Week 7 Lecture 7 - the social and emotional brain 2

Question 1

What is the social brain hypothesis?

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

What does social cognition focus on?

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

What does social cognition include?

Answer 3

• Perception of emotions and facial
  expressions
• Perception of eye gaze direction of others
• Prediction of the thoughts underlying the
  behaviour of others

Question 4

Faces are not only a subject for visual
perception because they are social
objects
What else do they carry information
about?

Answer 4

• Another person’s emotional states
• Intentions (eye-gaze)
• Membership in social categories (race, gender)
• Disposition (trustworthiness)

Question 5

What is Capgras syndrome?

Answer 5

• 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  have been replaced by identical looking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

Question 6

Who produces greater skin conductance responses (SCRs) to personally familiar faces?

General pop. or patients with Capgras delusions?

Answer 6

General pop.

Question 7

What were the results from Fantz’s 1961 “looking chamber” study?

Answer 7

Infants preferred the real face, looked a bit less at the scrambled face and ignored the control pattern

Question 8

Johnson et al., 1991 tested face processing in newborns within an hour after birth.

What did they find?

Answer 8

• Results: newborns also orient to face-like patterns
• Newborns are sensitive to the structure of the human face

Question 9

Reid et al., 2017 examined fetal head
turns to visually presented up- right and
inverted face-like stimuli

What did they find and conclude?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

What do EEG/ERP and fMRI studies show about the innate preference for faces compared to visual system development?

Answer 10

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)

Question 11

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?

Answer 11

• 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

Question 12

What are the results and conclusions from the visual cliff experiment (Sorce et al., 1985)?

Answer 12

• 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

Question 13

What is social referencing?

Answer 13

• Facial expressions regulate behaviour most clearly in contexts of uncertainty
• caregiver’s facial expression of emotion influences the infants’ decision

Question 14

Information from the eye region is a
key social cue for understanding others

Why?

Answer 14

• Distinguishes between emotions
• Establishes dyadic communication
• Orient attentions to critical objects
• Gives clues about intention

Question 15

What does mutual gaze provide the main model of?

Answer 15

Establishing a communicative context between humans

Question 16

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?

Answer 16

• 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)

Question 17

Baron-Cohen et al., 1995 studied eye gaze detection in autism.

What was found?

Answer 17

• 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?”

Question 18

An fMRI study by Hoffman & Haxby, 2000 investigated the brain bases of eye-gaze detection.

What was found?

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Pelphrey et al., 2005 investigated brain bases of eye-gaze detection in autism.

What was the task used?

Answer 19

press a button when eyes move

Question 20

Pelphrey et al., 2005 investigated brain bases of eye-gaze detection in autism.

What were the results?

Answer 20

• 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

Question 21

What is empathy?

Answer 21

• An emotional reaction to or understanding of another person’s feelings
• ability to infer emotional experiences

Question 22

What are the 2 components of empathy?

Answer 22

• affective
• cognitive

Question 23

What are two theories of empathy?

Answer 23

• Mirroring (Simulation Theory, ST) –affective component
• Mentalising (Theory of Mind, ToM) – cognitive component

Question 24

What is mentalising and ToM?

Answer 24

• 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

Question 25

An fMRI study by Völlm et al, 2005 investigated the neural bases of empathy and ToM.

What conditions were used?

Answer 25

Theory of mind condition –>‘What will the main character do next?’’

Empathy condition –> ‘‘What will make the main character feel better?’’

Question 26

An fMRI study by Völlm et al, 2005 investigated the neural bases of empathy and ToM.

What were the results?

Answer 26

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

Question 27

What did Frith & Frith, 2003 find as the neural basis of ToM?

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

How is ToM measured?

Answer 28

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

Question 29

What is the Sally-Anne task?

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

What are some criticisms of the Sally-Anne task?

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

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?

Answer 31

• 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?

Question 32

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?

Answer 32

• 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

Question 33

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?

Answer 33

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

Question 34

What was the idea behind Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?

Answer 34

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

Question 35

What were the conditions of Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?

Answer 35

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

Question 36

What were the results and conclusions of Kovacs, Teglas & Endress, 2010 Smurf Study?

Answer 36

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