Teaching others reveals hidden structure in conceptual cognitive maps

Abstract

Disorganized thought is a core feature of the psychosis spectrum. It is recognized, clinically and in daily life, through language, yet its proposed cognitive basis, shallow cognitive maps, the relational structures that organize knowledge, has been tested almost exclusively with task performance and neural measures. Here we show that the organization of a learned conceptual map can be read out from natural speech. Adults varying in schizotypal cognitive disorganization (n = 107) learned the same two-dimensional conceptual structure from images or sentences, then described their memory strategy and explained the material to a novice. Explaining elicited two-dimensional spatial descriptions selectively after image-based learning. Higher cognitive disorganization was associated with answers that tracked the question asked less closely, on an automated, rater-free embedding measure robust to report language, again selectively after image-based learning. Natural speech thus provides a scalable behavioral readout of conceptual map organization and its disorganization.

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BibTeX

@misc{wu2026teaching,
  title = {{Teaching others reveals hidden structure in conceptual cognitive maps}},
  author = {X. Wu and P. Wu and W. Omlor and W. Hinzen and I. E. Sommer and P. Homan},
  howpublished = {bioRxiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = aug,
  doi = {10.64898/2026.08.04.742691},
  url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.04.742691v3},
  note = {CC BY},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Teaching others reveals hidden structure in conceptual cognitive maps
AU  - X. Wu
AU  - P. Wu
AU  - W. Omlor
AU  - W. Hinzen
AU  - I. E. Sommer
AU  - P. Homan
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/04
PB  - bioRxiv
DO  - 10.64898/2026.08.04.742691
UR  - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.08.04.742691v3
AB  - Disorganized thought is a core feature of the psychosis spectrum. It is recognized, clinically and in daily life, through language, yet its proposed cognitive basis, shallow cognitive maps, the relational structures that organize knowledge, has been tested almost exclusively with task performance and neural measures. Here we show that the organization of a learned conceptual map can be read out from natural speech. Adults varying in schizotypal cognitive disorganization (n = 107) learned the same two-dimensional conceptual structure from images or sentences, then described their memory strategy and explained the material to a novice. Explaining elicited two-dimensional spatial descriptions selectively after image-based learning. Higher cognitive disorganization was associated with answers that tracked the question asked less closely, on an automated, rater-free embedding measure robust to report language, again selectively after image-based learning. Natural speech thus provides a scalable behavioral readout of conceptual map organization and its disorganization.
ER  -

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