler More information on the study: lnkd.in/enhCwfa2 Read the full paper here: lnkd.in/eGPzC2zJ
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
This variability may be a previously underestimated source of the miscommunication that shows up so often in everyday conversation: How you say something may land completely differently depending on who's listening.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Furthermore, it became apparent that not everyone interpreted the features in the same way: People use pitch information differently, sometimes even in opposite ways from each other.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
The results have recently been published in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social. They show that pitch dynamics—that is, how spiky or flat the contour is, and whether it trends upward or downward—were the main drivers of listeners‘ judgments.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
An interdisciplinary research team led by researchers from Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany has conducted a multi-stage study to find out which intonation features are crucial and if everyone perceives them the same way.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Prosody—the melody of speech—conveys meaning to what is said beyond the spoken words. Intonation, or changes in pitch, plays an important role in this process.
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Maia Armstrong @maiajuliet.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Super excited that our paper has been published in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social ! Very grateful to have been involved with this work on action planning and false memories with @silviaseghezzi.bsky.social and Patrick Haggard which has formed the basis of the rest of my PhD 🧠 doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
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Dirk Bernhardt-Walther @dirkbwalther.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Contours not only drive neural selectivity but also human behavior. The Tilt Aftereffect in natural scenes is driven by contours, not filter-based information! New article by Seohee Han and James Lochbichler in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1016/j.co... @uoftpsychology.bsky.social
Scene tilt aftereffects (Experiment 5). Left: Psychometric functions for ContourPos, FilterPos, and NoAdaptation conditions in the blocked condition. Right: Baseline-corrected PSEs for ContourPos and FilterPos.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
"Music influences the content of spontaneous thought" 📢 New paper from: Wei Wu, Elizabeth Margulis, & Kelly Jakubowski Read more here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @weiwu.bsky.social @margulisa.bsky.social @kellyjakubowski.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk c.uk
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This approach provides new paths forward for understanding the contours of spontaneous thought. Explore the music and data here: w-wow.github.io/MPL_music_ev...
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Nearly 1800 participants reported open-ended thoughts while listening to 120 excerpts of music. NLP analysis showed thought contents are jointly shaped by aspects of the music like genre and participant-level factors like age.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
How does our environment impact our everyday, free-flowing thoughts? This study used music as a window into the factors that influence the content of these thoughts.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
New article: “Lying and truth-telling in social interaction: Basic mechanisms” Authors: Kirsten Stark and Rasha Abdel Rahman @abdelrahmanlab.bsky.social Read more here: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The experimental code is shared alongside the publication, allowing future replications.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Truth-telling may be more deeply shaped by the social deceptive context than often assumed, with implications for how we understand planning, control, and monitoring during verbal deception.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Across experiments: An additional analysis of typing duration revealed a dissociation. While lying took longer to initiate, truth-telling took longer to complete. This measure of response execution may reveal differences obscured in response times.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Exp. 3: When lie and truth were semantically related, lying was facilitated; it became faster. In contrast, semantic relatedness did not affect truth-telling, while it did affect instructed responses.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Exp. 2: Reducing memory load did not reveal a larger difference between lying and control responses. Both were affected similarly, suggesting that memory demands did not moderate the surprisingly small difference between lie and control responses.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Exp. 1: Truth-telling was affected by the temptation and motivation to deceive. Lying was even slower, showing the expected ‘cost of deception’. The social-deceptive context shaped truthful responses, too.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Truth-telling was slower than comparable responses in a non-deceptive task and affected by a temptation to lie, while lying did not consistently differ from control responses. Truth-telling may not simply be a neutral baseline for studying lying.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Lying was slower than truth-telling, replicating the well-established ‘cognitive cost of deception effect’. But surprisingly, truth-telling was more strongly affected by the social-deceptive context in response times.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Are lying and truth-telling really two sides of the same coin? We studied both in three preregistered online experiments using a novel social card game in which participants sometimes strategically lied to a (simulated) partner.
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Roland Benoit @rolandbenoit.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social: our latest on how episodic future thinking influences decisions (i.e., delay discounting). w/ @heidrunschultz.bsky.social. Open access: www-sciencedirect-com.colorado.idm.oclc.org/science/arti.... Quite improved manuscript, thanks to reviewers and editor.
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Simon Stephan @simonstephan.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
(1/7) New paper in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social: "Manipulating Prior Causal Beliefs Affects the Formation of Apparent Causal Illusions" Why do people sometimes "see" causal links in zero-contingency data? We tested if this is rational updating, not bias. 🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Manipulating prior causal beliefs affects the formation of apparent causal illusions
Non-contingent learning data can produce an apparent “illusory” or “false” perception of causality (“causal illusion”), especially if a potential caus…
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Is multisensory perception malleable in preschoolers? A single naturalistic nonverbal 20-min play-based intervention improved synchrony detection, generalized to untrained speech stimuli, with greater gains in children with weaker inhibitory control. 🔗 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Bottom line: apparent causal illusions can be a rational response to ambiguous data, not a reasoning flaw — though some individuals do show non-normative updating too. Full paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Exp. 3 replicated with causal strength queries; Exp. 4 showed the same pattern using purely statistical (non-visual) base-rate priors. The source of the prior didn't matter — only its size did.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Exp. 2 ruled out that people were just ignoring the data: a high-prior condition + disconfirming data produced clear downward belief revision. People update — they just start from different priors.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Exp. 1: When the mechanism visibly ruled out a link, the "illusion" nearly vanished — ratings dropped to near zero. When hidden, the classic illusion appeared, scaling with outcome density exactly as Bayesian models predict.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
We built a "ball-device" paradigm where participants could see (or not see) a device's internal mechanism before learning from zero-contingency data. Seeing a blocked mechanism should instill a low prior; an open path, a high prior.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This seeming "causal illusion" is often framed as irrational bias. Bayesian models say otherwise: it emerges when non-zero causal priors aren't fully overridden by data. But priors were never directly manipulated — until now. (N=1,860, 4 experiments)
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
New paper: "Manipulating Prior Causal Beliefs Affects the Formation of Apparent Causal Illusions" Why do people sometimes "see" causal links in zero-contingency data? We tested whether this is rational updating, not bias. 🧵
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Value spread through participants' internal map of how things relate (not the veridical graph they learned), weakening with distance. Modeling of choices shows reward reshapes memory: structure close to reward is preserved, while more distal structure dissolves.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Participants learned how items relate by unknowingly traversing a community-structured graph, then dragged the items to report the structure they perceived. One item was then rewarded. Later, they chose which items seemed more likely rewarding.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
A new paper shows that reward spreads across multiple links in memory and selectively preserves the structure of related items. In other words: reward doesn't just travel through memory, it shapes it to guide what you choose next.
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
📢New paper out today in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social led by Seoyoung Lee! Does reward spread across multiple links in memory organized in a cognitive graph? Yes! We see graded spread through a recalled (even if incorrect) learned graph. Reward preserves proximal structure to support decisions.
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Reward selectively preserves relational structure in memory
Memories tend to form networks that reflect relationships between experiences. These networks, or cognitive graphs, have been used to study how struct…
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Theory of mind, leisure reading, and reading comprehension in adulthood" 📢New paper from: Virginia Tompkins, Derek Montgomery, & Xin Feng www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Theory of mind, leisure reading, and reading comprehension in adulthood
Theory of mind, our understanding of our own and others' mental states, is related to leisure reading as well as reading comprehension. However, most …
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Reading fiction may practice simulating the mental states of others, which reinforces theory of mind abilities, which are needed to comprehend text passages because characters’ mental states and motivations drive the plot.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
These results suggest that adults who read more fiction for pleasure tend to have greater understanding of others’ mental states, which in turn predicts greater reading comprehension.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Theory of mind was also significantly related to reading comprehension. Controlling for other factors (e.g., vocabulary), theory of mind mediated the relationship between leisure reading and reading comprehension.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Young adults who enjoyed reading more were also more likely to have greater theory of mind, for example, the ability to follow embedded thoughts in narratives, and understand characters’ motivations.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Reading fiction for pleasure was significantly related to theory of mind (the understanding of our own and others’ mental states) in young adults, for example, the ability to determine the expression in another’s eyes.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
This study integrated these lines of research in an adult sample, which can inform theories of reading comprehension in adulthood, which largely ignore the role of theory of mind.
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Most research on leisure reading and theory of mind (the understanding of our own and others’ mental states) has been conducted with adults, whereas research on theory of mind and reading comprehension has been conducted with children.
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Now out (for realz) in Cognition: "People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable" (by Hu, Sosa, & me) Free preprint: www.tomerullman.org/papers/grade... Journal link: bit.ly/gradedInconCog @jennhu.bsky.social @cognitionjournal.bsky.social
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Daniel Spinoza-Martín @d-spinozamartin.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
In a new paper out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, @gordpennycook.bsky.social and I argue the classic view that System 2 spontaneously corrects System 1 is flawed. We provide evidence that S2 is instead triggered by conflict between competing S1 intuitions www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Sensory attenuation scales with the strength of action-outcome coupling: A psychophysical study" 📢New paper from: Adrien Paire, Lilian Nguyen, Hélène Gomes de Araujo, Dorine Vergilino-Perez, & Céline Paeye www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Sensory attenuation scales with the strength of action-outcome coupling: A psychophysical study
Sensory attenuation refers to the reduced neural or perceptual responses elicited by self-generated stimuli relative to externally generated ones. Yet…
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Cognition @cognitionjournal.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Sensory attenuation thus scales with the strength of the action-outcome coupling, in line with the hybrid prediction model of Dogge et al. (2019): overlearned couplings would rely on motor-based forward models, novel ones on broader predictive mechanisms.
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