Cognitive Science Commons^™

Distributed Impressions: How Multiple Minds Come Together To Shape Person Perception, Lindsey J. Tepfer

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Moments after perceiving another person, we immediately infer a wealth of information about them. Despite the complexities within our social environments, we distill an incredible magnitude of details available to us into compressed representations of other people’s minds and mannerisms. Yet research has focused largely on mapping isolated stimuli—divorced from its messy context—to the spontaneous impressions they provoke. As a result, there are many unanswered questions about how our judgments are influenced by the rich and noisy social world we inhabit. Here, I’ve leveraged two paradigms to investigate how impression formation and updating may operate when the constraints of the …

What Could Be Done Vs. What Was: How Temporal Framing Affects Representations Of Possibility, Noah Chapman Prescott

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

When making decisions for ourselves or predicting what others will do, we face the challenge of figuring out which of the infinite possible actions to consider in the first place. The space of possibilities considered, often called a “modal space”, has been shown to reflect both what people think is likely and what they think is valuable. The present work investigates how these modal spaces change with a difference in temporal orientation (what an agent could do vs. what they did do) and grammatical perspective (considering a scenario in the first- vs. the third-person). The findings suggest that both these …

Toward An Account Of Visual Aesthetic Experience In Multimodal Large Language Models, Batuhan Saridede

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

While Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) increasingly mediate visual culture, far less is known about how MLLMs themselves evaluate aesthetic value and how those evaluations shift under different beliefs about authorship. This thesis investigates how three commercial MLLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini) appraise visual artworks across six dimensions: liking, beauty, profundity, worth, narrativity, and intentionality. Using a balanced dataset of 100 artworks, half human-generated and half AI-generated, with representational and abstract works equally represented, each model evaluated every image under four provenance conditions: unspecified origin, inferred origin, assumed AI origin, and assumed human origin. Results show that representationalism in visual …

Seeing Through Similar Eyes: How Social Identity Shapes Reinterpretation Of Ambiguous Stimuli, Eli Bailit

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

Identical sensory input can lead to a variety of subjective experiences and interpretations. In the face of such ambiguity, we often turn to our social context. Does the identity of the person providing an alternative interpretation to an ambiguous stimulus impact someone’s likelihood to adopt it? This study examined whether perceived interpersonal similarity modulates reinterpretation of ambiguous visual stimuli. Thirty Dartmouth undergraduates completed a modified “MadLibs” paradigm in which they generated initial interpretations of ambiguous photographs, indicated their confidence in their interpretations, then decided how much to update those interpretations upon viewing an alternative sourced from an individual of varying …

Category Learning Under Verbal Interference, Yawen Xue

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

What happens to cognition when you disrupt language? What does language actually do as a representational medium for cognition? Much literature shows a facilitative role of language on categorical thinking. This work specifically examines the role of language in category learning using a verbal interference paradigm. I ran two experiments where participants learned to distinguish between two novel categories of bugs while under conditions of verbal or visuospatial interference. In Experiment 1, category membership was determined by an XOR rule; in Experiment 2, category membership was determined by an AND rule.

In Experiment 1, participants on average did not succeed …

Understanding Behavioral And Representational Divergences Of Humans And Machines, Thomas Lasman Botch

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Human behavior and cognition are strikingly variable: people differ from one another in their preferences and abilities, and even from themselves across situations. Yet this diversity arises from common neural machinery shaped by the complex environments humans inhabit. A central objective of cognitive neuroscience is to understand how this varied experience emerges from interactions between brains, agents, and environments. In this dissertation, I argue that comparing behavior and neural computation across humans, artificial systems, and contexts is essential for understanding the flexibility of human cognition. Across three chapters, I use this comparative approach to examine how the rich, multimodal contexts …

From Physical Correlation To Emotional Connection: The Role Of Passive Haptics On Empathy In Virtual Reality, Jemely Robles

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Virtual reality is increasingly explored as a tool for cultivating empathy, and haptic feedback as a tool for enhancing immersion. This paper investigates the effects of combining the two.  Fifty-two participants experienced a custom-built VR scene in which a character was shown packing up a room. Participants were assigned to either a haptic condition, receiving passive haptic feedback corresponding to the character's actions, or a non-haptic control condition that did not receive any haptic input. Trait empathy was measured beforehand, and state empathy and engagement were measured after the experience. Thematic analysis was conducted on post-study interviews, and headset recordings …

From Meaning To Memory: Assessing The Capacity And Representational Structure Of Visual Working Memory With Meaningful Stimuli, Yong Hoon Chung

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Visual working memory is thought to be strictly limited. Yet we remember meaningful, real-world objects better than abstract stimuli. Here I show that this advantage arises from the semantic structure of meaningful objects, not their perceptual features alone, and that it extends even to memory for associated features such as color. In the brain, meaningful objects elicit greater and more distributed delay activity, consistent with the recruitment of higher-level neural processes during maintenance. I propose that semantic knowledge adds representational dimensions that make items more distinctive, and that these dimensions are organized hierarchically with lower-level visual features. These findings recast …

Neural Representations Of Valence And Arousal In Kung Fury, Jason A. Davis

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

Emotions are a core component of human experience and behavior, yet after decades of scientific research, it is still difficult to uncover the neural substrates related to emotion. Recent advances in neuroscience have examined how we interpret emotional signals from static images of facial expressions, but less work has sought to understand how the brain constructs our emotional experiences (Chen, 2020). To investigate such idiosyncratic experiences across participants, we employed naturalistic stimuli to model the real-time, reliable changes in activity that correspond to changes in emotional experience. A primary element of emotional experience is core affect, defined as the mental …

Are Cycles Of Neural Activity The Algorithm Of The Brain?, Edwin Omondi Onyango

Computer Science Senior Theses

We propose that precisely timed neural activity cycles can serve as structural primitives for memory and computation in a system that exhibits associative learning like the brain. Inspired by biologically grounded mechanisms such as calcium-dependent plasticity, spike-timing-dependent learning, and phase-sensitive excitability, we construct a spiking neural network model in which repeated temporal coincidences drive the formation of self-sustaining activity loops. These cycles, once formed, persist as dynamic memory traces: not stored as static weights, but as reverberating patterns that replay in time when these loops are restarted. We show that noise alone fails to induce stable structure, but even sparse, …

Zoom Dysmorphia: An Eye-Tracking Study Of Self-View And Attention During Video Conferences, Kathleen H. Stimson

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

This study investigates Zoom Dysmorphia, a heightened self-awareness and self-criticism of perceived physical flaws due to prolonged self-view on video conferencing platforms, with associated behaviors resembling symptoms of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Drawing on Veale’s (2001, 2004) and Neziroglu’s (2004) cognitive-behavioral models of BDD and prior studies on BDD which suggest the development and maintenance of BDD through excessive self-focused attention and attentional bias, this study explores the potential cognitive and emotional implications of this phenomenon. Participants engaged in two mock video conferences with self-view enabled in one meeting and disabled the other for comparison. Eye tracking technology monitored their …

What We Hear In Voices: Identifying Dimensionality In Speech Stimuli Trait Impressions, Caroline W. Conway

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

Is there dimensionality in how people form impressions of speakers? The first portion of the study generated trait terms via text survey responses to recordings from the Emotional Speech Database (ESD). Following the analysis of this initial data, a second survey invited subjects to rate the speaker on a specific trait for each of many ESD recordings. The trait terms were selected from the text responses from the first survey that were most strongly correlated via a mixed-effects model with the speaker of each recording rather than the emotion or sentence. Following an exploratory factor analysis of the trait ratings …

Examining Differences In Concept Representation Across Similarity Spaces Between Humans And Large Language Models, Krishnachandra Nair

Computer Science Senior Theses

The replication of human concept representation is a critical task for the pursuit of artificial general intelligence. With the recent influx of large language models that demonstrate text-generation capabilities nearly on par with humans, the question stands on whether these large language models can capture concepts within language. We examine this question by exploring differences in concept representation across similarity spaces between humans and LLMs. We find that, while concept representation within LLMs does partially mimic human concept representation, LLMs are greatly limited by their dependence on semantic information and cannot therefore develop an understanding of human social code or …

Say That Again: The Role Of Multimodal Redundancy In Communication And Context, Brandon Javier Dormes

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

With several modes of expression, such as facial expressions, body language, and speech working together to convey meaning, social communication is rich in redundancy. While typically relegated to signal preservation, this study investigates the role of cross-modal redundancies in establishing performance context, focusing on unaided, solo performances. Drawing on information theory, I operationalize redundancy as predictability and use an array of machine learning models to featurize speakers' facial expressions, body poses, movement speeds, acoustic features, and spoken language from 24 TEDTalks and 16 episodes of Comedy Central Stand-Up Presents. This analysis demonstrates that it is possible to distinguish between these …

Epistemic Mentalizing And Causal Cognition Across Agents And Objects, Bryan S. Gonzalez

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

This dissertation examines mentalizing abilities, causal reasoning, and the interactions thereof. Minds are so much more than false beliefs, yet much of the existing research on mentalizing has placed a disproportionately large emphasis on this one aspect of mental life. The first aim of this dissertation is to examine whether representing others’ knowledge states relies on more fundamentally basic cognitive processes than representations of their mere beliefs. Using a mixture of behavioral and brain measures across five experiments, I find evidence that we can represent others' knowledge quicker and using fewer neural resources than when representing others’ beliefs. To be …

Effects Of Daylight On College Students’ Physical And Mental Well-Being, Sathya Thenappan

Quantitative Social Science Undergraduate Senior Theses

While existing literature predominantly deals with the impact of daylight on adults in general and more specifically at the workplace, less is known about its impact on the college student demographic and daylight exposure levels at college residences. Given its considerable impact on both the physical and mental well-being of individuals, daylight has been used in the treatment of an assortment of diseases from seasonal affective disorder to depression. With college students constituting the majority of today’s people who suffer from mental health issues in society, uncovering the link between daylight exposure and its impact on the physical and mental …

What You Don’T Know Matters: An Ignorance-Focused Investigation Of Theory Of Mind, Steven M. Shin, Jonathan S. Phillips

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

This project examines the ways in which knowledge, or ignorance, impact healthy adults’ theory of mind (i.e. their considerations of others’ mental states). In a pilot study, and four experiments, an effect is found which supports the hypothesis that knowledge states influence the execution of theory of mind. The present findings suggest that attention is directed differently when participants reason from positions of knowledge, or positions of ignorance, in regard to a task-relevant fact. This project provides a starting point for further research, investigating the rich contextual contributions to the fluent functioning of the ‘theory of mind system.’

Bridging Philosophy And Neuroscience: How Behavioral Experiments Inform A Recent Theory Of Animal Consciousness, Qasim Abrar Qureshi

Cognitive Science Senior Theses

Consciousness is a loaded term and can mean many different things to different people. The goal of this paper is to investigate animal consciousness with an emphasis on rats. We investigated different ways of approaching the problem of animal consciousness including neuroscientific and philosophical methods. Next, we examined, a recent theory of animal consciousness in detail and examined neuroscientific evidence to support animals possessing the features described in the theory. The theory posited that consciousness includes five different components: perceptual richness, evaluative richness, self-consciousness, unity, and temporality. After, we discussed the phenomenon of “insight” and how it is similar and …

Cognitive Feedback Theories And Artificial Intelligence: A Case For A Grammarly Of Ui/Ux Design, Jordan Buchanan Paff

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

This thesis is concerned with utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) techniques and cognitive theories of feedback to enhance learning outcomes in the field of user interface and user experience (UI/UX) design. The capabilities of AI/ML have expanded immensely over the past several years, and it is now being effectively used in software programs like Grammarly, a tool that provides intelligent feedback on writing skills including grammar, tone, and clarity. Grammarly has been uniquely successful as a feedback tool because it relies on lessons from cognitive science regarding student feedback and learning outcomes. Currently, there is no comparable software …

Possibility Is Not A Luxury: The Role Of Identity In Representations Of Possibility, Hannah M. Lebaron

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

In what ways are our expectations of others and their behaviors limited by the ways they are identified? Broadly, this project asks how identity traits are considered across judgments about which social roles people can assume. This work is an interdisciplinary project that exists within the fields of both Cognitive Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. As such, the first chapter explores the central issues of identity conception from the perspective of feminist theory, including a discussion of category destabilization, intersectionality, and knowledge production in the context of feminist science studies. 4 empirical studies were launched with methods informed …

Probing Nlp Conceptual Relatedness Judgments Through The Word-Based Board Game Codenames, Tracey Mills

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

In this paper I evaluate the ability of different Natural Language Processing (NLP)
techniques to make human-like word relatedness judgements in a variant of the word-based board game Codenames. I analyze a variety of statistical and knowledge based approaches, combinations of these, and techniques for incorporating the wider game context into relatedness judgements. While no approach explored here reaches human performance, simple word embedding based approaches incorporate a surprising amount of the useful information captured by other techniques. I attempt to characterize the limitations of these approaches in relation to human game play, although differences are largely not systematic. Finally, …

Metaphors Matter: Top-Down Effects On Anthropomorphism, Hailey Austine Scherer

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Anthropomorphism, or the attribution of human mental states and characteristics to non-human entities, has been widely demonstrated to be cued automatically by certain bottom-up appearance and behavioral features in machines. In this thesis, I argue that the potential for top-down effects to influence anthropomorphism has so far been underexplored. I motivate and then report the results of a new empirical study suggesting that top-down linguistic cues, including anthropomorphic metaphors, personal pronouns, and other grammatical constructions, increase anthropomorphism of a robot. As robots and other machines become more integrated into human society and our daily lives, more thorough understanding of the …

Why Do We Follow Rules? An Exploration Of Normativity And Possibility, Eliza Jane Shaeffer

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

The way we interact with the world is governed by a body of rules, many of which are unspoken. What makes these rules so compelling? How do they interact with our decision-making infrastructure? In a series of three studies, this article explores the shared adaptive sampling model’s ability to account for normative behaviors, using a time pressure paradigm in which subjects (N = 399) recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk quickly judged whether actions of various degrees of moral permissibility and social acceptability were possible or impossible in a certain context (Phillips & Cushman, 2017; Phillips, Morris, & Cushman, 2019). When …

A Deep Learning Approach To Understanding Real-World Scene Perception In Autism, Erica Lindsey Busch

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

Autism is a multifaceted neurodevelopmental condition. Around 90% of individuals with autism experience sensory sensitivities, particularly impacting visual perception. Despite this high percentage, previous studies investigating visual perception in autism impose severe limitations on our understanding. In many of these experiments, their stimuli and experimental methods are un-naturalistic and produce unreproducible and conflicting results. In this study, we investigate the nature of the real-world visual experience in autism with a cutting-edge experimental approach. First, we use virtual reality headsets with eye-trackers to measure gaze behavior while individuals freely explore real-world, everyday scenes. Then, we compare their gaze behavior to the …