thinking about others

Question 1

Prosopagnosia

Answer 1

Damage to occipitotemporal cortex
Unable to recognise familiar faces, including own face

Question 2

Dorsal visual stream

Answer 2

Concerned with locating objects
Where pathway
Occipital to parietal lobes

Question 3

Ventral visual stream

Answer 3

Concerned with identifying objects
What pathway
Occipital to temporal lobes

Question 4

Occipital face area (OFA)

Answer 4

Specialised for faces
Responds to both upright and inverted faces
Defined by greater responses to faces than non facial categories
Sensitive to changes in physical features

Question 5

Fusiform face area (FFA)

Answer 5

Specialised for faces
Responds more to upright faces
Defined by greater responses to faces than non facial categories
Sensitive to changes in identity

Question 6

Superior temporal sulcus (STS)

Answer 6

Responds to faces and bodies
Also responds to other stimuli like bodies and eye gaze
Changeable aspects of faces but not identity

Question 7

Evidence for face-specificity hypothesis in FFA

Answer 7

FFA responds more to faces than non-face categories
Activation to faces is more consistent and much more robust than face-selective activity in OFA and STS
Evidence isn’t conclusive

Question 8

FFA - A question of expertise

Answer 8

We become experts at face discrimination through prolonged experience
FFA sensitive to expert within category visual discrimination

Question 9

Greebles test - Gauthier (1999)

Answer 9

Participants go through rigorous training to identify greebles
Increased response in FFA to upright vs inverted greebles

Question 10

Real world expertise - Gauthier (2000)

Answer 10

Increased FFA activity for cars compared to birds when looking at car experts
Vice versa for bird experts

Question 11

Case study R.M. - Sergent & Signoret (1992)

Answer 11

Prosopagnosic
Could still identify variety of minature cars
Face perception and within-category expertise is not the same and can’t be compared

Question 12

FFA - Only important for face processing?

Answer 12

Haxby and colleagues argued that response to objects in FFA might be important too
Prosopagnosia and visual agnosia speak against this idea

Question 13

Double dissociation Calder & Young (2005)

Answer 13

Double dissociation needed for separate routes for identity and expression
Impaired recognition of facial identity but not other cues (name, voice) with preserved facial expression recognition

Question 14

Emotional response to familiar faces

Answer 14

Emotional response to neutral familiar faces can be measured by skin conductance response (SCR) - automatic and unconscious
Familiar faces elicit greater SCT than unfamiliar faces, even in prosopagnosics!!!

Question 15

Capgras delusion

Answer 15

Believe familiar people have been replaced by an imposter

Question 16

What can eye gaze tell us about another person?

Answer 16

Signals where someone is looking and where they are putting their attention

Question 17

Joint attention

Answer 17

Ability to use gesture and eye contact to coordinate attention with another person to share experience of an object or an event

Question 18

Direct gaze

Answer 18

Babies as young as four days old prefer direct gaze to averted gaze
Speakers who make eye contact rated more pleasant and less nervous
Can also be a sign of aggression, dominance and threat

Question 19

Averted gaze

Answer 19

Signals attention oriented elsewhere
Important cue for information in environment

Question 20

Effect of eye gaze on facial expression

Answer 20

Anger recognised faster with direct gaze, fear with averted gaze

Question 21

Gaze cueing

Answer 21

Averted gaze cues trigger automatic shift of attention, even when an observer is trying to ignore the cue

Question 22

Top down modulation of gaze cueing

Answer 22

Mental state attribution affects rapid, reflexic components of gaze following

Question 23

Brain mechanisms for processing eye gaze - Perrett et al (1985, 1992)

Answer 23

Cells in superior temporal sulcus responsive to faces or heads are also to head orientation
Subset of cells sensitive to head orientation are also sensitive to gaze direction

Question 24

Posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and eye gaze

Answer 24

pSTS seems involved when different gaze direction signal different social intentions
pSTS responded more to eye gaze that was incongruent with participants’ expectations

Question 25

Amygdala and eye gaze

Answer 25

Patient with amygdala lesions will not look at eyes in social interactions

Question 26

Eye gaze as cue for mental states - brain networks

Answer 26

pSTS, medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala

Question 27

Eye gaze as cue for environmental states - brain networks

Answer 27

Inferior parietal cortex and anterior superior temporal sulcus

Question 28

Autism and eye gaze

Answer 28

Reduced eye contact - diagnostic criteria for autism
Absence of joint attention
Children with autism have difficulty understanding the social significance of eye gaze

Question 29

What is theory of mind

Answer 29

Understanding the mental states of others

Question 30

Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?

Answer 30

Language trained chimpanzee shown videos of familiar human facing obstacles in certain situations then shown two pictures, one of which represented a solution
Chimp consistently chose correct item
Interpreted as evidence that chimp understood actor’s goal HOWEVER interpretation has been criticised

Question 31

False belief task - true test of theory of mind

Answer 31

False beliefs are when someone else holds a mental state different from one’s own and from the current state of reality
False beliefs are important because they exist only in the other’s mind - they don’t reflect reality but only the other’s beliefs about reality

Question 32

Development over time reflected in false belief task

Answer 32

Most 3 year old children are egocentric and make errors on false belief task
By 4 to 5 years, can answer false belief tasks correctly

Question 33

Theory-theory

Answer 33

Store concepts and principles about mental states and how they affect behaviour

Question 34

Simulation theory

Answer 34

Reason about others’ mental states based on our own mental states and even stimulations

Question 34

Modularity account

Answer 34

Specific module for theory of mind
Specific set of brain regions

Question 34

Two system model

Answer 34

Low level system which gives rise to implicit theory of mind
High level system based on reasoning and explicit representation of mental states

Question 35

Theory of mind in adults

Answer 35

Adults allow their own knowledge to bias their mental state attribution to others
When attributing mental states under uncertainty, adults use heuristic that other people are similar to themselves
Overcoming egocentric bias is cognitively effortful

Question 36

Executive function

Answer 36

Set of cognitive processes involved in flexible goal-directed behaviour

Question 37

Language and mental state attribution

Answer 37

Language ability in typically developing children predicts success on false belief task, irrespective of age
Deaf children with delayed language acquisition also show delays in succeeding on false belief tasks
Shows that language is important for development of mental state attribution
Once normal theory of mind has developed, language does not appear to play a critical role

Question 38

Set of brain regions engaged for mental state attribution stories

Answer 38

Medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)
Temporoparietal junction (TPJ)
Temporal pole (TP)

Question 39

mPFC damage and theory of mind

Answer 39

Amount of damage to mPFC was correlated with performance on faux pas task

Question 40

Right TPJ

Answer 40

rTPJ involved in reasoning about mental states, relative to closely matched reasoning tasks without mental content