LabLinks: Social Cognition
Meeting Program
Session 1
9:15–9:35 Welcome and Introduction Chris Frith, University College London
9:35–10:05 James Kilner, University College London Are mirror neurons required for action understanding?
10:05–10:35 Matthew Rushworth, University of Oxford Comparing medial frontal cortical function in social cognition in human and other primates
LabLinks: 10:35–11:00 Refreshment break
Social Cognition Session 2
11:00–11:30 Lars Chittka, Queen Mary University of London Friday, December 3, 2010 Large societies and small brains: insects as Birkbeck, University of London minimal models of social cognition 11:30–12:00 Nicky Clayton, University of Cambridge Organizers Social Cognition: Lessons from Corvids Uta Frith, University College London and Children Chris Frith, University College London 12:00–13:00 KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Stavroula Kousta, Trends in Cognitive Andrew Whiten, University of St Andrews Sciences, Cell Press Dissecting the 'social' and 'cognition' in social cognition: a case study of cultural Meredith LeMasurier, Neuron, Cell Press learning in ape and child Geoffrey North, Current Biology, Cell Press 13:00–14:00 Lunch (on your own)
Keynote Speaker Session 3
Andrew Whiten, University of St Andrews 14:00–14:30 Francesca Happé, King’s College London ‘Theory of own mind’ in autism
To register go to: 14:30–15:00 Essi Viding, University College London http://www.cell.com/cellpress/lablinks Psychopathic tendencies in children: Registration is FREE Social cognitive underpinnings 15:00–15:30 Andrew Calder, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge Note: 5 registrants will be randomly chosen The Antisocial Brain: Testing the to receive a complimentary, one-year personal Developmental Taxonomic Theory online subscription to the Cell Press journal of Conduct Disorder of their choice. Personal online subscriptions 15:30–16:00 Refreshment break provide access to Article of the Future and other features not available anywhere else! Session 4
Winners will be notified by email. 16:00–16:30 David Skuse, University College London Cooperation and anti-cooperation: what is in our genes?
16:30–17:00 Ben Seymour, University College London Social neuroscience and implications for policy
17:00–17:30 Summing up and General Discussion www.cell.com Uta Frith, University College London
Social Cognition LabLinks
Friday, 3 December 2010
Birkbeck, University of London
Presentation Abstracts
Keynote Presentation
Dissecting the ‘social’ and ‘cognition’ in social cognition: A case study of cultural learning in ape and child
Andrew Whiten, University of St Andrews
In this talk I review a range of discoveries by our own research group and others concerning the cognitive processes underlying apes’ and children’s learning of cultural information from others, including such topics as emulation, selective (‘rational’) imitation in relation to physical and psychological causality, over-imitation, social conformity, cumulative cultural learning and social meta-cognition. I analyse the capacities shared by children and other apes that suggest the nature of social cognition in our common ancestors, and the differences that largely concern where cultural learning in children goes beyond that of other apes. I use this programme of research to discuss more broadly the scope of ‘social’ and ‘cognition’ in social cognition research, as well as other important contextual analysis. For example, in what ways may aspects of social cognition differ qualitatively from other domains of cognition that make this area of endeavour uniquely scientifically challenging?
The antisocial brain: testing the developmental taxonomic theory of conduct disorder
Andrew Calder, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge
Conduct Disorder (CD) emerges either in childhood or adolescence and is characterized by a pervasive pattern of aggressive and antisocial behavior. A central issue concerns the etiology of two putatively distinct developmental trajectories of CD. Following Moffitt’s (1993) influential developmental taxonomic theory, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) distinguishes between two subtypes: an early-onset (EO-CD) variant in which the antisocial behavior emerges in childhood, and an adolescence-onset (AO-CD) subtype developing after 10 years of age. Moffitt proposed that the EO-CD variant has a neurodevelopmental basis, whereas AO-CD emerges from social mimicry of deviant peers’ behaviour. I will discuss recent behavioural and neuroimaging research that calls the developmental taxonomic theory into question. These data show that both CD variants show evidence of similar abnormalities relative to healthy controls, including similar impairments in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response to emotional stimuli and structural brain differences.
Large societies and small brains: insects as minimal models of social cognition
Lars Chittka, Queen Mary University of London
The social brain hypothesis holds that the cognitive demands that come with living in societies have shaped brain evolution, and that social group size might in turn be linked to brain size. This hypothesis is controversial even within the primate world, but more complications arise when one inspects the social insects. Ants, bees and wasps build cohesive societies with small brains and 10s of thousands to millions of individuals. Just like in humans, these societies are not (only) held together by individual recognition, but by learnt cues that indicate the location of society, and the place of the individual within it. However, it would be incorrect to view social insects as anonymous societies, since individual recognition determines dominance hierarchies in several species. The facial recognition of some social wasp species is one example, and indeed some insects can assemble configural representations of facial cues, and identify faces even when rotated. There are also various forms of social learning in the insects, with the consensus building process in honeybee swarms as one example that is unique in the animal kingdom. Since insects’ nervous systems are comparatively small, this raises the question of what the minimal neural circuitry is that is required to achieve these feats. Neural network analyses show that many ‘advanced’ cognitive feats are possible with very limited neuron numbers (i.e. 100s or 1000s, rather than the billions in some vertebrate brains.
Comparative social cognition: lessons from crows and children
Nicola Clayton, University of Cambridge
Food-caching corvids appear to possess rather sophisticated social cognition. These birds hide food, but as such caches are susceptible to pilfering by other individuals, they have adopted a number of counter-strategies to protect their caches from theft, e.g. hiding most of them out of sight if another bird is watching, or hiding them in quiet places if the observer can hear but cannot see. When observed by potential pilferers at the time of caching, experienced jays that have been thieves themselves, take further protective action. Once the potential pilferers have left, they move caches those birds have seen, re-hiding them in new places. Naïve birds that had no thieving experience do not do so. By focusing on the counterstrategies of the cacher when previously observed by a potential pilferer, these results raise the intriguing possibility that re- caching is based on a form of mental attribution, namely the simulation of another bird’s viewpoint. Furthermore, the cachers also keep track of which observer was watching when and take protective action accordingly, thus suggesting that they may also be aware of others’ knowledge states.
By contrast experiments on knowledge attribution in 2-year old children suggest rather less impressive social cognition. Although the young children were able to use their own visual experience in a novel situation to subsequently infer another person’s visual perception in a similar context, they failed to understand the crucial role that perceptual access plays in knowledge formation. Taken together these results indicate that young children’s appropriate use of pointing gestures in natural communicative situations may not be an indication of a genuine understanding of other people’s knowledge states, as recently claimed, but may be better accounted for by assuming simpler processes such as an understanding of engagement.
‘Theory of own mind’ in autism
Francesca Happé, King’s College London
The notion that social and communication impairments in autism reflect an inability to recognise and represent others’ mental states has been enormously influential and productive. Although the original definition of ‘theory of mind’ included the ability to attribute mental states to self, as well as others, ‘theory of own mind’ has been far less explored in autism research. In this talk I will report recent research, much of it in collaboration with Dave Williams, exploring access to own mental states in people with autism spectrum conditions.
Are mirror neurons required for action understanding?
James Kilner, University College London
Ever since their discovery it has been proposed that mirror neurons enable action understanding and that they therefore play an important role in social interaction. However, there is little empirical support for this proposed role of mirror neurons in action understanding.
Recently it has been proposed that in action execution there is a functional dissociation between how the abstract features, such as the goal or intention, and the concrete features, such as the movement parameters, are encoded in the inferior frontal gyrus. When cortical regions active during action observation are considered within the same framework a novel role of mirror neurons in action understanding is revealed. This role is consistent with recent empirical findings on the cortical regions underlying action understanding and challenges the view that mirror neurons encode the goal or intention of an observed action.
Valuation of social information in humans and other animals
Matthew Rushworth, University of Oxford
The human cingulate and dorsomedial frontal cortex have been implicated in social cognition. Recent studies have suggested that dorsomedial frontal cortex codes for predictions and prediction errors concerning others’ intentions while the cingulate gyrus codes the importance or value of social information. The functional roles of these regions are likely to be determined by their anatomical connections but knowledge of anatomical connectivity has been driven by studies in animal models.
More recently non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging-based techniques have provided insights into the anatomy and connections of human cingulate and dorsomedial frontal cortex. Not only have these insights facilitated an understanding of the type of information that cingulate and dorsomedial frontal cortex might receive via their anatomical connections but they have also facilitated the development of animals models of these areas’ functions. It is now clear that, in macaques and rats, lesions of cingulate cortex disrupt the valuation of social information.
Social neuroscience and implications for policy
Bey Seymour
Can, and should, social neuroscience inform policy? With the government’s political strategy labeled 'The Big Society', it begs the question as to whether social neuroscience might have any part in inspiring, or informing, policy. I will discuss two areas: social incentives and market
behaviour, to illustrate how our emerging understanding of the social brain can predict both positive and negative effects of social behaviour in domains of political economy.
Cooperation and anti-cooperation: what is in our genes?
David Skuse, University College London
Is goodness in our genes? Since the days of Darwin the conundrum, ‘how did altruism evolve in the face of a natural world bent on competition?’ has been debated, if not resolved. In non- human species, examples of altruistic or cooperative behaviour are legion, and presumably reflect natural selection for a genetic predisposition. Did Homo sapiens evolve because of, or despite of, such ancestral inheritance? Surprisingly, until recently there had been no systematic attempts to discover whether genetic variation accounted for any individual differences in our tendency to cooperate with others, in real-world dyadic interactions. We used a game theory paradigm to compare the behaviour of MZ and DZ adult twins, and found altruistic or cooperative behaviours were indeed heritable, but only to a minor degree. Genetic impact on a propensity to exploit others was far greater, accounting for up to 65% of individual variation. Are we born to be bad, socialized to be good?
Psychopathic tendencies in children: Social cognitive underpinnings
Essi Viding, University College London
Psychopathy is an adult diagnosis comprised of both callous-unemotional personality traits (lack of empathy and guilt) and overt antisocial behaviour. One can also find children who exhibit callous-unemotional subtype of antisocial behaviour and who are at an increased risk for
developing psychopathy.
Research from our lab and others has documented that callous-unemotional traits are heritable. More interestingly, when we study subgroups of antisocial children with/without callous- unemotional traits, we find strong genetic influence on antisocial behaviour in the former group, but not in the latter. Our finding supports the view that children at risk for psychopathy form a distinct subgroup with a genetic vulnerability to antisocial behaviour.
Genetic vulnerability may underlie neurocognitive ‘abnormalities’ associated with psychopathic traits. I will provide a brief overview of data from our and other labs investigating neurocognitive correlates of psychopathy/psychopathic traits. Our ongoing research combines behaviour genetic and brain imaging methodologies and these efforts will be discussed at the end of the talk.