6. Social cognition Flashcards
What 3 stages does social cognition has?
- Perceiving social information: particularly emotional expressions, but also information relevant to estimate social roles, states, etc. of others.
- Understanding social information: the ability to activate relevant social knowledge, forming ToM, social perspective taking.
- Regulation of social behavior: being able to adjust behavior to the social situation and inhibit socially inappropriate or irrelevant behavior.
What 4 processes does ‘understanding social information’ from the social cognition domain has?
- Putting social information into context: just perceiving is often not enough (jokes, sarcasm), so you need to understand the surrounding context.
- Social perspective taking: how would you feel in someone elses situation?
- Theory of Mind: attributing mental states to others.
- Affective ToM = knowledge about emotions
- Cognitive ToM = knowledge about beliefs - Emotional empathy: how do you feel in response to somebody else having specific feelings? Also related to our concern for others.
Which neuron do FTD patients miss?
The Von Economo Neuron –> leading to cognitive impairments.
Damage in which 3 areas are most likely to disturb social cognition?
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Ventromedial cortex
- Prefrontal cortex
Which 4 problems in social cognition do we mostly see?
- Poor social perception
- Impaired ToM
- Reduced emotional empathy
- Abnormal social behavior
Which 4 subtypes of FTD are there and what are their core symptoms?
- Behavioral FTD: loss of social cognition
- Semantic dementia: fluency + grammar correct, but comprehension problems
- Progressive non-fluent aphasia: non-fluent speech production
- Cortico-basal syndrome: FTD or Parkinsonism/PD plus syndrome –> tremor, stiffness/freezing, movement initiation
What are 4 core symptoms of ASD?
- Communication problems: atypical speech, lack of eye contact
- Repetitive behavior: flapping movement, spinning, head banging
- Difficulty changing routine: wanting things in a particular way
- Altered sensory processing: overstimulation or needing specific stimulation
What are 4 common testing methods for social cognition?
- FEEST: number of subtests, e.g. faces with emotional expressions
- Faux Pas Test: written/spoken scenarios with questions about social acceptability
- TASIT: videos to test emotional evaluation and social interference
- ERT: videos with facial expressions of different intensity (online: Metrisquare) to see how much information somebody needs to recognize emotions
What are 3 newer methods to assess social cognition?
- Movement registration (body language)
- Physiology (skin conduction, heart rate)
- Eye tracking
Machine learning methods can make sense of all different data streams that in for example iMotion is used. Answer the following questions:
- Main goal?
- Basic principle?
- Problem?
- Main goal: extract reliable information from huge data sets by deciding what is real information and what is noise.
- Basic principle: through pattern detection over time, you may eventually have a machine to understand data that it hasn’t seen before (algorithms).
- Problem: a machine is trained in 1 face/gender/race, without generalizability.
What are 4 existing interventions to support social cognition?
- Explicit skills training: scripted training methods to test the transfer to real-life settings.
- Embodied/Affective methods: ask patients to match facial expressions, direct their attention to their own body (proprioception), and monitor their own bodily feelings to get a better understanding and sense of emotional responses.
- Relational approaches: involving people close to the patient in their intervention progress.
- T-ScEmo training: intense training, heavily involving a significant other.
What is the effectiveness of the T-ScEmo training compared to a computerized general cognition training?
- Immediate/long term difference (+) on FEEST and treatment satisfaction (!)
- No difference on Faux Pas (both +) and on TASIT (both didn’t improve)
- Long term + (but no difference) in QoL and relationship quality
What are the 3 elements of T-ScEmo?
- Emotion recognition: strategy learning (looking at facial features / mimicry), using body language illustration by the therapist and roleplaying.
- Emotional understanding: elements from CBT –> thoughts - feeling - behavior triangle scheme (focusing on becoming more explicit in communicating), using exercises of personal conflicts and roleplaying.
- Social behavior: most adjustable for individual patients, using basic social skills training, social problem solving training, receiving feedback (based on roleplaying).
Interpersonal synchrony in VR
What increased according to participants when avatars were in sync?
And what did not differ?
Participants reported increased closeness and in-group feelings
No difference in interest in others or willingness to receive/help was reported.
What can be increased with music interventions?
Helping behavior and stronger group feelings/affiliation (=verbondenheid) after making music together
