Hutchins (1995) describes the scenario of crew members working together to navigate a ship at sea. They act as a well-coordinated team, with each crew member fulfilling a distinct role. The helmsperson steers the ship, the lookout scans for hazards, the compass operator checks bearings. By smoothly distributing task-relevant information, the team collectively solves complex problems that surpass the capacity of any single individual. What are the cognitive mechanisms that underpin such distributed behaviours? Our symposium aims to shed light on this question by drawing upon research from a range of cognitive domains. Across five talks, we discuss mechanisms that support individuals in distributing cognitive labour to solve complex tasks collectively. We cover tasks such as searching, remembering, problem-solving and decision-making. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate how our cognitive processes are attuned to the social world around us in ways that enable people to distribute, share, or offload cognitive load and thereby achieve more together than they could alone.

Evaluative Conditioning (EC) refers to changes in attitude towards a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). In this symposium, we discuss various context-related and cognitive factors that may influence EC effects and shape the resulting conditioned attitudes. The first talk will explore whether letting participants rate a CS both before and after conditioning - rather than only afterward - impacts EC effects. The second talk centers around valence asymmetries resulting from differences in the frequency of positive and negative USs during EC. Whereas prior research has focused on valence asymmetries for individual stimuli, this talk extends the analysis to groups, demonstrating that rare group members can disproportionately affect overall group evaluations. Focusing on instances of EC with multiple, simultaneously appearing USs, the third talk presents evidence that adding weakly positive (negative) USs to a highly positive (negative) US diminishes EC effects. The fourth talk investigates the role of language for the conditioning process, testing whether a native vs. a secondary language context during EC leads to different outcomes. The last talk examines autonomous sampling during EC, asking whether merely instructing participants to sample certain stimuli more frequently is sufficient to achieve the effect that autonomous sampling has on conditioned attitudes. In summary, these talks offer valuable insights into how contextual and cognitive processes shape EC effects, enhancing our understanding of EC and highlighting promising directions for future research.

This symposium examines the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic cognition. While some cognitive functions appear to depend on language, others seem rather independent of it and many more integrate both aspects. In psychology, however, the distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic cognition is rarely made explicitly and there is currently no consensus on how language may shape, enable or constrain thought.

The symposium brings together perspectives from cognitive research, developmental psychology and animal cognition to address three questions:

(1) How are language and thought related?
(2) Which cognitive functions are inherently linguistic, and which are not?
(3) To what extend can language modulate domains traditionally considered non-linguistic?

Part 1 brings together comparative and ontogenetic perspectives, focusing on animal cognition and human development. Lena Veit will speak about vocal communication in birds. Marlen Fröhlich's contribution deals with pragmatic inference abilities in orangutans. Paul Gallenkemper studies expectation formation in conceptual and non-conceptual contexts. Krisztina Orban looks at pointing in human and non-human primates as well as from a development perspective, concluding that pointing is a proto-linguistic behavior bridging the gap between non-linguistic behavior and fully developed language. Claudio Tennie discusses the hypothesis that human culture requires language and language in turn requires know-how copying abilities, that are nearly or completely absent in non-human apes.

Part 2 adopts a cognitive psychology perspective (see detailed description there).

Visual word recognition and reading are central to human communication. Still, literacy rates are declining, increasing the need for better reading education and interventions for readers with low skill levels. At the beginning of such developments, one must understand the cognitions underlying reading. Here, we combine presentations that provide current developments in reading research, investigating how language, script, and memory influence visual word recognition processes in behavior and brain activation. We will start with a study by Sabrina Turker, which investigates the influence of language and memory skills on reading disabilities. The second study, by Benjamin Gagl, examines the influence of which items are stored in the lexicon on orthographic processing in visual word recognition behavior and brain responses. The third study, by Amelie Hague, investigates script familiarity on brain response dynamics. The fourth study, by Maz Mohamed, analyzes how learning to read in different languages influences the process of lexical access. Finally, Jana Hasenäcker presents a large-scale study of German lexicon decision data, which is essential to exploring novel hypotheses built on consensus-based guidelines, embracing open science methodology. The symposium relies on behavioral and brain findings across studies using implemented theoretical approaches through computational models, and offers an overview of the availability of novel datasets. Thus, this symposium delivers a comprehensive update on the neuro-cognitive processes implemented in reading and visual word recognition, including current theoretical advancements. 

This symposium surveys diverse instructional learning approaches and their boundary conditions across tasks, materials, and learner groups. Five talks address the benefits of production, interleaving, pretesting, backward testing (retrieval practice), and forward testing for learning, retention, and transfer, with an emphasis on examining and discussing the cognitive mechanisms of these effects. Tanja Roembke will talk about the production effect, which describes better memory for items spoken aloud than read silently. The presented research investigates to what extent semantic spreading activation contributes to the production effect. David Shanks will talk about the interleaving effect and improved inductive learning when exemplars are mixed rather than blocked. The talk will analyze why learners (children and adults) often misjudge blocking as superior and will describe an intervention that reverses this metacognitive illusion, leading to more advantageous scheduling choices. Oliver Kliegl will talk about the pretesting effect, which describes improved long-term retention when learners attempt answers before study, even when initial guesses are incorrect. The talk will demonstrate that the magnitude of this benefit increases with the number of guesses, with generalization across weakly related word pairs, prose passages, and age groups. Simone Malejka will talk about the (backward) testing effect, which describes superior long-term retention after retrieval practice compared to restudy. She will compare restudy and free-recall practice and use cognitive modeling to separate maintenance from retrieval contributions, specifying conditions under which retrieval practice yields the largest benefits. Bernhard Pastötter will talk about the forward testing effect, which describes enhanced learning of new material following interim tests on earlier material. He examines how divided attention affects forward-testing benefits for word lists and text passages, delineating boundary conditions under which interim tests enhance subsequent learning. Collectively, the symposium addresses five central instructional learning techniques and distills both theoretical (mechanistic) conclusions and practical implications for real-world learning and instruction.

We are capable of retaining a large variety of visual content in working memory, ranging from simple low-level features to complex naturalistic stimuli. Maintenance of visual information in working memory is accompanied by memory-specific activity across the entire cortical sheet from early visual areas to frontal cortex. Interference between memory content and distractors shapes these representations, as does the passage of time. Here, we bring together experts from cognitive psychology and neuroscience trying to understand the cortical and cognitive mechanisms of short-term memory. Using behavioral work, TMS, single-cell recordings, fMRI, and convolutional neural networks, they assess the representational nature of working memory storage and its interaction with the environment.  
First, Pablo Grassi asks whether activity in sensory cortex is necessary for the maintenance of visual information. He will present results from three experiments investigating whether TMS pulses applied over visual cortex interfere with working memory performance for low-level features. Michael Wolff will then show that V1 neurons reverse preference between the processing and short-term maintenance of natural images, evident in both spontaneous and evoked (“pinged”) spiking activity. This suggests that neural adaptation acts like a short-term memory buffer in the early sensory cortex. Next, Anna Zier asks which brain regions represent how low-level visual features (like color and motion) are bound into a more complex object in working memory. Using fMRI decoding, she demonstrates that trial-specific binding information can be identified from memory-related activity in early visual cortex (V1–V4). Then, Anastasia Kiyonaga uses CNN derived similarity measures in natural images to show that low-level and high-level interference uniquely affect working memory performance. Intriguingly, interference effects during working memory are inversely related to long term memory recollection, suggesting competition with immediate memory can strengthen longer-term memory. Finally, Joana Seabra shows that during visual working memory several cortical regions utilize categorical, semantic, and spatial representational formats to maintain simple low-level stimuli in a robust fashion.

Although the amount of traffic deaths in Germany decreases since the early 70s, still nowadays, more than 7 persons lose their lives, and more than 1000 persons get injured in road traffic in average each day. The main reasons are seen in human behavior errors as there are distraction, disregard of priority and inappropriate distances or speeding. That for, the symposium focuses research on human behavior related to traffic safety. The talks focus on research on pedestrians’ prediction of other road users’ behavior, the perspective of different road user groups on cyclists’ behavior as well as the impact of technical innovations on individual behavior – as there are camera-monitor systems in cars and sound reduced cars on the street.

With a literature review on existing UX models to inform the measurement of acceptance of automated driving, we then transition to the topic of “Automated driving - acceptance and interaction in traffic”:
In the talk session immediately following we will present current research on automated driving. The integration of automated cars into mixed traffic with manual motor vehicle drivers, pedestrians and cyclists generates open questions on how to communicate and interact with them. Solutions should ensure traffic safety as well as acceptance by the traffic participants involved. If acceptance is low, the improvement of traffic safety may fail.
The first two talks address research on the impact of external communication on the behavior of manual drivers as well as on other road users. In the following talk the user of the automated car and how to avoid usage errors is focused on.

Oculomotor research has a long tradition in experimental psychology. In humans, visual input provides the highest amount of information per time in comparison to other senses, and about 50% of the neocortex reacts to visual stimuli. With today’s technology, eye movements are easy to access, do not rely on participants’ subjective reports, and usually do not require complicated task instructions. Their neural basis, both neurochemical and neurophysiological, has been studied extensively. Therefore, they can provide insights into health and disease, numerous aspects of cognition, and can be viewed as an estimate of brain functioning. Despite the field’s long history, new methods and technologies open up new possibilities and questions, as well as new pathways to solving well-known problems. Here, we aim to present current methods, approaches, and directions in the field of oculomotor research in experimental psychology. First, Celina Kullmann will introduce the method of latent state-trait modelling and resulting reliability as well as trait and state components of smooth pursuit eye movements. Next, Paul Schmitthäuser will speak on how a new experimental paradigm makes use of saccadic inhibition to assess oculomotor planning and attentional priority. Keaton Dahl will contribute new insights into fixational eye movements and how specific statistical methods can be applied to them in face recognition tasks. Then, Philine Baumert will present findings on how lorazepam influences microsaccades during fixational and exploratory gaze behavior. As a final contribution, Alexander Goettker will shed light on the statistics of natural gaze behavior using mobile recordings and how they compare to laboratory-gained estimates. Overall, the symposium will demonstrate new perspectives as well as recent progress in exciting areas of oculomotor research, underscoring its continued relevance to the field of experimental psychology.

What do I want to eat, which item do I want to purchase, and in which stocks should I invest? We make countless decisions every day, but our preferences are typically not stable: They often fluctuate strongly across different contexts and depend heavily on our internal states. This symposium aims to shed light on how decisions are affected across different contexts and states. The contribution by Tibor Stöffel will highlight nutrition as an important factor influencing decision-making. In his talk, he disentangles how different macro-nutritional compositions differentially affect the valuation system in the brain, leading to nutrition-dependent levels of loss aversion in risky choice. In the second talk, Nuno Busch reveals that loss aversion in risky decision-making can also be modulated by the degree of explicit information available about the choice options, and by how we learn about them (i.e., from description or from own experience). In the third talk, Jennifer March will present the mechanisms that give rise to contextual influences on food-related decision making. Specifically, she will demonstrate how subjective values of food options and subsequent choice are altered when presented in bundles. In the fourth talk, Barbara Oberbauer will reveal to what extent search patterns differ depending on the decision goal (i.e., choose the most preferred item vs assess the overall value). Moreover, she will show how the possibility of postponing a decision (i.e., choice deferral) affects search patterns and subsequent choice. The effects of goals on choice also play an important role in the final talk of the symposium, wherein Chih-Chung Ting will demonstrate that flexible decision-making relies on goal-dependent value representations. Together, the symposium combines a diverse range of methodologies, including nutritional manipulations, fMRI, eye-tracking, and state-of-the-art cognitive modelling, to illuminate the contextual nature of choice. The symposium features a multi-ethnic team of female and male speakers at different career stages from three universities across two countries offering rich perspectives and expertise in experimental psychology related to human decision-making. 

This symposium examines the interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic cognition. While some cognitive functions appear to depend on language, others seem rather independent of it and many more integrate both aspects. In psychology, however, the distinction between linguistic and non-linguistic cognition is rarely made explicitly and there is currently no consensus on how language may shape, enable or constrain thought.

The symposium brings together perspectives from cognitive research, developmental psychology and animal cognition to address three questions:

(1) How are language and thought related?
(2) Which cognitive functions are inherently linguistic, and which are not?
(3) To what extend can language modulate domains traditionally considered non-linguistic?

Part 1 of the double symposium brings together comparative and ontogenetic perspectives, focusing on animal cognition and human development. (see detailled description there)

Part 2 adopts a cognitive psychology perspective. First, Carolin Dudschig examines common mechanisms in linguistic and non-linguistic processing by means of electrophysiological investigations. Rasha Abdel-Rahman's contribution addresses the question of whether language influences the formation of visual representations. Senne Braem investigates how semantic knowledge guides learning of new tasks. Tally Miller tests the influence of verbal labels on the categorization of musical stimuli. Finally, Günther Knoblich discusses the role of linguistic and non-linguistic cognition in joint action.
At the end of the double symposium, philosopher Hong Yu Wong will integrate these diverse perspectives in a concluding discussion, aiming to clarify when, whether, and how cognition harnesses the faculty of language.

Verbal communication can act as social glue, facilitating group coherence, or as a social repellent antagonizing people against each other. In this symposium, we bring together social psychologists, psycholinguists, and media scientists to ask how communication strategies have evolved in the age of polarization. While much of the literature on political polarization is based on the U.S. landscape, our workshop brings attention to polarization in Europe. The work of Asya Achimova addresses this question by looking at how speakers in these two cultural spaces choose indirect ways to signal their opinions on societally relevant topics. Her results suggest that German speakers prefer more direct ways of communicating opinions when topics are particularly controversial. We then turn to conversational strategies of Dutch speakers and their use of hedging expressions, such as ‘I think’. Liesje Van der Linden investigates how these hedges affect the perception of polarization in discourse. These psycholinguistic studies set the stage for studies of polarizing content in social media. Jürgen Buder will share insights into understanding social media communication strategies in German and US discourse. Gerrit Anders will then take this debate to the actual comments section of the German media outlet “Der Spiegel” and evaluate what types of comments users most often engage with, showing that users are more likely to engage with opposing view and express antagonistic opinions. Looking at the conflicting findings of Jürgen Buder in experimental settings and the findings of Gerrit Anders in field settings will allow us to discuss the role of antagonism in increasing polarization. Finally, we plan to engage with the possible interventions that aim at reducing polarization. Ximeng Fang will share his recent work on a large-scare experimental intervention in which individuals in Germany were matched to form either pairs with congruent or incongruent political views. He will discuss how confronting opposing people affected their antagonism, and whether bringing together similarly-minded individuals increased the risk of creating echo-chambers. In sum, we will look into the role of cultural expectations, personality characteristics of individuals, and the controversy of topics to investigate how they shape communication strategies.
 

Embodied and grounded cognition approaches have remained enduring focal points in cognitive psychology. Although some subtle differences are sometimes postulated, both approaches converge on the assumption that cognition is essentially based on a reinstatement of processes of perception, action and introspection. How exactly the symbols that are central our higher cognition and communication, such as linguistic forms and abstracted mental representations, obtain their meaning from sensorimotor experience is one of the open challenges in this line of research. Highly interesting experimental-behavioural studies have been conducted that produced important insights. At the same time, we are experiencing the theoretical and empirical limits of this approach:
On the one hand, research on embodied cognition is often missing the formalisation, quantification, and precision required to make theoretically substantive advances – a gap to be filled with computational modelling. Here, recent work has brought forward large-scale data-driven representation models built from different data sources, such as language and vision. These allow us to exactly operationalize to what extent information from different modalities of experience shape our semantic representations, and investigate their specific influences on cognitive processes.
On the other hand, theories of embodied cognition ultimately always result in claims about processes in specific cognitive systems (shared between higher cognition and sensorimotor or introspective processing), which are hard to evaluate with purely behavioural approaches and instead require neuroscientific methods. This includes electrophysiological methods with high temporal precision, as well neuroimaging methods with high spatial resolution; together, these techniques allow us to precisely map neural processes that underpin higher cognition.
 In this symposium, we bring together recent advances integrating computational and neuroscientific approaches to embodiment research: Computational models yield precise predictions at the system level, which in turn can be tested with neuroscientific methods. The presentations in this symposium highlight the advantage of an interplay of computational and neuroscientific approaches for various fields of embodied cognition such as language, memory and semantics.