Week 6 lecture Flashcards
Theory of Mind
The ability to understand that others have thoughts, beliefs, and perspectives different from one’s own.
Social Cognition
The processes involved in understanding the social world, including perception of others’ emotions, intentions, and behaviors.
Building Blocks of Social Interaction
Key components of social communication, including joint attention, social referencing, and social relationships.
Joint Attention
Sharing attention with another person on an object; involves alternating gaze between the object and the person, guided by eye gaze, vocal cues, and body orientation
Social Referencing
The process where infants look to caregivers for cues on how to react to uncertain situations, using emotional expressions or vocal cues to guide behavior
Social Interactions
Exchanges between individuals that form the basis of relationships and social engagement.
Social Relationships
Ongoing interactions that lead to bonds between individuals, influencing behavior and emotional development.
Face Perception
The ability to recognize and interpret facial expressions, which is crucial for understanding social cues.
Voice Perception
Recognition and interpretation of vocal cues, which communicate emotion and intent in social interactions
Body Perception
The ability to understand social cues from body movements and postures.
Emotion Recognition
The process of identifying and interpreting emotional expressions from faces, voices, and body language.
Social Information Gathering
Collecting cues such as eye gaze, facial expressions, and vocal signals to interpret others’ emotions and intentions.
Eye Gaze in Joint Attention
Eye gaze helps share attention between individuals and objects, relying on gaze direction, head orientation, and vocal cues.
Eye Gaze Salience
Eye gaze is a key social cue; infants can detect eye contact from birth and prefer direct eye gaze, which enhances early face processing.
Preferential Looking Paradigm
A method used to show that newborns look longer at direct gazes, demonstrating their early sensitivity to social information.
Posner Cueing Task
designed to measure the time it takes to re-orient attention from one side of the visual field to the other when a misleading cue is given
Infant-Directed Speech (IDS)
A speech style used by adults to engage infants, characterized by slower tempo, higher pitch, and exaggerated intonation, which attracts attention and supports language acquisition.
IDS vs. ADS
Infants prefer Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) over Adult-Directed Speech (ADS) because IDS is more attention-grabbing and emotionally engaging.
Social Referencing: Visual Cliff
An experiment where infants use caregivers’ emotional cues to decide whether to cross a visually ambiguous surface (the “cliff”).
Social Referencing: Novel Toy Study
When 12-month-olds were presented with a novel toy, negative vocal cues from parents led to avoidance of the toy, whereas negative facial cues alone did not change behaviour.
What is Simulation Theory?
A theory suggesting that we understand others by recreating their processes in ourselves. It involves a mechanism shared with emotion recognition and Theory of Mind (ToM), where perception is closely linked to action. This can occur consciously or unconsciously (mirroring), and is thought to underlie empathy.
What is the Mirror Neuron System?
A system of neurons that are active both when performing an action and when observing the same action in others. Evidence from monkey studies suggests these neurons are involved in empathy and imitation, and they activate in regions relevant to emotion processing.
How is the Mirror Neuron System linked to empathy?
Activation in the premotor cortex when viewing actions correlates with empathy questionnaire scores, suggesting a connection between the mirror neuron system and empathy. However, this activation can be influenced by top-down cognitive processing.
What brain regions are involved in the Mirror Neuron System?
The mirror neuron system involves the premotor cortex (for motor representations) and the amygdala and insula (for emotional processing), indicating its role in both imitation and emotion recognition.
What is empathy?
Empathy involves understanding another’s internal states (thoughts, feelings) and reacting to their situation. It includes imagining both how you would react and how the other person would react. Empathy is not just perception-action coupling but a complex emotional and cognitive process.
How can empathy be measured?
Empathy can be measured using Theory of Mind (ToM) vignettes, questionnaires (e.g., “Seeing people cry upsets me”), neural reactions (e.g., seeing others in pain), and emotion recognition tasks like the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” task.
What are the models of empathy according to Zaki & Ochsner?
Empathy involves both mirroring (emotional contagion) and mentalizing (understanding others’ thoughts). The balance between these depends on the context, such as mirroring when seeing someone in pain versus mentalizing when interpreting their behavior.
What are the components of empathy according to Decety & Jackson?
Empathy consists of emotion sharing (simulation), emotion understanding (mentalizing), and emotion regulation (perspective-taking). It requires a shared representation of self and other and the ability to distinguish between them.
What brain regions are activated during empathic accuracy?
Accurate empathy engages the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and premotor cortex, linking it to both mentalizing and the mirror neuron system. This is seen in scenarios like observing social rejection.
When do mirror neurons seem to appear in infants?
Mirror neurons seem to be present in infants as early as 12 months old, although it is unclear how neurons acquire their ‘mirror’ properties. These neurons may play a role in early social cognition and imitation.
What is the difference between emotion sharing and mentalizing?
Emotion sharing (mirroring) refers to feeling others’ emotions, while mentalizing involves understanding their thoughts. These two aspects of empathy often interact, but one does not necessarily imply the other.
How is empathy studied in adolescents using the Cyberball game?
In the Cyberball game experiment, adolescents aged 12-13 show activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and premotor cortex when observing social rejection, suggesting the role of these brain regions in empathic processing during social situations.
