Interacting with others Flashcards
Why is the social environment important to humans?
As humans we require social interaction for survival and this environment is highly complex
What are the two broad categories of cognition and how do we see this divide exhibited?
Hot: Social and emotional
Cold: Reasoning, Attention, visual processing, problem solving, memory
Autism: all cold
Williams syndroms: All hot
Brian damage: Dependent
What are the key social cognitive domains?
TOM, Attribution theory, emotional perception, social perception.
What does theory of mind test and how?
Perspective taking.
Through short cartoon
Vary form false belief to indirect speech (indirect speech)
Mostly 3rd person perspective
What is Emotional perception and how do we measure this?
Our ability to recognise emotions from indirect sources.
Recognise corresponding emotions
to faces and voices.
What is social perception and knowledge?
Social perception is ability to judge social situations, including status and relationships.
Social knowledge is the awareness of these rules, roles and goals
Both closely related.
What is attribution style and how is it measured?
What we attribute the positive or negative outcomes in our lives.
Also: how the meaning of events is related to this
Internal. personal and situational attributions questionnaire (IPSAQ)
Things caused:
By others (personal)
By the environment (Situations)
By self (Internal)
What is the social brain?
The social brain is the area that serves other functions too, but are most constantly activated by social stimuli
What are some of the findings of Michael Green?
Social cognition into Sub-Domains.
Experience sharing-Mirror processing
Emotional Sharing: Response to unpleasant and pleasant
Emotional Regulation:
Self reflective strategies to calm oneself down
What is the implication for the overlap with the DMN and Social brain network?
That when we have no specific goal we tend to think of others and this reflects the importance of that.
What did a 20 year long study show with regards to schizophrenia and social abilities?
That those with schizophrenia represented the lowest performers.
The social impairment begin before hospitalisation and are long lasting.
Schizophrenia is:
A social disorder of varying levels
Impairs social cognition and functioning
Social symptoms exist: Para and Motivation
How does schizophrenia show up in the four domains of social cognition?
Theory of Mind: Over-mentalising
Emotional per: Demonstrate negative emotions
Social per: Non-verbal cue decoding is poor
Attribution: Personlaising (others, not situation)
What did a 53 study meta-analysis find when comparing cognitions and life outcomes?
Social cognition is more significant than cold cognition. Particularly TOM
What does the research show with regards to social cognition and social functioning?
Positive symptoms associated with social deficits, however the highest correlation is with negative. Paranoia is hyper TOM hypothesis.
What areas are there lower and higher activation in TOM tasks in schizophrenics?
Lower:
MFG, STG, temporal poles, Inferior parietal lobe, somatosensory areas.
Higher: MIFG, IFG, Superior temporal gyrus, percuneus, cerebellum

What is a summary of results from the studies in this social field?
Behavioural differences related to brain abnormalities,
But,
Cause and effect not known,
Mechanisms not known
What are the strengths and limitations to studying social cognitions?
Gives us some insights into neural mechanisms.
Weakness: Can’t capture interactive element of social behaviour.
What is the issue with social cognition research and how could it be fixed?
It is difficult to interact in social arenas with fMRI.
Interactive Game theory may help
What has the trust game highlighted?
Healthy controls:
Influenced by reputation and learning
Info about the social interaction
TOM is essential for effective trust
We get better with age
Oxytocin increases trust
Neuroimaging:
TOM and trust linked in areas.
Dop and caudate nucleus implicated in outcome of game.
What did the trust study in relatives, controls and patients show?
1: Fist order relatives have lower trust than controls 2: Patients are unable to be context flexible
What did Groman find in the trust game studies?
Schizophrenics were generally less trusting, but not significantly different in unfair investing.
The caudate nucleus had less activation in positive partners
Caudate was less active in those with positive symptoms.
Temporal Parental Junction less active when receiving payment
What 3 problems do the studies using chronic psychosis have?
Medication
Isolation
Out of work
What are the findings of the trust game when using adolescents and recent onset psychosis
Adults in the control group exhibited higher trust.
Adolescent patients learnt to trust. Adults failed to learn
Patients had lower baseline trust and adults had less trust than adolescents.
All groups learnt to distrust.
