Cognitive Science

The latest breakthroughs, innovations, and cool happenings at the cutting edge of the world of cognitive science. Updated daily.

A sequence bottleneck for animal intelligence and language?

We discuss recent findings suggesting that non-human animals lack memory for stimulus sequences, and therefore do not represent the order of stimuli faithfully. These observations have far-reaching consequences for animal cognition, neuroscience, and studies of the evolution of language and culture. This is because, if non-human animals do not remember or process information about order […]

Published on November 8, 2024

How Likely Is it that I Would Act the Same Way: Modeling Moral Judgment During Uncertainty

Abstract Moral rules come with exceptions, and moral judgments come with uncertainty. For instance, stealing is wrong and generally punished. Yet, it could be the case that the thief is stealing food for their family. Such information about the thief’s context could flip admonishment to praise. To varying degrees, this type of uncertainty regarding the […]

Published on November 7, 2024

Folk Intuitions About Free Will and Moral Responsibility: Evaluating the Combined Effects of Misunderstandings About Determinism and Motivated Cognition

Abstract In this study, we conducted large-scale experiments with novel descriptions of determinism. Our goal was to investigate the effects of desires for punishment and comprehension errors on people’s intuitions about free will and moral responsibility in deterministic scenarios. Previous research has acknowledged the influence of these factors, but their total effect has not been […]

Published on November 7, 2024