Foresight Cognitive Systems Project Social Cognition Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience University College London Foresight Cognitive Systems Project Social Cognition Depriving people of social interaction is v. punishing Uta Frith and Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

Interdisciplinary interest Social psychology Developmental psychology Comparative psychology Social Cognition Cognitive neuroscience Computer science and artificial intelligence

Social Cognition: a new domain of Cognitive Neuroscience Social Cognition: Any cognitive process that involves other people Focus on computational and neural mechanisms >3 Social Cognition special issues in Neuroscience journals in the past year Danger of too broad a definition Long tradition of study of social interaction: Animal and Human We narrow down: Processes which imply an effect of one person on another We emphasise cognition: Mechanisms that can be implemented computationally and at the neural level. We emphasise specificity: All cognitive processes (language, memory)are involved in social cognition. But, some processes specifically sustain the effect of one person on another. The brain distinguishes intentional and mechanical events, Animate and inanimate objects, Agents and non-agents Faces and objects

Mechanisms of Social Cognition This is a list of mechanisms that have a claim to being considered. They are amenable to being understood in computational and neural models. These mechanisms are currently topics of cognitive neuroscience. As well as topics of artificial systems.They appear very early in life From birth human infants prefer faces. The brain specialises in face recognition: FFA Basic motional expressions are recognised even without awareness. Amygdala. I

Recognising emotional expressions Recognising faces Recognising emotional expressions This is a list of mechanisms that have a claim to being considered. They are amenable to being understood in computational and neural models. These mechanisms are currently topics of cognitive neuroscience. As well as topics of artificial systems.They appear very early in life From birth human infants prefer faces. The brain specialises in face recognition: FFA Basic motional expressions are recognised even without awareness. Amygdala. I

Detecting eye gaze Infants show eye gaze reflex. They look where another person is looking. STS

Perceiving biological motion Infants detect biological motion -3 m. Movie: bringing heap of dots to life. STS

Imitation These mechanisms appear in the second year of life in humans. From about 18 months Meltzoff showed that newborns have a primitive form of imitation of certain mouth movements. Robots can learn to imitate. True flexible (not slavish) imitation later.

Theory of Mind ToM - the intuitive ability to attribute mental states, desired, beliefs to others. Burgeoning research since 1978 Cartoon 1: funny if you appreciate the fact that the angler at the bottom does not know that the angler at the top is fishing his baits, And the fact that both want to get fish. Cartoon 2: funny without attributing knowledge or desire to angler The line was in the same position so long that a spider built a web.

Complex Emotions and processes: Deception Trustworthiness Embarrassment Empathy Morality Complex emotions: guilt, shame, trust, embarrassment, envy, jealousy - stuff of novels. More than amygdala response, but also awareness of one feeling state Empathy and morality: Mechanism may be related to an automatic response to distress.

When social communication fails Antisocial behaviour Conduct disorder Autism Schizophrenia Psychopathy These disorders are primarily disorders of social communication Autism: ToM mechanisms failure has been shown. Lack of intuitive ability to mentalise Also in Schizophrenia: paranoid ideas suggest Overactive mental state attribution Poor sharing of mental states Antisocial behaviour: confounding of biological and environmental factors. Violence and aggression not the same as psychopathy. Psychopathy: developmental disorder Amygdala? Genetic basis likely No autonomic response to distress cues No recognition of morally wrong acts. No remorse.

Current and future interests Life span development: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age Genetics Social IQ Prejudice Imitating role models Fanaticism Moral responsibility, free will Although we crave social ineractions, we also suffer from them. We would like to know how to handle poor interactions, avoid damaging conflict. Spin is reputation management. We all need it From adolescence we wake up to this Responsibility. How to improve it? We are usually unaware of prejudice.We need to be made aware. How? Imitation of bad role models is a concern: Violence on TV - does it promote violence? When are good role models imitated? Social IQ: people differ in social competence. Can we measure this? Brainwashing: Why are some people turned into fantics, fundamentalists? Cultural evolution: Can we overcome primitive and outdated biological reflexes? Moral Responsibility: How can we understand genetics properly? It wasn’t me - it was my genes!

Social Robots? Is human social interaction special? Artificial agent communication, learning and teaching Facial and emotion recognition in machines Cars that respond to emotion Electronic aids for social interaction Robot companions, toys Not only young infants and adults. Also adolescents Also old age Robots will play an increasing role as teachers, companions? (Marvin - who is so depressed.) This graceful example of a difficult motor task kindly provided by Daniel Wolpert shows that a difficult social task might also be mastered by robots Could we pop a daily pill to improve our ability to show empathy, switch points of view? Are there know out genes that make an animal antisocial or asocial? Disorders of neuro-genetic origin can be remediated. Now by compensatory learning. In the future by cognitive engineering?