Social Cognition

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Mind Map on Social Cognition, created by otaku96 on 28/02/2016.
otaku96
Mind Map by otaku96, updated more than 1 year ago
otaku96
Created by otaku96 almost 9 years ago
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Social Cognition
  1. Are faces special?
    1. Adults
      1. Neurons in part of fusiform gyrus ("fusiform face area") fire more in response to faces than other complex stimuli.
        1. This is still debated - do they respond to just faces or are they "familiarity" neurons, firing in response to anything we are experts at
        2. Proposagnosia - face blindness. Specific deficit for face recognition when object recognition unimpaired suggests a specific system for processing faces
        3. Newborns
          1. Neonates imitate facial expressions (e.g. lips P, mouth O) as young as 42 minutes. While they have also been found to imitate other body movements, the effect is much stronger for the face, suggesting they are innately fixating on the face
            1. Neonates preferentially look at face-like stimuli. Looking times go face>scrambled face>blank, which suggests an innate tendency to look at faces
          2. CONSPEC and CONLEARN
            1. Was suggested due to an observed decline in face-processing ability at 1-2 months that re-emerges at 2-3 months
              1. CONSPEC is the theory that there is an innate subcortical visuomotor pathway that biases neonates to look at face-like stimuli to provide input for developing face-processing systems
                1. CONLEARN is the theory that the input provided by the innate visuomotor pathway allowed the specialisation of cortical pathways involved in face processing. The observed dip in face-processing ability is the "handover" between the two systems
                  1. Problems for CONSPEC/CONLEARN
                    1. A newborn preference has been observed for attractive over unattractive faces and for direct gaze over averted gaze. This cannot be explained by the theory
                      1. Doesn't necessarily mean theory is fundamentally wrong, just that it is incomplete. Infant perception is poorly understood, and when it is better understood the theory may be able to be refined
                      2. It has been argued that the visuomotor pathway proposed by CONSPEC is not face-specific. It has been found that infants will respond with the same looking preference to any top heavy stimuli as to faces
                        1. In essence, this is what the theory suggests. The innate visuomotor pathway is not claimed to be a face-specific pathway, it is claimed to bias infants to look at faces, as a top-heavy based pathway would
                    2. Face preference development
                      1. Same-species preference
                        1. At birth, there is no looking preference between human and monkey faces. After the first few months of life, when infants are habituated to a monkey and a human face, then shown a novel face, while they can now discriminate the novel face from the habituated face, they discriminate equally for monkey and human faces. This suggests that a same-species face preference is not innate
                          1. Face-processing does become human specific. By around 9 months, when infants are habituated to a monkey face and a human face and then are shown novel faces, they only recognise the human face as novel.
                            1. Experiments suggest that learning of same-species preference is experience-based. When monkeys were prevented from seeing faces until the age of 24 months, they showed no preference for human or monkey faces post-deprivation. After a subsequent month of being exposed to either human or monkey faces, they showed a preference for the species of face they had been exposed to
                            2. Other-race effect
                              1. Preferential looking towards same-race faces and better discrimination of same-race faces emerges at 6-9 months. Like with the same species preference, it can be explained in terms of experience biasing input and so systems specialising to the faces most commonly seen
                                1. The evidence from the development of face type specialisation supports the idea that perceptual biases direct attention to faces, then expertise leads to gradual narrowing, as suggested by CONSPEC/CONLEARN
                              2. Autism
                                1. Autism is associated with deficits in face-processing, but it is debated as to whether it is a deficit in face processing that contributes to autistic behaviour, or a general impairment leading to autistic behaviour which also affects face processing
                                  1. Social hypothesis
                                    1. A reduced ability to or motivation to process faces leads to social impairment
                                    2. Non-social hypothesis
                                      1. Reduced general social processing abilities lead to deficits in face processing
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