Cognitive Science

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

Learning Object Names at Different Hierarchical Levels Using Cross-Situational Statistics

Abstract Objects in the world usually have names at different hierarchical levels (e.g., beagle, dog, animal). This research investigates adults’ ability to use cross-situational statistics to simultaneously learn object labels at individual and category levels. The results revealed that adults were able to use co-occurrence information to learn hierarchical labels in contexts where the labels […]

Published on July 12, 2017

No Evidence That Sleep Deprivation Effects and the Vigilance Decrement Are Functionally Equivalent: Comment on Veksler and Gunzelmann (2017)

Abstract Veksler and Gunzelmann (2017) make an extraordinary claim, which is that sleep deprivation effects and the vigilance decrement are functionally equivalent. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which is missing from Veksler and Gunzelmann’s study. Their behavioral data offer only weak theoretical constraint, and to the extent their modeling exercise supports any position, it is […]

Published on July 12, 2017

Knowing When Help Is Needed: A Developing Sense of Causal Complexity

Abstract Research on the division of cognitive labor has found that adults and children as young as age 5 are able to find appropriate experts for different causal systems. However, little work has explored how children and adults decide when to seek out expert knowledge in the first place. We propose that children and adults […]

Published on July 12, 2017