This article shows how supervisors and students use cognitive verbs such as think or know in Sweden-Swedish and Finland-Swedish supervision meetings. Drawing on the research framework of variational pragmatics, we highlight similarities and differences between the use of cognitive verbs in the Sweden-Swedish and the Finland-Swedish interactions. Our data consist of ten video- and/or audio-recorded supervision meetings, five from each country. The analysis shows that supervisors in both data sets use cognitive verbs in order to modify the strength and directness of their feedback. One difference is that while the Finland-Swedish supervisors tend to mitigate their on-going feedback through references to the past, e.g. jag tyckte ‘I thought’, the Sweden-Swedish supervisors do similar interactional work by using more neutral verbs when expressing an opinion, e.g. tänker ‘think expressing thought’ instead of tycker ‘think expressing opinion’. The students in both the Sweden-Swedish and the Finland-Swedish supervision meetings use cognitive verbs e.g. when describing their writing process. A difference, however, is that the Sweden-Swedish students to a higher extent than the Finland-Swedish students use cognitive verbs to deliver supportive feedback, while the Finland-Swedish students more frequently than their Sweden-Swedish peers do so when reporting their own thoughts and opinions about the text.