Cognitive Science

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

Conceptual Combination in Large Language Models: Uncovering Implicit Relational Interpretations in Compound Words With Contextualized Word Embeddings

Abstract Large language models (LLMs) have been proposed as candidate models of human semantics, and as such, they must be able to account for conceptual combination. This work explores the ability of two LLMs, namely, BERT-base and Llama-2-13b, to reveal the implicit meaning of existing and novel compound words. According to psycholinguistic theories, understanding the […]

Published on March 13, 2025

On the origin of memory neurons in the human hippocampus

The hippocampus is essential for episodic memory, yet its coding mechanism remains debated. In humans, two main theories have been proposed: one suggests that concept neurons represent specific elements of an episode, while another posits a conjunctive code, where index neurons code the entire episode. Here, we integrate new findings of index neurons in humans […]

Published on March 5, 2025

The cognitive science of eyewitness memory

Recent insights from cognitive science have reshaped our understanding of the reliability of eyewitness memory. Many believe that eyewitness memory is unreliable, but a better way of thinking is that eyewitness memory, like other types of forensic evidence, can be contaminated. Because contaminated evidence yields unreliable results, the focus should be placed on testing uncontaminated […]

Published on February 28, 2025