Social cognition

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What's social cognition

Social cognitive psychology/neuroscience: how do brain functions support the cognitive brain processes underlying social behaviour. Case study of Phineas Gage - iron bar penetrated his head damaging orbitofrontal cortex. Physical wound healed and normal cognitive functions returned, but his personality changed.

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Perception of others

Social Brain Hypothesis

  • There is evidence that supports a correlation between neocortex size and social group size (Dunbar, 1980). 
  • Constraints on group size arise from the information-processing capacity of the primate brain, and that the neocortex plays a major role in this

Humans are eager to interact with one another, and understand the behaviour of each other. Interest in others develops at birth, and is a primary source of motivation throughout life. Evidence for this

  • Human infants prefer to look at human faces compared to other objects
  • 2-day infants can mimic facial expressions
  • EEGs of 4-month olds shows infants are quick to process information about faces, and use similar neural structures as adults (Grossman et al, 2007)
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Understanding others

To successfully integrate in social situations, we must be able to understand the mental states of others. Key player in this: Theory of Mind. Sally-Anne task is used to measure theory of mind in children, which most under 4 will fail, as TOM develops as we grow older.

Non-verbal cues can indicate mental states. Another person's gaze can provide important information about their attentional state. Gaze following - the tendency to look in the direction that another person is looking. Infants reliably follow caregivers' head turns within the first year of life (Scaife & Bruner, 1975). Observing shifts of eye gaze by a face presented on a computer screen resulted in faciliated rapid eye movements to the direction of gaze in infants as young as 3 months (Hood et al, 1998).

It is also shown in adults. Adults frequently look at objects being looked at by others (Kuhn et al, 2009). Single cell recordings in monkeys showed that there were cells in the superior temporal sulcus (STS) that are sensitive towards gaze and head direction (Perrett, 1989). STS is involved in integrating eye gaze and mental states in humans too (Pelphery et al, 2003).

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Autism and non-verbal cues

People with autism tend to reason in concrete manners, and thus have difficults in understanding the emotional and mental states of others. Those with autism show little interest in other individuals or social interaction.

Individuals with autism direct attention away from others due to theory of mind deficit. Mindblindness: an inability to properly represent mental states of others (Baron-Cohen, 1995). Evidence for this: children with autism have particular problems solving false belief tasks (Baron-Cohen, 1996).

Children with autism have difficulties reading emotional expressions. Children typically sort faces according to emotional expression, but ASD children tend to use physical features.

Children with autism have no difficulties in identifying where another person is looking, but don't tend to follow the gaze of others spontaneously.

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