College 3: The Social Brain Flashcards
Social Cognition
a uniquely human trait is the ability to understand each other as conscious beings with internal mental states. Social cognition helps us understand the mental states of others, it also helps us understand how we respond to other social beings
- recognizing, understanding en interpreting social cues from other
- using this knowledge to guide interactions
Social Brain
network of brain regions that underlie these social processes:
- dmPFC
- Precuneus
- pSTS
- TPJ
- ATC
Mentalizing Tasks
reflecting one’s intentions, thinking about preferences, judging other’s intentions, reflecting on emotional responses, understanding sarcasm
Social Decision making
Different kind of decision making, more specifically oriented on taking another person in consideration. It forces you to think about yourself or another person. Thinking of self vs. thinking of others
pro-social behaviour
behaviour that benefits other
self-referential thinking
is the cognitive process of relating information, often from the external world, to the self.
economic games
often used measurement of social decision-making. Comes close to constructs: fairness, reciprocity and trust.
involves:
- 2 players
- (one-shot) interaction
- rules
- money/candy/stickers
- used across a wide age range
- structured nature of the games makes it possible to quantify complex social behaviour
- they provide experimental designs that can be easily used in neuroimaging studies and thus examine the underlying neural substrates of social bhevaiour
- individual differences in behaviour and neural activation can be related to measures of cognitive control or perspective taking
dictator game
construct: fairness
2 players (allocator makes an offer and recipient passively receives)
Stake is shared according to allocator’s decision, what does the allocator keep for himself.
Predicts: allocator keeps everything to themselves.
Outcome: 20/30% give away to anonymous others.
DG used for pro-social behaviour
ultimatum game
Construct: Fairness
2 players (proposer and responder)
Proposer makes offer, responder can reject/accept. If accepted, stake is shared of rejected no one gets anything.
predict: proposers offer smallest offer greater than zero, proposers offer most often an equal split
outcome: responders usually reject offers smaller than 20% of the stake. Unfair offers are rejected but if they come from a computer, more likely to accept.
mini-ultimatum game
Works the same as the ultimatum game except there are 3 different alternatives:
- fair alternative: equally divided
- hyperfair alternative: responder gets more than proposer
- no alternative: proposer gets more than responder
9 yo most of the time reject the unfair offers (no alternative) but with age there is an increase seen in perspective-taking and impulte-control.
left dLPFC and right TPJ are involved
trustgame
construct: fairness
2 players: investor (trustor) sends an endowment to the second player showing trust or no trust. The offer is multiplied and then send to the second player.
Second player (trustee) decides how much to return to the investor
dilemma is: should you trust the second person?
Outcome: Adolescents put their own interest before someone else’s and with age this is decreasing
summary of this game:
- increased dlPFC and TPJ activity with increasing age
- Adolescents use the mPFC in more contexts when responding to the investors trust than adults
However participants overall when getting older, were quicker to adapt their behaviour by lowering their offers quicker when playing with uncooperative/untrustworthy opponent
dorsomedial PFC (dmPFC)
part of the mentalizing network, a set of brain regions consistently engaged in inferring mental states
Adolescents recruit dmPFC more than adults, which might implicate in a greater self-referential processing
precuneus
self-referential processing, imagery and memory
(part of social brain)
posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS)
analyzing the intentions underlying actions and is sensitive to the context within which actions occur
Temporo-parietal Junction
perspective taking
age related increase when receiving trust
more active in adults in mentalizing tasks
