Chapter 13 Social Cognition Flashcards
What kind of social related behaviours resulted from injury to the orbitofrontal cortex?
They behave socially inappropriately by discussing personal topics with strangers, greet a stranger with a hug, sit too close or stare too long without realising these are all inappropriate
How do patients with damage to the OFC perform on neuropsychological testing?
They perform within normal ranges
How does social cognitive neuroscience differ from cognitive neuroscience?
It emphasizes that situations or contexts determine how we think or act and those situations usually involve other people
Schizophrenia and depression result in what regional blood flow differences compared to healthy controls?
PET scans show less blood flow in the PFC of schizophrenic patients compared to healthy patients and increased blood flow in the lateral PFC of the left hemisphere in depressed patients when compared to healthy
What is the self-reference effect?
Enhanced memory for information processed in relation to the self
Describe how the self-referential processing experiment and its results
fMRI monitors the Medial PFC while the participant completes a self-referential processing task where they are shown adjectives and asked one of 3 questions: Does this trait describe you? Does this trait describe the president? Is this word presented in uppercase? MPFC is activated during the task, differentially in the self condition compared to the other 2 conditions
Do self-descriptive judgements depend on specific autobiographical judgements? Explain
No. Klein et al completed an experiment where they asked participants to rate an adjective in terms of how it related to them, its definition and a control. After completing this task they were then asked to describe a situation when they portrayed this characteristic. Response times were recorded and it was found that there was no differences between the groups indicating that our judgements about self-characteristics are not linked to recall of specific past behaviours.
Can patients with amnesia teach us anything about the mechanisms of self-referential processing?
Yes, even though patients with severe amnesia can’t tell you any of their memories from their life, they can describe themselves in a way that is congruent with how their friends or family would describe them. This suggests that semantic trait self-knowledge exists outside of general semantic knowledge
What is the default mode?
The default mode is when brain activity is sustained during rest periods of experiments even though no specific task is being completed. This indicates that some areas of the brain don’t turn off as first thought.
Where is the default network?
MPFC, precuneus, TPJ, meidal temporal lobe lateral parietal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex
What is the sentinel hypothesis?
The theory that the default network is there to ensure that we always have some idea of what is going on around us
What does Mitchell (2011) state is a good reason for decrease activation of the default state?
May indicate that these virtual scenarios have been set aside temporarily in order to orient to the actual, concrete world around us.
Explain the experiment that measures neural activity in relation to judging positive information about the self
Participants rated the self-descriptiveness of a variety of personality traits; less deactivation in the anterior cingulate cortex was associated with rating positive personality traits in comparison to negative personality traits
Explain the study of personality inference
Mitchell et al looked at impression formation in an experiment using pictures of faces with a statement about their personality; one task required participants to make an inference on the person’s personality and the other required participants to remember the sequence of the statement of their personality. The impression formation task engaged the MPFC much more than the sequencing task.
What would people of OFC damage not understanding regarding the Jeannette and Anne story?
That Anne was trying to make Jeannette feel better about breaking the vase and was not being intentionally mean
People of OFC damage are more likely to tease in what way?
In an inappropriate way that is unflattering and as if they know the person better than what they do; they would not be able to recognise this as being embarrassing for them either
Explain the gambling task experiment in terms of neuroeconomics
This experiment looks at emotional decision making as opposed to rational decision making with a gambling task where the outcomes are the same however option 1 is posed in a gain or positive frame and option 2 is posed in a loss or negative frame; people will always choose the positive frame based on emotion even thought the outcomes are the same and a rational decision would tell them this. When gambling based on the emotional decision, the participants amygdala and activated
What effect does autism have on social cognition?
Autistic people show little interest in other individuals or social interaction and prefer to focus on internal thoughts and inanimate external stimuli
What is the somatic marker hypothesis?
Proposed by Damasio, it states that emotional information in the form of physiological arousal is needed to guide decision making
