Week 7 Lecture 7 - the social and emotional brain 2 Flashcards
What is the social brain hypothesis?
- Human primates have unusually large
brains for body size. - Brain is one of the most ”expensive” organ in terms of running costs
- The brain has evolved to deal with the
complex information we are presented
with in a largely social world. - Computational demands of living in large, complex societies that selected for large brains
What does social cognition focus on?
- Focuses on how people process, store,
and apply information about other
people and social situations - We infer, interpret, encode, decode
social information and social situations
What does social cognition include?
- Perception of emotions and facial
expressions - Perception of eye gaze direction of others
- Prediction of the thoughts underlying the
behaviour of others
Faces are not only a subject for visual
perception because they are social
objects
What else do they carry information
about?
- Another person’s emotional states
- Intentions (eye-gaze)
- Membership in social categories (race, gender)
- Disposition (trustworthiness)
What is Capgras syndrome?
- a person believes that their loved ones
have been replaced by identical looking
imposters or body-doubles - Consciously recognise the person but
lack emotional response to them
Who produces greater skin conductance responses (SCRs) to personally familiar faces?
General pop. or patients with Capgras delusions?
General pop.
What were the results from Fantz’s 1961 “looking chamber” study?
Infants preferred the real face, looked a bit less at the scrambled face and ignored the control pattern
Johnson et al., 1991 tested face processing in newborns within an hour after birth.
What did they find?
- Results: newborns also orient to face-like patterns
- Newborns are sensitive to the structure of the human face
Reid et al., 2017 examined fetal head
turns to visually presented up- right and
inverted face-like stimuli
What did they find and conclude?
Results:
- Fetuses (at around 34 weeks of gestation) are more likely to engage with stimuli featuring an upright face-like configuration than with an inverted configuration
Conclusion:
- postnatal experience is not necessary for the emergence of a preference for
face-like stimuli
What do EEG/ERP and fMRI studies show about the innate preference for faces compared to visual system development?
EEG/ERP and fMRI studies show that although large-scale organisation of visual brain areas in 4-6-month-old infants is
already similar to adult brains (e.g. fusiform face area), but is subsequently refined through development (experience,
maturation)
A fNIRS study by Di Lorenzo et al.,
2019 aimed to investigate whether areas known to be involved in face and facial expression processing in adults are activated in 5-month-olds for emotional faces.
What did they find?
- right occipital area selectively responds
to faces = the face processing network is
activated at 5 months. - no differences between happy and
fearful faces = sensitivity to facial emotions immature at this age
What are the results and conclusions from the visual cliff experiment (Sorce et al., 1985)?
- Infants (12 months)
Results: - Mother expressed joy or interest –infants crossed
- Mother expressed fear or anger – infants didn’t cross
- No depth – infants crossed irrespectively of mother’s expression
Conclusion:
- by 1 year of age infants are able to process facial expressions and use them for decision making
What is social referencing?
- Facial expressions regulate behaviour most clearly in contexts of uncertainty
- caregiver’s facial expression of emotion influences the infants’ decision
Information from the eye region is a
key social cue for understanding others
Why?
- Distinguishes between emotions
- Establishes dyadic communication
- Orient attentions to critical objects
- Gives clues about intention
What does mutual gaze provide the main model of?
Establishing a communicative context between humans
Farroni et al, 2002 studied newborns (within the first 5 days of life) in a looking time study and 4-months-olds in an EEG study to see whether eye-gaze detection was innate.
What were the results?
- Newborns prefer to look at faces that engage them in mutual gaze
- 4-month-olds show enhanced neural processing of direct gaze (infant N170 ERP)
Baron-Cohen et al., 1995 studied eye gaze detection in autism.
What was found?
- intact perception of eye gaze –> e.g., “is the boy looking at you?”
- difficulty in using eye gaze information to predict behaviour –> “which one does Charlie want?”
An fMRI study by Hoffman & Haxby, 2000 investigated the brain bases of eye-gaze detection.
What was found?
STS (Superior Temporal Sulcus):
- Activated in the eye gaze detection task
- Involved in changeable features
- Lesion impair the ability to detect gaze direction
FFA (Fusiform Face Area):
- Activated in the face identity task
- Processing of unchangeable features of facial features
Pelphrey et al., 2005 investigated brain bases of eye-gaze detection in autism.
What was the task used?
press a button when eyes move
Pelphrey et al., 2005 investigated brain bases of eye-gaze detection in autism.
What were the results?
- STS activity for typically developing and autistic participants
Autism:
- no difference between incongruent versus incongruent trials
- perception of the gaze shift not linked with its mentalistic significance
What is empathy?
- An emotional reaction to or understanding of another person’s feelings
- ability to infer emotional experiences
What are the 2 components of empathy?
- affective
- cognitive
What are two theories of empathy?
- Mirroring (Simulation Theory, ST) –affective component
- Mentalising (Theory of Mind, ToM) – cognitive component
What is mentalising and ToM?
- the ability to infer mental states (desires, feelings) and intentions of others
Concerned with cognitive aspects of empathy:
- Reasoning about mental states
- Attributing mental states
An fMRI study by Völlm et al, 2005 investigated the neural bases of empathy and ToM.
What conditions were used?
Theory of mind condition –>‘What will the main character do next?’’
Empathy condition –> ‘‘What will make the main character feel better?’’
An fMRI study by Völlm et al, 2005 investigated the neural bases of empathy and ToM.
What were the results?
Both empathy and ToM activated:
- the medial prefrontal cortex,
- temporoparietal junction
- temporal poles
- ToM specific activity: e.g. orbitofrontal cortex
- Empathy specific activity: e.g. amygdala
What did Frith & Frith, 2003 find as the neural basis of ToM?
Temporal poles:
- Language and semantic memory
- Possible role: Representing/activating semantic schemas that specify current social and emotional context
Parieto-temporal junction:
- Activated by perception of biological motion, eye-gaze, moving mouth and living things
- Possible role: detecting other agents
- Medial prefrontal cortex:
- Activated more by thinking about people than thinking about objects
- Activated more by thinking about minds than physical characteristics
- Pragmatics of language: metaphors, irony – intention needs to be derived in order to understand
- Possible Role: binding together different kinds of info: actions, agents, goals etc.
How is ToM measured?
False belief tests:
- Other person holds belief that differs from ours & reality
- One must decouple the state of someone’s mind from the state of the world
- Participants typically have to predict a person’s behaviour based on the person’s false belief while ignoring their own true belief
What is the Sally-Anne task?
- Question: “Where will Sally look for her ball?”
- Correct answer: “in the basket”
- Typically developed children until about 4-5 years will say “in the box”
- Conclusion: they cannot yet form a
representation of other persons mental
state
What are some criticisms of the Sally-Anne task?
- False belief tasks not only involve representing others’ mental states
Involves inhibition and problem solving –> specifically, they need to deal with two conflicting representations:
- Sally’s (false) belief that the ball is in the basket
- their own (true) belief that the ball is in the box,
and to inhibit their own belief when they predict Sally’s behaviour
- What if ToM is present earlier, but we can’t measure it using a traditional false belief task
What if we use a “skill” that even younger children are good at:
- Giving and taking (14-18 months) –> Repacholi & Gopnik (1997)
- Looking (7 months) –> Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010
Repacholi & Gopnik (1997) used a food-request procedure to explore the understanding of other people’s desires in 14- and 18-month-olds
What was the method?
- Children observed an experimenter expressing disgust as she/he tasted 1 type of food and happiness as she/he tasted another type of food
- Then the experimenter asked for some food
- Can children take into account the experimenter preference?
Repacholi & Gopnik (1997) used a food-request procedure to explore the understanding of other people’s desires in 14- and 18-month-olds
What was the hypothesis?
- If children can’t take into account the experimenter’s desire then they will offer whichever food they themselves preferred
- If children will infer that the experimenter wanted the food associated with her/his prior positive affect then they understand that the experimenter’s desires might differ from their own
Repacholi & Gopnik (1997) used a food-request procedure to explore the understanding of other people’s desires in 14- and 18-month-olds
What was the results and conclusion?
Results:
- 14-month-olds: 54% percent gave the preferred food to the experimenter
- 18-month-olds: 92% gave the preferred food to the experimenter
Conclusion:
- even 18-month-olds can be able to take into account others’ perspective and preferences
What was the idea behind Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?
if social information processing and ToM
abilities are so important (and possibly innate):
- then computing others’ beliefs should be
spontaneous and automatic
- and others’ beliefs should be computed online and effortlessly
What were the conditions of Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?
True belief
- smurf and participant has the same knowledge
- outcome is not surprising for either
False belief
- smurf and participant has different knowledge
- outcome is surprising for smurf
but not for participant
What were the results and conclusions of Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?
Results:
- Surprise reaction when the outcome was not in line with the smurf’s belief (but in line with infant’s belief)
Conclusion:
- The beliefs of the agent influenced the infants’ looking behaviour, even though they clashed with the infants’ own beliefs
- Infants computed the agent’s (smurf’s) belief
