Lecture 17: Social Cognition Flashcards

Question

Patient M.R.

Answer 1

Motorcycle accident led to injury in OFC * Normal performance on standard cognitive tests * Exhibited socially inappropriate behavior * Discussed personal topics with strangers * Greets strangers with a hug, sits too close, stares too long * Talks endlessly about boring topics

Answer 2

* Faux Pas Task * Teasing Task * Engaging in personal conversations * Social judgments (e.g., trustworthiness) based on facial expression

Answer 3

Read narratives where social faux pas is committed “Anne receives a vase as a wedding gift from Jeannette. A year later, Anne has forgotten that the vase was from Jeanette. Jeanette accidentally breaks the vase while at Anne’s house. Anne tells Jeannette not to worry because it was a wedding gift she never liked anyway.” Did someone make a social mistake here? * Read narratives where social faux pas is committed * Healthy controls can correctly identify the faux pas * But OFC patients do poorly (don’t detect the faux pas) à have trouble putting together the whole sequence of events properly and take context into account when making social judgments

Answer 4

* Make up nickname for an experimenter * Healthy controls don’t like this, make up positive nicknames, and then apologize * OFC patients enjoy the task, make up negative nicknames, weren’t embarrassed, etc. (note: If they’re not embarrassed, then there’s no reason to change)

Answer 5

Examples: Tell me about an embarrassing moment you’ve had. When did you last cry in front of another person? Why? Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it? Engaging in personal conversation with experimenter where personal questions are asked (while being videotaped): * OFC patients are much more likely than healthy controls to introduce impolite, inappropriate, and excessively personal conversation topics (i.e., unaware of their behavior in the moment) However, they do have social knowledge– they know that it is inappropriate to discuss intimate/emotional topics with a stranger When they watch the video of themselves, they report greater embarrassment than other controls Given that they are unaware in the moment that they are behaving inappropriately, they therefore do not generate emotional feedback that would allow them to change behavior (e.g., embarrassment)

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

Are worse at detecting social faux pas * Are more likely to assign negative nicknames (and do so happily) * Do have knowledge of what constitutes a socially appropriate vs. inappropriate situation, but seem to unable to generate emotional feedback (e.g., embarrassment) IN THE MOMENT that would allow them to change their behavior (even though they feel embarrassed watching a video of themselves after the fact) * Are much more likely to rate an emotional face as approachable

Answer 8

Our sense of self depends on perceiving the difference between knowledge about our self and knowledge of others * How does the representation of self-knowledge differ from the representation about non-self information?

Answer 9

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?)

Answer 10

* 2 explanations: 1. Processing relative to the self is an example of a deeper level of processing that connects the word with other stored knowledge (e.g., Levels of processing view by Craik & Lockhart) -should have same increased activity in left inferior frontal regions that are associated with greater depth of encoding 2. Processing relative to the self is a SPECIAL cognitive process with unique memory and organization different from other processes ---should engage distinct neural regions for judgments about the self

Answer 11

Make yes/no judgments concerning… * Self: Does this word describe you? * Other: Does this word describe George Bush? * Printed format: Is this word in uppercase or lowercase letters? Note: Both self and other judgments require deeper levels of processing than the printed format judgment… but only the self judgment involves self-referential processing * Hypothesis 1 (Levels of processing view): Predicts that both self and other judgments should recruit left inferior frontal regions over print judgment, since both require deeper levels of processing * Hypothesis 2 (“Self” is special): Predicts that there should be a special region that shows greater activity for self judgments than both other and case judgments

Answer 12

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!

Answer 13

MPFC is part of the default network * This network of regions decrease in activity during attention to demanding cognitive tasks (i.e., require externally-focused attention), and increase in activity during rest (i.e., that involve self-focused attention) When we don’t have a specific task to do, MPFC activity increases * This might reflect the idea that we engage in thinking about the self (self-referential processing) during rest… “What am I doing? What will I do later?

Answer 14

Our sense of self is NOT merely a collection autobiographical memories * After making the judgment about themselves (e.g., “Are you extroverted?”), people are no faster at retrieving a related episode (e.g., “Think of a time where you acted extroverted”) * Thus, people don’t recall specific episodes from their life when they have to decide whether a trait applies to themselves * BUT, people are faster at retrieving a specific episode about others after making trait judgments of others à we use our memory to retrieve specific episodes when making judgments of others Personality traits are true across most of our lives– not tied to any single life event * Patient K.C. (amnesic patient) could accurately describe his own personality (after the accident), which changed after the onset of amnesia à can acquire new semantic information about himself

Answer 15

Self-referent effect (improved memory for self-relevant info) is associated with activity in MPFC (not merely deeper processing) * MPFC is part of the brain’s default network, which because more active during rest (when engaged in internal thoughts about the self) and less active while engaged in other externally-focused tasks * MPFC is also linked to social aspects of mental simulations * Self/personality knowledge is represented as trait summaries rather than as individual episodes (e.g., evidence from Patient K.C.)

Answer 16

Important for theory of mind (i.e., understanding the mental states of others) * Problem of Other Minds: Why is it so hard to know other minds?

Answer 17

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