1. Dr. Fan-pei Gloria Yang 楊梵孛
Social Cognition
Dr. Fan-pei Gloria Yang
楊梵孛

2. Before we begin… (1/3) Social cognitive neuroscience:
it is a new field that aims to tackle the problem of understanding how brain function supports the cognitive processes underlying social behavior.

3. Before we begin… (2/3)
2. Fundamental questions that psychologists study:
(1) How do we get to know ourselves?
(2) How do we get to know others? (3) What can the brain tell us about possible similarities in the processes through which we come to know ourselves and other people?

4. Before we begin… (3/3)
(4) How do we make decisions that guided by social knowledge?
(5) What can the brain tell us about the psychological functions that might be involved in this process?

5. Outline
1. Self-perception and Self-knowledge 2. Perception of other people 3. Convergence in the perception of self and others 4. Social knowledge 5. Summary

6. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
A. Introduction:
(1) Self-perception:
a unique social cognitive process because the self is
simultaneously the perceiver and the perveived.
Our sense of self relies partially on perceiving a distinction
between our self-knowledge and the characteristics,
desires and thoughts of other individuals.

7. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
B. Self-referential processing:
Why do we remember some information better than other information?
A: Fergus Craik and Rober Lockhart (1972) said that the depth of processing profoundly affects the storage of information.
Self-referent effect:
the enhanced memory for information processed in relation to the self.

8. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
(3) Why is memory so much better for information processed in relation to the self? A: Two hypotheses. a) The self represents an extreme endpoint of the depth-of- processing effect, by which memory is significantly improved as information is processed. b) The self is actually a special cognitive structure with unique mnemonic or organizational elements that promote processing in a way that is distinct from all other cognitive structures.

9. 3 experimental conditions:
(i) in relation to the self
(“Does this trait describe you?”)
(ii) In relation to another people
(“ Does this trait describe SOMEONE?”)
(iii) In relation to its printed format
(“Is this word presented in uppercase letters?”)

10. MPFC activity is associated with self-referential processing when compared to processing words in relation to another person (“Other”) or the printed format of the words.

11. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
(4) MPFC ( medical prefrontal cortex) : the level of activity in the MPFC predicted which items would be remembered on the surprise memory test. (Macrae et.al., 2004) (5) Stanely Klein & Santa Barbara (1992): their experimental paradigm examines the effect of self-description judgments on the accessibility of autobiographical memories.

12. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
(6) Our memory for information processed in relation to ourselves is significantly stronger than for information processed in other ways. (7) A more complete understanding of the psychological role of the MPCF in self-judgment requires more research.

13. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
Self-reference as a Baseline mode of brain function
The medial prefrontal cortex, the region associated with self-referential processing, has unique physiological properties that may permit self-referential processing to occur even when we are not actively trying to think about ourselves.
Key point: Understanding the physiological properties of the MPFC when the brain is at rest, as well as how this region’s activity relates to specific cognitive tasks.

14. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
Self-reference as a Baseline mode of brain function
(3) Why would the brain consume so much of the body’s energy when it is not engaged in a specific cognitive task?
-> When individuals are at “rest”, their brains continue to engage in a number of psychological processes.
(4) The rest is a fairly infrequent state in our daily lives. In addition, the psychological meaning assigned to various regions in the default network is based on studies that found activation above baseline.

15. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
D. Self-perception as a motivated process
The distinct higher order prefrontal regions allow people to selectively focus on positive aspects of themselves and at the same time prevent them from deviating too far from reality.
The most ventral portion of the anterior cingulated cortex is responsible for focusing attention on positive information about the self comported to negative information.

16. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
D. Self-perception as a motivated process
Differences in activity in the ventral anterior cigulate cortex were associated with making judgments of positive compared to negative adjectives.
Although self-perceptions are sometimes biased in a positive direction, on average self-perceptions are not delusional or completely detached from reality.

17. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
Self-perception as a motivated process
The orbitofontal cortex is one brain region that may help people have relatively accurate insight into their behavior. Patients with damage to the orbitofrontal cortex tend to have unrealistically positive self-views.
In sum, the medial prefrontal cortex is associated with superior memory for information processed in relation to the self and may promote chronic self-referential processing through its high baseline level of metabolism.

18. Self-perception and Self-knowledge
Self-perception as a motivated process
(7) The anterior cingulate cortex is important for selectively attending to positive information about the self, but orbitofrontal cortex function ensures that positively biased self-views do not deviate too far from reality.

20. Perception of other people
Understanding the mental status of others
The ability to infer the current mental state of others- their beliefs and desires- is critical for successful performance across a wide range of social actions, such as cooperation, empathizing, and accurately anticipating behavior.
Theory of mind [Mentalizing] (David Premack & Guy Woodruff (1978)) – describe our ability to make inferences about the mental states of other people.

21. Perception of other people
A. Understanding the mental status of others (3) Our ability to recognize the mismatch between outward behavior and intentions will be useful for recognizing people who should not be trusted. B. The Neural Correlates of Theory of Mind (1) MPFC plays a strong role when people form impressions of the personality of another individual compared to when they are required to process other information about another individual.
B 的第一點可參照 Figure 14.7, p.608)

22. Perception of other people
B. The Neural Correlates of Theory of Mind
(2) The temporoparietal junction in the right hemisphere (rTPJ) is another brain region which has been associated with making inferences about other people’s mental states.
Localizer task: Sall-Anne False-Belief Task (Figure 14.8)
( Participants view a series of cartoons that depict scenarios
involving the characters Sally and Anne.)
-> Activity in the rTPJ is associated with reasoning about other people’s mental states
. (Yet, rTPJ does not respond to any condition involving socially relevant information about other people. )

23. Figure 14.8
Sally-Anne False-Belief Task for investigation theory of Mind.
Task: To determine whether children can interpret what Sally is thinking about the location of the marble.

24. Perception of other people
B. The Neural Correlates of Theory of Mind (3) How should we think about the roles of the rTPJ and MPFC in reasoning about mental states? Two different hypotheses. a) rTPJ reasons about the mental of other people. MPFC broadly supports reasoning about other people including but not limited to their mental states. b) MPFC supports reasoning about social tasks. rTPJ is important for redirecting attention in both social and nonsocial tasks.

25. Perception of other people
B. The Neural Correlates of Theory of Mind (4) Some studies supports the same region of rTPJ supports the control of attention for social and nonsocial stimuli. C. Integrating nonverbal cues and mental states. (1) Patients with language comprehension deficits are better at detecting when someone is lying than are patients without language deficits or control participants. ( Etcoff et al., 2000).

26. Perception of other people
C. Integrating nonverbal cues and mental states. (2) Children at first year develop join attention, the ability to monitor another person’s attention, by noticing the direction of their eye gaze. (3) STS ( superior temporal sulcus) not only signals the focus of attention of another individual, but provides very important social signals.
(3) STS: when individual may be trying to direct our attention away from a novel object and when we have become the focus of another person’s attention.

27. Perception of other people
Autism: Deficits in understanding the minds and nonverbal cues of other people?
Autism: a pervasive developmental disorder associated with impaired social interaction. People with autism tend to in a very concrete manner, so it is difficult to appreciate the mental and emotional states of other people.

28. Perception of other people
Autism: Deficits in understanding the minds and nonverbal cues of other people?
(2) They tend to show little interest in other individuals or social interactions, preferring to focus on their internal thoughts or inanimate external stimuli.
(3) They prefer routine activities and may become upset if there routines are interrupted.

29. Perception of other people
Autism: Deficits in understanding the minds and nonverbal cues of other people?
(4) Baron-Cohen et al., 1995: Mindblindness
(theory of mind deficiencies)
The mindblindness associated with autism extends to impaired use of nonverbal cues to reason about another person’s internal states.

30. Perception of other people
Autism: Deficits in understanding the minds and nonverbal cues of other people?
(5) They have difficulty identifying emotion and mental states from facial expressions (compared to those healthy participants).
Individuals with autism do not active the neural regions associated with person perception (compared to individuals without autism).

31. Perception of other people
Autism: Deficits in understanding the minds and nonverbal cues of other people?
(7) Autism not only may be associated with abnormal brain function and volume, but affect the default brain network.
(8) Kennedy et al. (2006): Autism patients do not significantly deactivate their MPFC when performing non-self-referential tasks.
-> People with autism may continuously maintain a high level of self-referential focus.

32. Convergence in the perception of self and others
Simulation theory: theory of mind is based on an ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another person, using our own minds to simulate what might be going on in the minds of someone else.

33. Convergence in the perception of self and others
Medial Prefrontal cortex: Similar and close others
The theory of simulation suggests an intrinsic relation between the perception of self and the perception of others.
(2) MPFC is important for thinking about the self and other people when a common psychological process underlies the thought processes.

34. Convergence in the perception of self and others
Empathy :
the process of purposely puts oneself in another person’s shoes in order to understand that person’s thoughts and feelings.
Mirror neurons may be a critical physiological mechanism that supports our ability to empathize with others by permitting us to simulate their internal states within our own bodies.

35. Convergence in the perception of self and others
Empathy :
(2) Mirror neurons associated with empathy are located in regions more typically associated with emotional states.
(3) Singer et al. (2004) : both experiencing physical pain in oneself and perceiving physical pain in others activate the insula and anterior cigulate.
(4) Cheng et al. (2007): individual differences in empathy modulate the activation of the mirror neurons related to physical pain.

36. Social Knowledge Representation of social knowledge.
One of the most complicated aspects of social behavior is that there are few straightforward rules.
Patients with prefrontal cortex damage do not take context into account. Instead, they execute prototypical responses to objects in their environment.

37. Social Knowledge
(3) Lhermitte et al. (1983): Utilization behavior & Imitative behavior characterize the extreme dependency on prototypical responses for guiding behavior. (4) Patients with orbitofrontal cortex damage have the most difficulty when they need to draw on their social knowledge to make sense of social interactions. (5) Those patients were likely to introduce impolite conversation topics.

38. Social Knowledge
(6) Those patients also have difficulties to experience embarrassment that might motivate them to behave differently in the future. (7) Those patients never generate the emotional feedback they need to change their future behavior. (8) The orbitofrontal cortex is important for learning social knowledge and applying it to specific social interactions.

39. Social Knowledge B. Using social knowledge to make decisions.
Damasio (1991):
somatic marker hypothesis –
emotional information in the form of physiological arousal is needed to guide decision making.

40. Social Knowledge
The orbitofronal cortex works with other brain regions to consider previous situations that elicited similar patterns of somatic change.
Patients with orbitofrontal damage learn the task but fail to favor the decks that result in net winnings.
The orbitofrontal cortex helps us choose the correct behaviors not by accessing somatic markers but by recognizing which rules are applicable in a particular situation.

41. Social Knowledge C. Neuroeconomics
It integrates psyhoclogy, neuroscience and economics to yield an understanding of how people make decisions (Sanfey et al., 2006).
Economic models of decision making assume that people should make rational decisions, decision that maximize their rewards and minimize their losses.
How neural regions that are associated with emotion and cognition are engaged by decisions that are more or less rational.

42. Social Knowledge
C. Neuroeconomics (4) The consideration of unfair offers was associated with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula activity. (5) Cooperation was related to areas associated with reward states, such as the nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate , and caudate nucleus. (6) This activation reflects a positive emotion experiences that reinforces presocial decision making.

43. Social Knowledge
Figure 14.18
A gambling task in which participants can choose to gamble in the context of a guaranteed gain (a) or a guaranteed loss in (b).

44. Social Knowledge
D. Moral decisions (1) Greene et al. (2001, 2004): we make difference choices in the trolley and footbridge dilemmas because the level of personal involvement in causing the single death differentially engages emotional decision making. (2) Greene’s fMRI studies : contrasted moral dilemmas involving high levels of personal engagement with dilemmas involving low levels of personal engagement.

45. Social Knowledge
D. Moral decisions (3) Personal dilemmas and impersonal dilemmas were associated with distinct patterns of activation. (4) Impersonal decisions were associated with greater activation in the right lateral prefrontal cortex and bilateral parietal lobe, areas associated with working memory. (5) The difference in our moral decision arises in relation to the extent that we permit emotions influence our decisions about what is morally acceptable.

46. Social Knowledge
The trolley problem. Would you be willing to sacrifice one life in order to save five lives?
《正義：一場思辨之旅》之電車問題 (中文字幕)

47. Summary (1/5)
The medial prefrontal cortex supports the particularly deep manner in which we encode information about ourselves.
The increased baseline metabolism in this region may indicate that we chronically engage in self-referential thought, and many other processes represent momentary diversions of our cognitive recourse from self-referential thought.

48. Summary (2/5) (3) Understanding other people heavily relies on our
ability to use non-verbal cues such as facial
expression and eye gaze to gather information
about possible mental states.
(4) Structures , such as, the medial prefrontal cortex,
right temporoparietal junction, superior temporal
sulcus, fusiform face area, and amygdala support
our ability to make inferences about other people’s
minds.

49. Summary (3/5) (5) Autism: reinforces the theory that these regions
work together to support theory-of-mind abilities.
(6) The medial prefrontal cortex may support the
perception of both self and others when we drawn
on properties of self-perception to make sense of
other people.

50. Summary (4/5) (7) Need to understand the rules for social
interactions and how to make decisions to satisfy
the multitude of rules that govern a particular
social interaction.
(8) The process of making social decisions engages a
large network of neural structures, including the
orbitofrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex, the amygadala, the anterior cingulate, the
medial preforntal cortex, the caudate, and the
insula.

51. Summary (5/5) (9) Brain regions are activated in relation to the 3
main processed of social cognition:
Self-perceptions, person perceptions, and social
knowledge  Social Brian
(10) However, almost every brain function has been
adapted for social functions, even if they are not
uniquely social,.