Building social cognition from Scratch Flashcards
Social Cognition
Cognitive process involved in social info processing
What can serve to identify endophenotypes (inside phenotype) related to disorder
congenital (disease from birth) abnormalities in neural substates (CNS)
Ways social cognition can be measured
Autonomic responses
Non-verbal behaviour
EEG, MEG, PET, fMRI and brain stimulation
Babies face recognition
innate preference for faces (especially mothers) Imprinting
starts of using superior colliculus (subcortical structures) automatic movement based on what we see
adults use fusiform face area
Brain area responsible for analysing fear and sadness
Amygdala
Triadic attention
Two people and an object
Biological motion
different to mechanical as self propelled and non linear
3 month old can discriminate
instinctive sympathy
feeling sad when others do emerges at age of 2
Social animal
Unable to survive alone- rely on group to regulate physiology (Allostasis)
Allostasis
energy metabolism to social strategies
higher allostatic demands associated with more complex sociality
domain-general process
sociality mechanism that promotes regulation
meta-analysis of neural circuits of allostasis
neuroimaging suggest overlap of neural system of social behaviours
Social regulation of allostasis
synchrony (temperature)
Joint attention
learning
social attachment (eventual learn to regulate others)
Cognition
info processing that operates on inputs and generates outputs
Social cognition and self-other processes
switching between representation of self and others (self/other control)
perceiving + attending (Gaze, Motion and facial expressions)
Predicting and responding (TOM and empathy)
Social inference
minimal info need
triangle study - Heider and Simmel
Dot moving study
Atkinson et al
Social attribution tendencies
representation of social processes
degree of automaticity
Domain- general mechanisms
Social behaviour implemented by general processes
aggregation of non-social general processing areas
Domain-specific mechanisms
Specialised social-cognitive processes
modularity
Experimental approach
Stimuli constant - manipulate task as social or non
task constant- manipulate stimuli as social or non-social
non-social controls in social cognition experiments
Evidence for social brain
Dunbar social brain hypothesis - neocortex size correlates with average social group size
Social cognition only human
yes- TOM unique for humans
No- homologous brain areas for self and others (Mice study). structure and activity covary with complexity of social environment.
instinctive behaviours
Greater pupil dilation of pupils in 6 year olds for spiders vs flowers
Habituation
Babies spend less time look at objects the more they are shown them
Interoception
attend to ones own states - prediction of the body and external milieu
