Lecture 17: Social Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
emerged in the 1980s as a subarea of social psychology focused on how people
process, store, and retrieve information about
themselves, other people, and social situations
first mentioned as a concept
in 1992. Subsequently others used the term social
cognitive neuroscience to refer to the same
field
25-yr. old railway worker charged with putting explosive powder/fuse in rock holes, cover with sand, pat down with tamping iron. On Sep
13, 1848 he failed to notice exposed powder…ignited
explosion…made history
-He never lost consciousness, and had no
obvious neurological symptoms
-But afterwards he seemed a different
person – disorganized, socially
inappropriate, “no longer Gage”
phineas gage
Social impairments documented in more recent
cases of orbitofrontal damage, such as patient MR
-he crashed motorcycle into a fixed object
-suffered coup (direct impact) and contrecoup
(brain striking skull) injury
-pronounced injury in the
orbitofrontal cortex
Case Study: M.R
-normal IQ
-normal perceptual processing
-normal motor control
Performance on standard cognitive tests
-normal language ability
-normal memory
Social behavior is “off” (inappropriate, strange)
-Will discuss personal topics with strangers
-Will talk endlessly about boring topics (e.g., a
detailed account of the cuts used to trim a tree)
-Will greet a stranger with a hug, sit too close, or
stare too long…
Case Study: B.W
Patient BW, a 14-yr. old boy, exhibited severe antisocial behavior throughout much of his childhood
Experimental Studies: Orbitofrontal
Damage
The Faux Pas Task
“Anne receives a vase as a wedding gift from Jeannette. A year later Anne has forgotten that the vase was from Jeannette. Jeannette accidentally breaks the vase while at Anne’s house.
Anne tells Jeannette not to worry because it was a wedding gift that she never liked anyway.”
-Did someone make a social mistake here?
-Healthy people, and people with lateral prefrontal cortex damage do well (identify the faux pas correctly).
-People with orbitofrontal damage perform poorly:
Orbitofrontal patients think Jeannette will feel badly, but they think it’s because Anne was trying to hurt
Jeannette’s feelings (not reassure her).
-orbitofrontal damage impairs the ability to reason/think about ongoing social interactions; patients fail to take context into account when making social judgments.
Orbitofrontal damage impairs the ability to reason/think about ongoing social interactions; patients fail to take
context into account when making social judgments.
Evidence:
Faux Pas task
Teasing Task
Teasing Task
-Make up a nickname for one of the experimenters
(who they did not know well)
-Healthy people don’t like this, and will reluctantly make up a positive nickname, and then immediately apologize
-Orbitofrontal patients do this happily, usually make up negative nicknames, use a “sing song” mocking voice when saying the name, weren’t embarrassed, and actually expressed pride in their social behavior. If not embarrassed, no reason to change
-Awareness of Behavior vs. Social Knowledge
-Orbitofrontal patients and controls engaged in structured conversation with a stranger (graduate student experimenter),
-Awareness of Behavior vs. Social Knowledge
Examples:
Tell me about an embarrassing moment you’ve had.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want to have as a dinner guest and why?
When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself? Why?
Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
-Patients more likely than controls to introduce
impolite/inappropriate/excessively personal & intimate conversation topics (as judged by objective raters).
-But patients possessed the social knowledge: they
stated prior to conversation that it is inappropriate to
discuss intimate/emotional topics with a stranger.
Unaware in the moment that they are doing so in a
context where it is inappropriate! Therefore do not
generate emotional feedback that would allow them to change behavior.
The researchers videotaped the conversation
Damage to the orbitofrontal cortex:
Can leave a person with many intact cognitive abilities, but inappropriate social behavior.
Spares retention of social knowledge, but impairs the
ability to apply that knowledge in ongoing interaction likely related to decision making deficits.
Does not prevent patients from becoming aware of their mistakes when viewing their own behavior.
Exactly how to characterize the contributions of
orbitofrontal cortex to social cognition remains an unsolved part of the “orbitofrontal puzzle”.
Self-Perception and Self-Knowledge
Self-perception is unique because self is both the
perceiver and perceived.
Sense of self depends in part on perceiving the
difference between self-knowledge and
knowledge of others
Does self-perception depend on distinct or
unique neural structures? How is self-knowledge
represented?
Self-Referential Processing
-More words remembered that were processed in
relation to the self, versus in relation to others (the
president here)
-called the self-referent (or self-reference) effect
What explains the self-referent effect?
Hypothesis 1: processing relative to the self is
just a deeper level of processing (i.e., connects
with more stored knowledge than other types of
processing)
“Deeper” processing leads to better subsequent
memory
increased activity in regions associated with “depth”
effects
Hypothesis 2
processing relative to the self is a special cognitive process with unique memory/organization that is distinct from other cognitive processing
self-referential processing will engage distinct neural
Encoding task
Participants made yes/no judgments
concerning self, other, or case/printed format (is
word in upper case?)
Region for Self-Referential Processing
Self: Does this trait describe you?
Other: Does this trait describe George Bush?
Format: Is this word presented in uppercase
letters?
Medial Prefrontal
Cortex (MPFC)
MPFC response greater for self condition
Self-Referent Effect and Subsequent Memory
medial pfc
Medial PFC involved in successful vs. unsuccessful
encoding of/memory for self-relevant information,
whereas inferior PFC involved in successful vs.
unsuccessful encoding of/memory for non-self-
relevant information
left inferior prefrontal cortex
It is hypothesized that activations in left inferior prefrontal cortex reflect a domain-specific semantic working memory capacity that is invoked more for semantic than nonsemantic analyses regardless of stimulus modality
7 patients with vmPFC damage
Compared to 8 control patients with lesions outside vmPFC
and 23 healthy controls
so we can be sure that the damage to that area causes that deficit
Self-Reference as the Brain’s Default Mode
-What do you think about when you don’t have a specific task to do?
The fact that MPFC has a high state of activity during
“rest” might reflect self-referential processing during resting state
(“What am I doing? How do I feel?”, “What will I do
later?”)
Messages Task
Tailored vs Untailored Messages
* Tailored: “You are concerned with being tempted to smoke around
other smokers.”
* Untailored: “Smokers are admitted to the hospital more often than
nonsmokers.”
Overlap with Self-Related vs. ValenceTailored > Untailored
- Social judgments based on facial expressions:
Shown photos of 10 unfamiliar faces with various expressions
(angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, sad, neutral) à indicate the
extent to which they would ask this person for directions
- OFC patients and controls performed similarly for neutral faces
- But OFC patients were much more likely to rate a face as
approachable than other controls, even though they could
recognize a foreboding face
Self-Referential Processing
Self-referent effect
Self-referent effect: When presented with a word list, we
remember more words if we process them in relation to the
self (e.g., Does this word describe you?) versus if you process
them relative to others (e.g., Does this word describe the
President?)
Self-Referential Processing
* Left inferior frontal cortex (LIFC)
showed greater activity for BOTH self and other judgments (i.e., require deeper processing) than for printed format judgments
MPFC showed greater response (i.e., less reduction in activity) for self judgments than for other and printed format
judgments
Thus, processing self-relevant information is a SPECIAL process!
theory of mind
understanding the mental
states of others
- Assessed using False Belief task
- rTPJ shows greater activity when individuals engage in false belief
task, compared to other control tasks
rTPJ is specifically involved in reasoning about other people’s
mental states
