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
