Social cognition 2

Question 1

Define social inference making

Answer 1

Reasoning about the social world.

Question 2

Define Theory of Mind.

Answer 2

Knowing someone else has a different state of mind.

Question 3

What were Dumontheil’s (2010) findings on Theory of Mind?

Answer 3

• Dictator task with 7y-adults.

- Still improving in late adolescence, but adults still make errors.

Question 4

Who did a social network study and what were the findings?

Answer 4

• Burnett-Heyes et al., 2015
• Mapping networks of relationships using self-report trust scores and reciprocity via Dictator Game.
• Y9 = how much they liked the other
• Y12 begin to use reciprocity

Question 5

What have Theory of Mind tasks in MRI scans shown?

Answer 5

That roles of certain areas move from the front to the back of the brain.

Question 6

Describe Somerville et al.’s (2013) study.

Answer 6

• Child, adolescent and adult participants.
• Told they were being watched in scanner by peer.
• Self conscious peaked in adolescence.
• Age-dependent sensitivity of brain systems for socio-affective processes
• Unique interactions of MPFC and striatum

Question 7

Describe Hare et al.’s (2008) study.

Answer 7

• 80 participants, 7-32 y
• fMRI go/nogo task for fearful, happy and calm faces.
• Adolescent had higher amygdala activity relative to children and adults, but decreased with repeated exposure to stimuli.
• Higher trait anxiety meant lower habituation with exposure and lower functional connectivity between ventral PFC and amygdala.
• More emotional reactivity increases need for top-down control.
• Individuals with less control are at greater risk for poor outcomes.

Question 8

What did Gee et al.’s fMRI study show?

Answer 8

• 45 participants, 4-22y
• only respond to neutral faces.
• Positive and negative connectivity
• positive amygdala-PFC circuitry in early childhood becomes negative in adolescence.
• Developmental switch paralleled by decreased amygdala activity: liner decline
• Age related increase in task performance and decrease in anxiety

Question 9

What do hormone changes in puberty cause?

Answer 9

Changes in the limbic system

Question 10

The gradual maturation of the PFC leads to what?

Answer 10

Increased control of responses.

Question 11

What percentage of the population experience Social Anxiety?

Answer 11

7-10%

Question 12

Symptoms of social anxiety include?

Answer 12

• Avoidance of social situations

- Fear of negative evaluation

Question 13

What did Roy et al. (2008) find about attention bias in anxiety?

Answer 13

• Used a visual probe task to threat, neutral and happy faces.
• Attention bias calculated from response times to probes for each emotion type
• Anxious vs healthy youths: 7-18y
• Anxious = greater bias to threat faces

Question 14

Describe Haller et al.’s (2016) study.

Answer 14

• Shown photos of social scene and choose positive or negative valenced interpretation of scene.
• More socially anxious adolescents had a more negative attributional style when interpreting visual cues.
• Anxious also made more internal attributions.

Question 15

Describe Miers et al.’s (2008) study.

Answer 15

• 37 high socially anxious and 36 control participants.
• Rated likelihood of different interpretations of ambiguous social and non-social situations.
• negative interpretations were more common in the anxious group.

Question 16

What did Guyer et al. (2008) study?

Answer 16

• Rejection Sensitivity
• 14 anxious participants and 14 control participants
• fMRI
• 40 pictures: would you interact with person or not?
• Anxious had higher amygdala reaction to undesirable peers
• Anticipating social evaluation had different vPFC and amygdala activity anxious vs healthy
• Dysfunction manifests in adolescent anxiety disorders in specific peer evaluation contexts