lecture 10 - the social brain

Question 1

human _______ may be rooted in our evolutionary history

Answer 1

hypersociality

Question 1

are there brain mechanisms that make us social
what are the 3 solutions

Answer 1

yes,
1)there are specialised brain regions for processing social information
2) blurring the distinction between self and other
3)

Question 2

dunbar et al 2007
-measured different primate brain sizes against their group size

Answer 2

-he found a correlation between neocortex ration(brain size) of primates (eg like monkey and apes) and their mean group size

Question 3

temporal cortex and faces - an aquiring mechanism ? social mechanism?

Answer 3

-proposed that there’s something there to allow us to socially recall who the person is
-not an evolutionary given mechanism for face perception, but a mechanism for acquiring face perception

Question 4

is there a specific period we need to learn faces in order to do this the rest of our lives ?

Answer 4

-seems to be a sensitive period we need to learn them
-if people don’t learn faces at a specific time they wont develop this and be able to recognise them

Question 5

experiments where children are shown faces and face like configurations (top heavy etc)
results

Answer 5

-children prefer faces or what roughly look like faces
-even if features are mixed up, children will prefer the one closest to a face

Question 6

blurring the distinctions between self and others

Answer 6

-sometimes called shared representations
-we process things that happen to other people the same way we would process it happening to ourselves

Question 7

seeing people or primates smiling has what response in us?

Answer 7

-makes us smile, we respond emotionally to these things ,

Question 8

shared representation for self and other

mimicking
yawning

Answer 8

people unconsciously and non strategically mimic the postures of the person they interreact with

-seeing someone else yawn makes you yawn

Question 9

subtle behaviours that indicate shared representation

Answer 9

People automatically synchronize swinging of hand-held pendulums (Richardson et al., 2005;Schmidt & O’Brien, 1997).
 Synchronize postural sway (Shockley, Santana, & Fowler, 2003)

 The motion of rocking chairs(Goodman, Icenhower , Marsh, Schmidt, & Richardson, 2005)

Question 10

imitation and mimicry

Answer 10

-study shows babies and bay primates imitate and mimic behaviours
-not sure how accurate this is , as babies have poor vision

Question 11

experience of another person…..

Answer 11

experience of another person-
-map this onto our own experiences
-derive associated mental states

Question 12

mirror neurons

Answer 12

fire both when the monkey performs a specific action and when he sees the same action being performed by someone else.