Social Cognition Flashcards
Describe social cognition in relation to the brain
Social cognitive neuroscience is a field that aims to tackle the problems of understanding how brain functions supports that cog processes underlying social behaviour
It also aims to understand the mechanisms that underly the processing of information about the self or other people - specifically whether these mechanisms are the dame or different or how the brain differentiates between the self and other.
Individuals who experience brain damage, such as lesions to particular areas of the brain showcase impairments in their social behaviour whilst their other complex cognitive abilities are spared.
What does the social brain do
- It has intelligent filter to figure out whats important: where to look: where to see out social info - the amygdala helps in this
- Once the info is gather, the brain has to figure out what it means by making social inferences
- Decisions are then made on what to do next and how to interact with other people.
Is social behaviour specialised?
There are some a priori reasons for thinking that we might have evolved specialized systems, because social behavior makes demands that are so unique. It requires rapid identification of social stimuli and signals (such as recognition of people and their dispositions toward us), vast integration of memory (to keep track of who is friend and foe based on past experience), anticipation of others’ behavior in a reciprocal and often competitive setting. One might hypothesize that each is subserved by a specialized evolved ability, or “module” (Barkow et al. 1992, Pinker 1997).
In thinking about the extent to which social cognition might be special in some way, it is useful to distinguish such specialization at the level of the domain of information that is being processed (such as face perception, detailed below) or at the level of the processes that are engaged (whether they are general purpose or special purpose) (Atkinson et al. 2008)
The argument about the modularity of the TPJ arises from findings, on the one hand, that lesions within it impair the ability to attribute beliefs to others (Samson et al. 2004) and that it is activated selectively when we imagine the beliefs of somebody else (Saxe 2005), versus findings, on the other hand, that it is also activated when we redirect our attention in nonsocial tasks (Mitchell 2007).
What is social cognition
Social cognition is the study of how people process social information, especially its encoding, storage, retrieval, and application to social situations.
GENERAL definition: emphasis is on the internal processes at play in social interactions and studies how we process information about the social world; how we percieve, form memories of, and make inferences about other people and about ourselves
More specific: BROTHER 1990, seeing social cognition as having a Theory of Mind as you try to process what others are thinking
Describe the amygdala’s role in social cognition
– PROCESS EMOTION - its role in social cognition has been studied most extensively in regard to judgments we make about other people from their faces such as their emotional expressions:
Lesion studies found that damage to the amygdala results in an impaired ability to recognize emotional facial expressions when ppts shown a number of pictures and asked to state which emotion is shown e.g. fear (ADOLPHS etal. 1994) - thus, amygdala has been proposed to be involved in basic emotion processing.
– JUDGMENTS ON TRUSTWORTHINESS
ADOLPHS et al (1998) looked at amygdala patients and social judgements of others based on facial appearance Showed people a number of different faces – had them rate the faces on Approachability/Trustworthiness. 3 amygdala lesion patients judged unfamiliar people to be more approachable and trustworthy than controls. Effect was most notable for the most negative faces – as judged by controls. So amygdala might also be involved in social judgements about others
WINSTON etal (2002) provided more support for this using fMRI that tested braining over a simple behavioural task and found that the higher the rating of untrustworthiness proposed for a face, the greater the activity in the amygdala.
– SOCIAL GROUP SIZE: (Wright, 2010) The “social brain hypothesis” suggests that, evolutionarily, living in larger, more complex social groups selected for larger brain regions with a greater capacity for performing relevant computations. So, amygdala volume correlates positively with both the size (the number of contacts a person has) and the complexity (the number of different groups to which a person belongs) of social networks. A larger amygdala might enable us to more effectively identify, learn about, and recognize socioemotional cues allowing us to develop complex strategies to cooperate and compete
– THREAT DETECTION appears to be the linking of perceptual representations to cognition and behavior on the basis of the emotional or social value of the stimuli.
What are the main brain regions involved in social cognition
Debate within this field if there are separate brain regions involved in processing social information or if there are overlapping regions.
A primary region is the PREFRONTAL CORTEX .
When we try to understand others different brain networks are involved depending on the task: the amgdyala has been implicated alongside the regions associated with mirror neuron systems such as the medial parietal cortex
What is theory of mind
One of the most fundamental tools we have for social cognition is the ability to infer the men- tal states of others, known as theory-of-mind (ToM)
BARENC 2003
Setting aside ones own perspective, attributing a mental state to another and predicting their behaviour.
Important aspect of normal social functioning
What is ‘inferring the thoughts of others (observable cues)
Our ability to make inferences of what other people are thinking and how individuals read non-verbal cues as well as the connections that occur between the two
To infer thoughts about others the perceiver must translate what is observable into an inference about what is unobservable (The other persons psychological state).
Social cognitive neuroscientists have attempted to explain this ability.
– Simulation Theory & Perception-Action Model are theories that help to explain how this occurs.
Describe the simulation theory
(ZAKI+OCHSNER, 2011) A theory that attempts to explain how we ‘infer the thoughts of others: we use our own mind to “simulate” the minds of others
This theory proposes that we observe someone else’s behaviour, imitate it, have a physiological response that we feel and then infer that the other is feeling that same way. Suggests that people make inferences about the actions of others using their own expectations based on experiences from their own lives.
In terms of brain activity, the MPFC is implicated.
The ability to mimic others emotions and actions are based on an ability to put ourselves in the shoes of the other person by using our own minds to simulate what might be going on in the others mind.
Therefore, the MEDIAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX is involved as the perception of others involves a perception of self (so responsible for two processes)
Evaluation of simulation theory
+ SUPPORT:
1. MITCHELL et al. 2006: Ppts read descriptions of people who either shared similar or dissimilar political views - their brain activity was measured while they answered questions on their own preferences as well as the others preferences.
- found that a subregion of the MPFC was activated for perception for self-perceptions and perceptions of a similar person
Thus evidencing that we use ourselves as a way of understanding someone we do not know well but who appears related to us in some way.
– Some criticism of simulation theory is based on contradictory developmental evidence. One of the most important study has been conducted by PERNER+HOWES (1992). The most important result of the experiment was that “there is a substantial gap between children’s ability to answer the question about what John thinks and their ability to answer the self-reflection question about what he thinks about his knowledge. The conclusion drawn from this evidence is that simulation is not used to solve the problem.
What is mindblindess theory
Proposes that children with autism are delayed in development of their theory of mind and so they are left with degrees of mindblindess.
Consequently they find others behaviour confusing and unpredictable. They cannot interpret others expressions from their eyes until much later in life and deception is not easily understood as they tend to assume everyone is telling the truth
Evidence from false belief tasks where children show delayed ability to represent others mental states
Define empathy
Another feature of social behaviour that is needed for social functioning - it employs the strong relation between self-perception and the perception of others when making these inferences,
NETTLE 2007 the drive to identify another persons emotions and thoughts
The ability to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and to respond to these with appropriate emotions
Describe the brain mechanisms behind empathy
A common agreement when understanding how we understand and respond to other people, individuals must momentarily create within ourselves the other persons internal state in our effort to understand it.
THE PERCEPTION-ACTION MODEL: this model suggests that perceiving another’s mental state automatically activates the same mental state in the observer which triggers somatic and automatic responses.
– A way of doing this is through mirror neutrons which are a physiological mechanism that allows us to have the same representations of another internal state within our own bodies.
Role of Medial Frontal Cortex in inferring mental states (ToM)
MPFC activation plays a strong role in forming impressions about the mental states of others by acting as a key region in understanding self (simulation) which allow inferences to be made.
– MITCHELL etal. 2006: Compared brain activity of ppts in conditions of either forming an impression of another (inference made about personality) or a sequencing task (the order of statements given) when given pictures of people paired with statements about personality.
Both conditions required them to think about other people but only the former required them to think of the others internal states. It was found that the former task engaged the MPFC a lot more.
SO, suggests that MPFC plays role in internal states but not in thinking about other types of info regarding another person, THUS, social cognition relies on a distinct set of mental processes.
– SIEGAL 2002 Further supported by a few studies have found that patients with damage to the frontal lobes are impaired on theory-of-mind tasks
MPC IS IMPLICIATED IN SELF-REFERENTIAL PROCESSING
– OSCHNER 2005 found that this region is activated when people are asked to judge whether another individual would use particular adjectives to describe them
Role of Medial Frontal Cortex in inferring mental states (ToM)
MPFC activation plays a strong role in forming impressions about the mental states of others by acting as a key region in understanding self (simulation) which allow inferences to be made.
– MITCHELL etal. 2006: Compared brain activity of ppts in conditions of either forming an impression of another or a sequencing task. Both conditions required them to think about tother people but only the former required them to think of the others internal states. It was found that the former task engaged the MPFC a lot more.
SO, suggests that MPFC plays role in internal states but not in thinking about other types of info regarding another person, THUS, social cognition relies on a distinct set of mental processes.
– SIEGAL 2002 Further supported by a few studies have found that patients with damage to the frontal lobes are impaired on theory-of-mind tasks
MPC IS IMPLICIATED IN SELF-REFERENTIAL PROCESSING
– OSCHNER 2005 found that this region is activated when people are asked to judge whether another individual would use particular adjectives to describe them
What is inferring the thoughts of others (non-observable cues)
Sometimes when we are inferring what others are thinking, their mental states do not match their observable cues; their facial expressions may be hiding their true thoughts.
- Thus different brain mechanisms may be involved when we are identifying mental states from unobservable cues.
Understanding the consistency and discrepancy between the non-verbal cues and mental states of others helps us to judge their actions and determine characteristics such as trustworthiness - essential for development complex social responses such as empathy.
– Main debate between the Medial Frontal Cortex and Temporoparietal Junction
Describe the brain mechanisms involved in the connection of non-verbal cues and inferring mental states
EYE GAZE MODULE- SUPERIOR TEMPORAL SUCLUS:
This is crucial to social interactions in general. In particular, this region seems to process social cues. STS has been implicated for helping identify gaze direction. People with damage to STS show deficits in processing gaze direction (Campbell et al, 1990)
- PELEPHRY etal. 2003 using an attention orienting paradigm, studied ppts who watched an animated woman who directed her attention either toward or away from a checkerboard that appears and flickered in her left or right visual field. It was the found that activity in the STS varied in relation to to shifts in eye gaze direction
- PELEPHRY 2004 also found STS activation higher when a virtual reality character made eye contact with the participant vs when the character averted his gaze from ppt. Suggesting, the STS signals focus of attention of gaze as well
LATERALISATION:
2. Ricciardelli et al. (2002) who showed that eye gaze is processed better when presented in the left visual field, as opposed to when it is presented in the right visual field, supporting the idea of a right-hemispheric specialization for eye gaze perception.
- Grosbras et al. (2005) performed a wide meta-analysis of brain-imaging studies, finding that the networks responsible for gaze perception are more similar to those involved in reflexive than to those involved in voluntary shifts of attention and eye movements. The analysis indicated that gaze perception, reflexive shifts of covert attention and visually guided eye movements all activate the temporoparietal junction in proximity of the ascending branch of the STS in the right hemisphere.
Describe the brain mechanisms involved in the connection of non-verbal cues and inferring mental states
EYE GAZE MODULE- SUPERIOR TEMPORAL SUCLUS:
This is crucial to social interactions in general. In particular, this region seems to process social cues. STS has been implicated for helping identify gaze direction. People with damage to STS show deficits in processing gaze direction (Campbell et al, 1990)
- PELEPHRY etal. using an attention orienting paradigm, studied ppts who watched an animated woman who directed her attention either toward or away from a checkerboard that appears and flickered in her left or right visual field. It was the found that activity in the STS varied in relation to to shifts in eye gaze direction
LATERALISATION:
2. Ricciardelli et al. (2002) who showed that eye gaze is processed better when presented in the left visual field, as opposed to when it is presented in the right visual field, supporting the idea of a right-hemispheric specialization for eye gaze perception.
- Grosbras et al. (2005) performed a wide meta-analysis of brain-imaging studies, finding that the networks responsible for gaze perception are more similar to those involved in reflexive than to those involved in voluntary shifts of attention and eye movements. The analysis indicated that gaze perception, reflexive shifts of covert attention and visually guided eye movements all activate the temporoparietal junction in proximity of the ascending branch of the STS in the right hemisphere.
Describe Autism
Characterised by difficulties and deficits in social development, and in the development of communication, alongside unusually strong, narrow interests and repetitive behaviour.
They may also be hypersensitive to sensory stimuli
Describe eye gaze and its social role
Gaze (non-verbal cue) plays a central role in social interactions, informing individuals about others’ attention, goals and mental states. Eye gazes are helpful in understanding when peoples words don’t match their mental states or helps support social interaction.
Perception and interpretation of gaze direction are automatic and effortless processes in normal individuals, while they are altered in autistic subject. Given the importance of perceiving others’ gaze, one might expect that it receives specialized processing in the brain. Studies investigating the neural substrates of gaze direction processing have found that the vision of moving eyes activates the STS.
Gaze direction helps to infer understanding of others mental states: individuals who turn their head in the same direction as their gaze may be thinking something different to the individuals who keep their head facing forward but direct their gaze in a different direction.
What role can autism play in understanding the social brain
As people who have autism have impairments/deficits to their theory of mind capabilities and thus their ability to infer other mental states, brain activity should demonstrate differences between the regions activated for them and for normal people
Research on autism and neuropsychology of social processing
RTPFJ:
- LOMBARDO etal. 2011: Attempted to understand the specific neural systems responsible for the impairments in representing mental state information in autism and when they process info about self and others. Used mentalising task (which elicited robust activation of all the regions within standard circuit known to be active when non autistic individual thinks bout self and others)
- – It was found that the rTPFJ functioned atypically in autism: whilst normal peoples rTPFJ was selectively more responsive to think out about thoughts than physical judgements, autistics showed less responsive rTPFJ and specialisation was absent which correlated to social impairment.
STS:
2. SPEZIO 2007 showed pictures of facial expressions to autistics and people with autism don’t pay attention to eye gaze as much as non-autistic individuals. These individuals do not automatically distinguish eye gaze as an especially meaningful cue for perceiving people. Thus asymmetries in STS should occur.
– FRITH 2003 shows that autistics show less activation in the STS during theory of mind tasks but instead show increased activation in this region for a broad range of conditions
MPC:
3. In other areas of the social brain, reduced activity has been found in left medial frontal cortex during an empathizing (theory of mind) task
HAPPE ETAL 1996 compared brain activation (PET) with autistics and controls while reading stories. During tasks that involved mentalising the autisic group showed activation of the same regions of the brain (MPC) as controls but showed significantly reduced activity.
Therefore, showcasing that neural regions of individuals with autism are not activated in the same way as in the brains of individuals without autism. And that their regions that are activated are not sensitive to social cues but are due to more inclusive activation.
AMYGDALA:
4. ASHWIN etal. 2006: investigated basic emotion recognition in people with and without autism. Ppts shown 84 b&w photos of people expressing different emotions, had to choose one emotion for each: results showed that controls were correct 84% of the time but … . Suggests amygdala dysfunction in autism may underlie their difficulties in processing the emotions of others as they were particularly failing at identifying negative, basic emotions known to be associated with amygdala.
General evaluation of social cognition research
- The same brain regions are often activated in relation to the main process of social cognition such as person perception and self-perception. However, caution must be taken when generalising these regions to the ‘social brain; as all brain functions have been adapted for social functions although not uniquely social. Nevertheless, such interdisciplinary perspectives provide the potential to give a deeper understanding of the fundamental processes that underlie social behaviour.
- Understanding social cognitive processes such as inferring others mental states has large practical implications. Social interactions, from collective hunting to playing soccer to criminal justice, critically depend on the ability to infer others’ intentions and beliefs. Such abilities are also at the foundation of major evolutionary conundra. For example, the human aptitude at inferring mental states might be one of the crucial preconditions for the evolution of the cooperative social structure in human societies.
- Context is often very important when understanding the inference of others mental states. An important and common finding (often utilized as a control condition in imaging studies) is that knowing that a particular event or outcome was intentionally caused by another person leads to a different interpretation than knowing that the event was unintentional or was caused by a computer.
- Together, research within this field do not present a consensus on the components of this network. Individual ar- ticles commonly mention some brain areas but neglect to mention others, identify areas not mentioned by other authors, and place a par- ticular emphasis on different areas. The root of this heterogeneity likely lies in the method employed by most previous reviewers. These authors produce reviews based on a qualitative, narrative-based approach, which is vulnerable to various subjective biases that may influence any attempt to summarize the extant literature. MAR 2011
Future research in understanding social cognition
In the near future, we will see more studies that use virtual-reality stimuli, and new techniques such as simultaneous scanning of multiple subjects engaged in mutual social interactions. Both approaches will give us a better approximation to real life, an issue that is vital for investigating social behaviour.
Future studies should also look at group interactions, both within groups and between groups. Group behaviour is an important component of human social behaviour and may differ in some ways from dyadic interactions. YOUNG, 2008
