The social mind

Theory of Mind develops

- 6-7 = know when someone is being ironic - 9-10 = judge mental states by examining eyes - ASD = impaired

Theory of mind - Premack & Woodruff, 1978

- Ability to reason to other peoples mental states - Cues (facial expressions, gestures etc.) can help determine a persons mental state

ASD and ToM

- Castelli et al, 2002: fMRI - Animated shapes to ASD and controls - Compared BOLD responses when shapes moved at random - ASD group = gave fewer mental state related discriptions - ASD = underactivation in all regions (MPFC, TPJ, STS) - ASD = no trouble perceiving the stimulus = association and interpreting their meaning was impaired

Typical development of theory of mind

- Children have innate preferences for social stimuli - Batki et al (2000) = babies prefered to look at human face rather than non-social objects - especially if eyes were open - Grossman et al (2007) = enhanced ERPs in occipital face processing areas for direct eye contact compared to averted gaze - Joint attention

Modularity theory (Leslie et al, 2004)

- Innate mechanisms which allow us to reason with mental states - Present at birth but develops over time - Innate ability to see where everyone else is looking = important for lang and development - Evidence = children preference for social stimuli - Consistent with Baron-Cohen Eye direction director hypothesis

Temporoparietal junction (TPJ)

- Involved in reasoning with others and their mental states - right TPJ important - Role of shifting attention in ToM - Saxe & Kanwisher (2003) - specificity > Compared activity in TPJ with extrastraite body areas (EBA: responds to perceptions of bodies) > Task 1 was looking at pictures of bodies, task 2 was think of mental states of those people in the photos > Task 1 = acitvated EBA and not TPJ > Task 2 = ToM tasks = activated TPJ

Joint Attention (Buttersworth & Jarrett, 1991)

- Looking and attending the same with - Sharing attention with another - 12-18 months developed - Important - Delay (e.g. blind parents) - if do not learn = impacts lang and social - Use point cues = related to social and lang development - Children with ASD = trouble with joint attention

Social interactions in ASD

- Not maintain eye contact - Not form age appropriate relations - Not use age appropriate gestures - Not share social experiences and joint attention - Not respond to name - Not respond appropriately to other's emotion states - Lack of social and make believe play

Austim Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

- Problems with social interactions - DSM-V = problems with social interactions, social reciprocity, communication and repetitive behaviours - Doesn't relate to IQ - 40% of autistic people have above average IQs - 1% of people - traditionally was males, but changing - females react differently to males - Life long neurodevelopment condition - Problems understanding how others think and feel - Condition rather than disorder = less stigmatizing

Superior temporal sulcus (STS)

- Role in detecting biological motion (e.g. eye gaze) with mental states - Thinking of what you want to act upon - Insight on their mental states - Look at object you expect others to look at - Pelphrey et al, 2003; 2006 = rSTS more strongly activated when gaze violated expectations - Pelphrey et al, 2004: direct gaze = actived rSTS even more than averted gaze

Neural bases of ToM

- Several brain regions critical in mental state attribution - Temporopariental Junction - Superior temporal sulcus = don't talk to each other much - Medial PFC > Ventral PFC > Dorsal PFC = Activated when reasoning of other mental states - Phineas gage = damage to MPFC = bad personality after injury

mPFC (medial prefrontal cortex)

- Ventral and dorsal PFC = activated when reasoning about other persons state Neuroimaging evidence: - Mitchell et al, 2004 = ppts shown images of others and shown info of that person. Asked to make impression of that person or recall what order info was presented > Mental state task = higher activation of medial PFC - Mitchell et al, 2006 = (specificity) read descriptions of people of people with similar political views and dissimilar political views to themselves > Similar views = ventral PFC > Dissimilar views = dorsal PFC - stimulating other mental states

Stimulation theory (Harris, 1992)

- We learn to do - Putting ourselves into someone else's "mental shoes" - Imagining what it would be like to be them - key to mental states - Consistent with imaginative abilities developing alongside ToM abilities