Delving deeper into social cognition Flashcards
What does social cognition refer to?
The processes that people use to make sense of, and navigate through, their social world
- how people make sense of social stimuli
Which two areas of psychology gave birth to social cognition?
Social and cognitive psychology
What are the three psychological assumptions that founded social cognition?
- People are consistency seekers:
- holding coherent, meaning perceptions of the world around them - People are accuracy seekers or ‘naïve scientists’
- trying to form accurate, but sometimes incorrect, perceptions of the world around and within them
(e. g. heuristics) - People are cognitive misers
- saving their cognitive resources (e.g. effort and time), when possible
What do people tend to do in situations of cognitive dissonance (Festinger)?
They change their beliefs to accommodate inconsistency
Which insight did cognitive psychology bring to social cognition?
We go beyond the information that is presented to us
- and use existing knowledge that we posses to make sense of novel information
Which judgments do we make on social targets?
We judge internal characteristics, make social inferences, subjective attributions
- relying on history, prior knowledge, stereotypes, motives, attitudes, …
- we don’t make these judgments on non-social targets
What is the Theory of mind?
Understanding the contents of another person’s mind
- essential for accurate social inferences
When does a theory of mind develop according to Jean Piaget?
Around age 9
What is the Sally-Anne test?
A task to evaluate if children possess the theory of mind
- false-belief understanding
> Story with the 2 characters
Ask: Where did Sally put the book? Where is the book now? Where will Sally look for the book first?
-> are the children able to separate the perspectives of Sally and Anne
What are mirror neurons?
Motor neurons that fire for the performance of an action or the observation of someone else’s action
Why are mirror neurons important for social cognition?
They seem to bridge the gap between self and others
- mapping other people’s actions onto your own motor programs for those actions
- they could be the neuroscientific basis for bridging the self-other divide
Which are the speculations on the functions of the responses from mirror neurons?
> Role in social cognitive processes
> Relationship with neurological and psychiatric disorders
What are the two areas that currently hold causal evidence on the function of mirror neurons?
- Action perception
- process other people’s actions - Imitation
- copying observed actions
- > social skills
What is the evidence for the involvement of mirror neurons in social cognition?
Little evidence
- low-level empathy: mirroring other people’s emotions
What is the evidence of empathic mirroring?
> No direct (single-cell) evidence
> fMRI data:
- overlapping brain responses for self and other emotions
- for experience and vision of pain; same for disgust
-> mirror mechanism for low-level empathy
What is the difference between mirroring actions and mirroring emotions?
Not necessarily same mechanisms:
- action: motor areas
- emotion: emotional areas
What is the clinical implication behind the potential different areas for empathic and motor mirroring?
Patient could have impaired motor mirroring, but intact emotion mirroring, or vice-versa
Can mirroring be learned through experience?
Yes - Research: motor mirror responses can be re-trained
-> mirror responses are very flexible
What are the 3 consequences of the flexibility of mirror responses?
- Casts doubt on idea that matching mirror neuron responses have evolved especially for social cognition
- if it was the case, you wouldn’t expect them to be easily altered through experience - Experience may be sufficient and necessary to produce mirror neurons
- Therapy:
- mirroring can be instilled through training
What is the problem of self-other distinction with mirror neurons?
Is the mirror neuron firing for an action or for the perception of an action?
- who’s performing an action?
What does the problem of self-other distinction reveal about mirror neurons?
They are part of bigger network that deals with social information
- they can’t explain social cognition on their own
How do we make judgments about others?
Through social attributions, based on stereotypes
What is the attribution theory?
A set of psychological models on how people infer causal relations and dispositional characteristics of others
What is the fundamental attribution error (James and Harris, 1967)?
People’s tendency to over-attribute another person’s behaviour to dispositional causes rather than taking into account situational factors
> Pro and contra Castro experiment (1967):
- participants perceived those who were forced to write a pro-Castro essay as more approving of Castro
vs. those who wrote a contra-Castro essay
-> they attributed these participants’ essays as reflecting their disposition rather than being caused by the situation they were aware of
What is the actor-observer effect?
We tend to blame situations and environment, not ourselves, and vice-versa for other people
What kind of attributes do we make?
People tend to make attributions consistent with the specific stereotypes we hold towards the person’s group
- dispositional attributions are guided by stereotypes
- different contexts for attributions
What are the artist stereotypes?
- “Creative geniuses” + “Eccentric and bizarre”
- > Stereotype = artists are unconventional and creative
- People made aware of an artist’s eccentric traits (Van Gogh cutting his ear), hedge their work to be more attractive than people not aware
What is ASD?
Autism Spectrum Disorder
> Neurodevelopmental condition
> Diagnosis on behaviour: ‘Triad’ of impairments
- social
- communication
- rigid, repetitive behaviour
> Highly heritable
- for minority it is related to rare single gene mutation
- for majority its is suspected to be polygenic = many genes, small effects
What is the prevalence of ASD?
- Affecting 1% of children and adults
- 2 to 4x more males than females diagnoses
What are the comorbidities of ASD?
- Epilespy
- Intellectual disability
- Anxiety
- Depression
- ADHD
- Sleep and eating problems
What is the ASD diagnostic criteria in DSM-5?
Persistent deficits in social communication and interaction across contexts:
- social-emotional reciprocity
- nonverbal communication
- developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships
What is the developmental course of the social deficits in ASD?
> Diagnosis typically before age 3
> Parent’s earliest worries:
- lack of language
- little social response
- rigid behaviour
> Some parents report apparent ‘regression’
> Reduced/absent joint attention
(follow where somebody is looking, pointing to direct someone’s attention, showing things of interest to an adult)
> Impaired peer interaction
> Odd social manner, body language, eye conduct
What are the different theories on what is underlying the socio-communicative difficulties in ASD?
> Primary non-social deficit
> Primary social deficit
- ‘social motivation’ account
- Mirror neuron theory
- ‘theory of mind’ account
What do Dawson, Chevalier and colleagues (2012) propose is the cause of the primary impairment in ASD?
Social motivation
- infants with autism don’t find social stimuli rewarding
- > don’t pay attention to them
-> Fail to learn the social world
What does the social motivation theory predicts to account for the primary impairment in ASD?
Early sign: lack of social interest
How did Yale test the social motivation theory of ASD (Chawarska, Macari, and Shic, 2013)?
What did they find?
Eye-tracking
-> reduced attention to social stimuli at 6 months in infants who were later diagnosed with autism
Is all social orienting impaired in ASD (Shah et al., 2013)?
Why?
No: adults and children with autism show the usual preferential attention to face-like stimuli
- proto face draws the automatic attention of people with autism similar to controls
What is the ‘broken mirror’ (neurons) theory of ASD?
> Gallese and Goldman:
- healthy mirror neurons are necessary to understand thoughts and intentions of others
> Meltzoff:
- imitation enables infants to recognise others as ‘like-me’
- hypothesis: in autism, a problem in mirror neurons may result in later social difficulties
Which findings can invalidate the ‘broken mirror’ theory of ASD?
Hamilton and Bird: automatic imitation is intact in autism
What does the theory of mind proposes to account for ASD?
‘Mind-blindness’ explains well the social and communication problems, including over-literal understanding
- children with autism don’t track the mental states of others = mind-blind
How did the theory of mind refine our understanding of ASD?
> Before: autism = not a general lack of sociability
> Now: people with autism want to be social, but find it hard to connect with other minds
What is the criticism against the theory of mind for ASD?
- Theory of Mind is not primary, not the core origin
- Mind tests are not specific to autism
- Mind tests are non universal
Why is the theory of mind not the core origin of ASD?
Theory of mind tests are designed for children 3-4 years
- signs of autism appear earlier
- reason for social motivation theories are popular
Which evidence on ASD came to light with infant studies on earlier years?
> Following children been into families where there’s already a child with autism
- because it’s heritable, these children have higher risk of developing autism at around 3-4 years and getting diagnosed
> Abnormalities only appear at 12 months
- reduced imitation
- lack of response to their name
- reduced social interaction
- less social smiling
> Earliest signs at 6 months on non-social tasks
- sticky attention to any kind of stimulus
Why are mind tests not specific to autism?
> Other clinical groups also fail at false-belief tests, like Sally-Anne
- children congenitally death but born into hearing homes so no sign language from early years
- children intellectually disabled, low IQ but not autism
- > no social difficulties present in autism
- perhaps they failed these tasks, like Sally-Anne, for other reasons: e.g. memory or language problems
What can be used to see whether people with autism would still be impaired and more impaired than individuals with intellectual disability without autism?
Non-verbal theory of mind test
- e.g. penny-hiding game
What did non-verbal theory of mind tests, such as the penny-hiding game, demonstrate?
> Penny-hiding game:
- children with autism hide the penny from sight but fail to hide the information from the mind of the guesser
- leave empty hand open, transfer penny between their hands but in plain sight
- > People with autism struggle even though there is no memory or language demanded
vs. intellectually disabled children without autism whose problems rest on verbal demands, memory, or executive functions
What makes mind tests, such as the Sally-Anne task, non universal?
> Not all individuals with autism fail the Sally-Anne task
- they pass the test using a variety of methods and work arounds that do not necessarily imply a theory of mind
eg. one child said that during the Sally-Anne task she first wanted to give the wrong answer, but then stopped herself because she remembered that when psychologists as questions it’s always a trick
- she gave the opposite answer and passed the test
What could more advanced theory of mind tests reveal (i.e. more advanced than Sally-Anne task for example)?
Continuing deficits even in intelligent adults with autism
Which task is used to test advanced mind-reading (theory of mind)?
Frith-Happe animations
What is observed in people with autism doing the Frith-Happe animations test?
More likely to give a physical description:
- “the small triangle moved outside the enclosure and then back again, the large triangle moved slightly to the right”
-> they don’t automatically attribute mental states or see an interaction between minds
Is spontaneous mentalising impaired in adults with autism (Senju, Southgate, White and Frith, 2009)?
Yes - Sally-Anne task and eye tracking:
- they didn’t automatically look where the character with a false belief was going to search
- anticipatory eye gaze is a clear sign of theory of mind in typically developing children and adults
What are the two kinds of mentalising?
- Unconscious form
- tested with eye gaze tracking
- seen in infants 7 months old
- seen in adults - Conscious (deliberate) form
- develops around 3-5 years old
- measured in verbal theory of mind tasks
e. g. Sally-Anne task
How does implicit (unconscious) mentalising impact the development of children with autism?
Lack of implicit mentalising shapes development of children with autism
> Non autistic:
- interested in what others think
- > learning through social interaction
- automatically infers thoughts and feelings behind people’s actions; spontaneously imitate others
> Potential autism:
- not intersted in external approval
- > not learning from others
- not motivated by social interactions
- doesn’t learn the knowledge and skills others share
Which aspect of social development is not affected in autism?
> Empathy:
- many children and adults with autism are strongly attached to their parents and others they love
- they can respond to distress and show empathy; and at the same time having difficulty knowing what others are thinking
> People with autism show same biases then neurotypicals
How do autistic people differ from people with psychopathic traits (i.e. cold and callous) (Jones et al., 2010)?
> Boys with conduct disorder and psychopathic traits (cold and callous):
- good at theory of mind
- poor empathy
- may use theory of mind to manipulate
> Boys with autism:
- poor at theory of mind
- good empathic concern
Why are stereotyping and biases unaffected in autism?
Because stereotypes and biases don’t require theory of mind
What does the presence of empathy, stereotyping and biases in people with autism tell us?
Not every aspect of social cognition may be abnormal in ASD
