To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: Social cognition.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social cognition'
Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles
Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Social cognition.'
Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.
You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.
Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.
1
Trilla, Gros Irene. "Situated social cognition." Doctoral thesis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2021. http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/18452/24079.
Full textAbstract:
In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden vier Studien vorgestellt, in denen untersucht wurde, wie altrozentrische (Mimikry) und egozentrische (Selbstprojektion) Prozesse der sozialen Kognition in Abhängigkeit vom sozialen Kontext und persönlichen Dispositionen reguliert werden.
Studie 1 zeigte, dass die Tendenz, fröhliche Gesichtsausdrücke anderer nachzuahmen abhängig von dem mit der beobachteten Person assoziierten Belohnungswert ist. Die Auswirkung der Belohnung ging jedoch weder in die vorhergesagte Richtung, noch konnten wir einen Einfluss von Oxytocin, einem Hormon, das der Neurobiologie der sozialen Anpassung zugrunde liegt, finden. Studie 2 zeigte, im Vergleich zu vorherigen Studien, keine allgemeine Verbesserung der automatischen Nachahmung nach direktem Blickkontakt im Vergleich zum abgewandten Blick. Wir konnten jedoch potenzielle dispositionelle Faktoren (z.B. autistische Eigenschaften) identifizieren, denen unterschiedlichen Mimikry-Reaktionen auf den Blickkontakt zugrunde liegen könnten.
Studie 3 kombinierte kurze Phasen der Emotionsinduktion mit psychophysischen Messungen der Emotionswahrnehmung. Es zeigte sich, dass emotionale Gesichtsausdrücke tendenziell als fröhlicher beurteilt werden, wenn Personen angeben, dass sie sich fröhlich im Vergleich zu traurig fühlen. Emotionale egozentrische Verzerrungen wurden in Studie 4 erneut untersucht. Im Gegensatz zu unseren Vorhersagen fanden wir jedoch keine stärkeren egozentrischen Verzerrungen, wenn die Teilnehmenden emotionale Gesichtsausdrücke von ähnlichen im Vergleich zu unähnlichen Personen beurteilten.
In allen Studien fanden wir Hinweise für den kontextabhängigen Charakter der sozialen Kognition. Allerdings konnten wir einige der in der Literatur berichteten Phänomene nicht replizieren. Diese Ergebnisse unterstreichen die Notwendigkeit, die Robustheit und Generalisierbarkeit früherer Befunde systematisch neu zu bewerten.This dissertation presents four studies that investigated how altercentric (mimicry) and egocentric (self-projection) processes of social cognition are regulated according to the social context and personal dispositions. Study 1 showed that the tendency to mimic others’ happy facial expressions depends on the reward value associated with the observed agent. However, the effects of reward were not in the hypothesised direction, nor could we detect an influence of oxytocin treatment, a hormone involved in the neurobiology of social adaptation. Study 2 could not detect a general enhancement of the tendency to automatically imitate others’ hand actions following direct gaze compared to averted gaze, in contrast to previous studies. However, we could identify dispositional factors (e.g., autistic traits) that might underlie different mimicry responses to gaze cues. Combining brief emotion induction blocks with psychophysical measures of emotion perception, Study 3 showed that facial emotional expressions tend to be judged as happier when individuals feel happy than when they feel sad. Emotional egocentric biases were replicated in Study 4. But contrary to our predictions, we did not find stronger egocentric biases when participants judged emotional facial expressions of similar compared to dissimilar others. Across all studies, we found evidence supporting the contextual nature of social cognition. However, we could not replicate some of the phenomena reported in the literature. These results highlight the need to systematically re-evaluate the robustness and generalizability of prior findings.
2
Mccagh, Jane Teresa. "Social cognition in epilepsy." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2009. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/5954/.
Full textAbstract:
Some of the psychological problems associated with epilepsy have their origins in the ability of people with epilepsy (PWE) to engage in meaningful and appropriate social interactions. PWE often report difficulties in social settings, yet there is a paucity of research investigating the socio-cognitive skills of this group. This thesis aimed to investigate these skills and relate them to the patient's perceived impact of epilepsy on their social competence. An additional objective was to see whether studying social cognition in focal epilepsy might provide some insight into the organic basis of social cognitive abilities in the normal population. The thesis consists of four separate studies which aimed to investigate social cognition and social functioning in patients with focal epilepsy. With this in mind, a test battery assessing a range of skills linked to social cognition was administered to a cross section of experimental groups (N=95). These included patients with seizure foci in the right frontal lobe (RF), left frontal lobe (LF), right temporal lobe (RT), left temporal lobe (LT) and a group with idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE). A normal control group (NC) and a frontal head injured (FHI) group with no epilepsy were also recruited for the study. In Studies 1 and 2 theory of mind (ToM) deficits were apparent in people with RF and LT epilepsy. These groups demonstrated impairment in the appreciation of false belief and deception at first and second order levels of intentionality. They also exhibited deficits in the appreciation of pragmatic language when attempting to infer the meaning underlying hints given by story characters. These impairments were in part attributable to deficits in narrative memory in the LT group. In Study 3 embedding problems within a social context significantly facilitated conditional reasoning in the NC, LT and RF groups but not in the other experimental groups. This finding was unexpected and suggests a double dissociation between ToM and social conditional reasoning. Study 4 investigated the extent to which socio-cognitive impairment was associated with the perceived impact of epilepsy on everyday social functioning. No statistically significant relationship between these variables was found, although a significant negative correlation between education level and impact of epilepsy was observed. Taken together the findings suggest that impairment in ToM may be a particular feature of right frontal lobe pathology and that social conditional reasoning and ToM may be functionally dissociated. PWE do not appear to have insight into their social functioning difficulties, which may well reflect underlying pathology. In light of this, future research should obtain objective measures of social competence from `significant others'. This is the only series of studies to date to assess social cognition in people with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) and temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) within the same design. It is also the first time that social conditional reasoning in epilepsy has been systematically assessed and represents one of the largest lesion studies within the field of social cognition. It is hoped that some of the test material used in the thesis, may prove to be a useful and inexpensive clinical resource to help identify PWE who are at risk of reduced social competence, and in localising the site of seizure foci in patients during clinical audit, particularly where anterior foci are suspected.
3
McCleery, Amanda. "Social Cognition and Social Functioning in Schizotypy." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239914727.
Full text
4
Robertson, Toby Andrew. "The social psychology of contradictions." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.337682.
Full text
5
Häberle, Anne. "Social cognition and ideomotor movements." Berlin Logos-Verl, 2006. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2827596&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.
Full text
6
Yapp, Maria L. J. "The self in social cognition." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.256694.
Full text
7
Jones, Katherine L. "Self-prioritisation in social cognition." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2018. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/111666/.
Full textAbstract:
Systematic self-biases have been demonstrated across cognitive domains of perception, attention, memory, and decision making. However, it remains unclear how self-relevance is recognised and processed by the brain. This thesis examines the influence of social context on processes of self-prioritisation in social cognition. Using a perceptual matching paradigm (Sui, He, & Humphreys, 2012), the first series of experiments demonstrated that novel shape stimuli associated with the self are prioritised for perceptual processing over novel shape stimuli associated with other individuals present within, and absent from, the task environment. No processing advantage was found for stimuli associated with present others over absent others. A second series of experiments demonstrated that self-associated stimuli were prioritised for processing over stimuli associated with both liked and disliked others. Moreover, the size of the self-association benefit was not influenced by the 'likability' of the other individuals. Therefore, neither the ability to 'tag' information to a physical body, nor the likability of social stimuli can fully account for self-prioritisation in perceptual matching. A final series of experiments introduced a novel paradigm to investigate the extent to which people prioritise own-task-relevant information over information relevant to a nearby actor's task. The findings indicated that participants co-represented a partner's stimulus-response rules even when interpersonal coordination was not required. Such co-representation occurred within a binary choice task in which direct stimulus response mappings were not possible. This suggests that co-representation is an unintended consequence of a shared social environment and that people are unable to fully prioritise their own task over that of a nearby actor. Overall, the work extends and clarifies when and how self-biases are influenced by task demands, the context in which a task is performed, and the presence or absence of others within the environment.
8
Ellis, Katherine Rebecca. "Social cognition in genetic syndromes." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2018. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/8401/.
Full textAbstract:
The distinct profiles of sociability and the development of social cognitive abilities was investigated in Cornelia de Lange (CdLS), Fragile X (FXS) and Rubinstein-Taybi (RTS) syndromes. An observational study demonstrated differences in the quality of broad social interaction skills and behaviours during a semi-structured social interaction with an examiner between individuals with CdLS, FXS and RTS. Individuals with FXS and RTS showed lower quality of eye contact, and individuals with FXS showed less person-focused attention, than those with CdLS. Associations between specific behaviours with age and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptomatology differed across groups. A second study assessing participant's performance on two scaled batteries of tasks assessing early (intentionality abilities) and later developing (ToM abilities) social cognitive abilities indicated that these groups do not develop these abilities in the same order as typically developing children. Different strengths and weaknesses observed between groups highlighted factors that may lead to disrupted social cognitive development in these groups. A third study showed that intentionality abilities predicted social enjoyment and social motivation, whereas ToM abilities predicted social enjoyment and ASD symptomatology in all groups. These fmdings were synthesised with previous literature to develop a preliminary model of sociability in CdLS, FXS and RTS.
9
Swartz, Tyler Joel. "Climatic Influences on Social Cognition." UNF Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/357.
Full textAbstract:
The effects of ambient room temperature on social cognition were examined in the current study. This study included 202 participants who completed a computer-based survey consisting of eight items measuring participants’ self-perception and desired social dynamics. I included these constructs because they serve to empirically examine the claims put forth by the Socio-Relational Framework of Expressive Behavior (Vigil, 2009). Participants completed the survey in experimental settings with the ambient room temperature ranging from 67.8 °F to 77.2 °F. I identified several important relationships that support the current theoretical framework, such as the differential desire for either affiliative or avoidant social responses, and the differential inflation of either empowerment or trustworthiness descriptors in colder and warmer conditions, respectively. Implications of the findings for future research are discussed.
10
Bratton, Helen. "Social cognition in antisocial populations." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/15834.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction: Impairments in facial affect recognition have been linked to the development of various disorders. The aim of the current work is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies examining whether this ability is impaired in males with psychopathy or antisocial traits, when compared to healthy individuals. Method: Studies were eligible for inclusion if they compared facial affect recognition in either a) psychopathic vs. antisocial males, b) psychopathic vs. healthy controls and c) antisocial vs. healthy controls. Primary outcomes were group differences in overall emotion recognition, fear recognition, and sadness recognition. Secondary outcomes were differences in recognition of disgust, happiness, surprise and anger. Results: Fifteen papers comprising 214 psychopathic males, 491 antisocial males and 386 healthy community controls were identified. In psychopathy, limited evidence suggested impairments in fear (k=2), sadness (k=1) and surprise (k=1) recognition relative to healthy individuals, but overall affect recognition ability was not affected (k=2). Findings were inconclusive for antisocial (k=4-6), although impairments in surprise (k=4) and disgust (k=5) recognition were observed. Psychopathic and antisocial samples did not differ in their ability to detect sadness (k=4), but psychopaths were less able to recognise happiness (k=4) and surprise (k=3). Conclusion: Limited evidence suggests psychopathic and antisocial personality traits are associated with small to moderate deficits in specific aspects of emotion recognition. However considerable heterogeneity was identified, and study quality was often poor. Adequately powered studies using validated assessment measures, rater masking and a priori public registration of hypotheses and methods are required.
11
Murphy, Ann Aileen. "Social Cognition and Schizophrenia Syndromes." W&M ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626425.
Full text
12
Paracampo, Riccardo <1986>. "Sensorimotor Network in Social Cognition." Doctoral thesis, Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna, 2017. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/7878/1/ParacampoRiccardo_SensorimotorNetworkSocialCognition.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
Our motor and somatosensory cortices originally evolved to control our movement through the environment. In the past decade, one of the most exciting developments in cognitive neuroscience is the discovery that the same sensorimotor brain regions that are used to control our body are involved in the perception of others’ actions, sensations and emotions. Human beings are equipped with a mechanism mapping perceptual representations of actions, sensations, and emotions onto sensorimotor representations, thus, perception of others might be inherently grounded in the same brain regions involved in first-hand subjective experiences. While the notion that observing, or imagining actions, emotions, and sensations in others triggers vicarious activations in the sensorimotor network is widely accepted, evidence about the specific role of these activations in social cognition is meagre and still largely based on correlational data. The experiments included in the present thesis aim at exploring the functional role of the sensorimotor network in understanding others’ internal emotional and cognitive states. We used neuromodulation tools to interfere with brain activity in regions involved in moving and sensing the body while participants were asked to understand others’ emotions or intentions. In experiment 1 to 7 we focused on the ability to accurately understand amusement from observed smiles, while in experiment 8 to 10 we explored the ability to rate the pain felt by another individual when her/his experience is described only through text. Our results show that interference with activity within somatosensory and motor cortices impairs participants’ ability to understand others’ emotions. Combining complex naturalistic tasks to neuromodulation tools, the present thesis sheds novel light on the behavioural relevance of vicarious activations in the sensorimotor network, by establishing a strong and direct causal link between sensorimotor brain networks and others’ understanding that was only suggested in the past.
13
Revell, Emily. "Combined cognitive remediation and social cognition training in first episode psychosis." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2017. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/combined-cognitive-remediation-and-social-cognition-training-in-first-episode-psychosis(a309c184-9478-4763-b2a2-2547463e08da).html.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction: Impaired neurocognition, especially social cognition, predicts disability in schizophrenia. Early intervention to target impairment is theoretically attractive as a means to minimise chronic disability. Many trials confirm that Cognitive Remediation (CR) produces meaningful, durable improvements in cognition and functioning but few interventions remediate social cognition or focus on the early stages of schizophrenia. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of CR in first episode psychosis (FEP) was completed. A randomised controlled pilot trial was then conducted to investigate a combined CR and social cognition training (CR+SCT) intervention in FEP compared to CR alone, assessing cognition, functioning and symptoms at baseline and follow-up. Qualitative feedback was also obtained in a nested feasibility and acceptability study to assess engagement, intervention suitability and attrition. Results: In the systematic review and meta-analysis, random effects models revealed a non-significant effect of CR on global cognition in FEP. However, there was a significant effect on functioning and symptoms, which was larger in trials with adjunctive psychiatric rehabilitation and small group interventions. In the pilot trial, the CR+SCT group had significantly better social functioning scores post-treatment, especially on the interpersonal relationships scale, however there was no significant effect on social cognition. CR+SCT also improved visual learning and set-shifting. There was no specific effect on symptoms. The nested feasibility and acceptability study found CR and CR+SCT to be acceptable and feasible for early intervention in psychosis service users, with high engagement rates and high user-reported satisfaction. Users perceived improvements in neurocognition and reported using strategies learnt during CR in daily life. Conclusions: Meta-analysis suggests that CR is beneficial in FEP. Evidence from the pilot trial shows that a CR intervention enhanced with SCT can improve functioning more than CR alone and that such an intervention is feasible and acceptable. A larger RCT is required to explore the full benefits of a CR+SCT intervention compared to CR and treatment as usual.
14
Sanghvi, Hari Galen. "Cognitive interference in social interaction : development and validation of the social interference questionnaire /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/9110.
Full text
15
Arslan, Burcu. "Evidentiality And Second-order Social Cognition." Master's thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12614050/index.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
In this study, the development of a second-order false belief task is investigated by considering the impact of the acquisition of Turkish evidential markers, namely &ndashDI (direct evidence) and &ndash
mIs (inference or hearsay). A neutral version of the tasks served as a control form. 21 kindergarten children (aged 4-5 years), 47 primary school children (aged 6- 12 years) and 10 adults participated in the study. Our results revealed that there is no effect of acquisition of evidentials on false belief understanding. Together with the other studies, there is a facilitative effect of &ndash
DI (direct evidence) in understanding of stories/narratives in general rather than false belief understanding for the children at the age of 4 to 6/7. In addition to the second-order false belief tasks (FBT_2), a simple working memory task (WST), a complex working memory task (LST), a perspective taking task (PTT) and a double- embedded relative clause task (REL_2) were used in order to investigate the developmental trend of these tasks and their possible relationship with second-order false belief understanding. Also, to the best of our knowledge this is the first time that a REL_2 task has been devised in a Turkish study. The general developmental trend was found for all tasks. Even if some significant correlations were found for FBT_2 score predicted from other tasks, analyses showed that only the contribution of age was significant. Since all of these domains are not related to second-order false belief reasoning but develop at the same time, it is not incompatible with the serial bottleneck hypothesis. In sum, the findings are matching with the modularity view that ToM is a faculty of the human mind at their own pace that does not share intrinsic content with other faculties such as language and working memory (Leslie et al., 2004). However, it develops together with those other faculties and they may constrain the expression of child
16
Levine, Diane Thembekile. "Adolescent girls, social cognition and technology." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2015. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/75499/.
Full textAbstract:
Technology is almost ubiquitous among adolescents in contemporary British society. Despite this, we do not have a meaningful understanding of the interplay between adolescent girls’ developing social cognition and their use of digital devices. This study aims to address this gap in understanding. Four pre-pubescent and eleven pubescent young women based in the Midlands and from across the socio-economic spectrum participated between 2012-2013. Participant completed six research tools and eleven of them participated in a face-to-face interview. Three tools were adapted from the existing psychology literature, and the remainder were developed specifically for this study. The tools explored technology-mediated attachment and relationships, self and identity, attribution and Theory of Mind. The findings suggest that the moral panics surrounding technology use in adolescence are misplaced; rather, adolescent girls with a good range of personal and situational resources are likely to exert considerable choice in their uses of technology, and social media in particular. Valsiner’s Zones and life course perspectives were used to conceptualise the emerging understanding of technology-mediated social cognition in adolescent girls. This theoretical framework made it possible to do four things. Firstly, to recognize adolescents’ active choice and agency. Secondly, to articulate development opportunities within individuals, relationships and technological environments. Thirdly to locate physiological and psychological development within the broader socio-technical realm. And finally, to see technology as neither positive nor negative but as shaping, rather than defining adolescent perspectives, behaviours and relationships. These possibilities suggest that, rather than attempting to shoehorn adolescent experience into a single paradigm or model we need to ask ourselves key questions about the interplay between the individual adolescent and the technology they choose to use.
17
Bettman, Michael D. "Social cognition, criminal violence, and psychopathy." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape15/PQDD_0005/NQ35952.pdf.
Full text
18
Durrant, Caroline. "Adult Attachment, Cognition and Social Anxiety." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.525704.
Full text
19
Morgan, Lisa. "Social cognition in temporal lobe epilepsy." Thesis, University of East London, 2011. http://roar.uel.ac.uk/3675/.
Full textAbstract:
This study addressed social cognition in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Social cognition encompasses a range of functions, for example, those requiring the attribution of emotional states, and those requiring mental state inferences to be made ('theory of mind'). The area of social cognition has evolved from developmental explanations of theory of mind, which have been extrapolated for their empirical application to adult populations, often using neuroimaging and neuropsychological paradigms. The present study may help to raise awareness of social cognitive difficulties in TLE and may inform clinical neuropsychological assessment protocols. A feature of the existing literature is the lack of consistency in methodologies. This study drew upon methodology described in previous relevant studies in order that findings were more comparable. A range of standardised measures of general intellectual functioning, verbal and visual memory, and verbal and nonverbal executive function tasks were administered alongside social cognition tasks, assessing recognition of emotional expressions, attributing mental states to eyes, attributing mental state inferences in stories and cartoons, and detecting and describing violations of social etiquette. A group of 25 patients with TLE were compared with 42 typically developed and intact (TDI) participants matched for age, education and general abilities. The TLE group scored lower on all social cognition measures, but in the context of similar difficulties in visual and verbal memory, and verbal aspects of executive functioning. There were no significant effects of laterality (hemispheric focus of the TLE). Variables influencing performance on social cognition tasks were examined. The results are discussed in terms of the relevant literature and possible underlying mechanisms of difficulties, and recommendations for future research made on this basis.
20
Santiesteban, Idalmis. "Self-other processes in social cognition." Thesis, Birkbeck (University of London), 2014. http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/120/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis aimed to investigate self-other processes in social cognition. Contrary to the traditional approach of focusing on self-other processes within the confines of a single domain, this thesis highlights the prominent role of these processes across different socio-cognitive domains. Three main empirical questions form the basis of the research reported here. The first is concerned with the extent to which self-other representations are shared across three different socio-cognitive abilities: the control of imitation, theory of mind, and visual perspective taking. The second relates to the neural underpinnings of self-other representations, in particular, the role of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during socio-cognitive processing. The third question examines the role of culture as a modulatory factor of self-other processes. The findings from Experiment 1, 3 and 4 showed a relationship between the control of imitation and visual perspective taking. This relationship seems to rely on the online control of co-activated self-other representations, which at the neural level are mediated by the TPJ (bilaterally). In Experiment 2 it was found that individuals with mirror-touch synaesthesia are impaired in the control of imitation but their performance on visual perspective taking and theory of mind is comparable with non-synaesthetes. It is hypothesised that atypical self-other processes in mirror-touch synaesthesia might be confined to situations in which representations of the ‘other’ should be inhibited, but not when they should be enhanced. Experiment 5 showed that acculturation strategies adopted by migrants modulate their imitative behaviour towards a member of the heritage vs. a member of the host culture. The diverse nature of the studies reported in this thesis shows the complexity of self-other processes in social cognition. Taken together, these findings demonstrate how adopting a wider approach to the investigation of self-other processes contributes towards a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying socio-cognitive abilities.
21
Teufel, Christoph Rupert. "Mental attribution : its role in socio-cognitive development and adult social cognition." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.611347.
Full text
22
Augoustinos, Martha. "Social representations and social cognition : a convergence of different traditions /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 1991. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09pha921.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1991."Appendix E: Thesis publications" contains reprints of four journal articles written or co-authored by M. Augoustinos. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 450-467).
23
Choudhury, S. "The development of social cognition during adolescence." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2007. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1445392/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis aims to investigate the development of social cognition during adolescence. Neuroimaging research has provided new evidence for significant developments of the brain during adolescence, contesting old notions that the human brain reaches maturity by childhood. The prefrontal, parietal and superior temporal cortices have been highlighted as the regions that undergo the most prolonged and profound structural change. Given the association of these brain areas with social cognitive tasks, including perspective taking, intention understanding and motor imagery, this series of studies have sought to investigate the social cognitive consequences of these brain developments. The first study in this thesis investigated the development of perspective taking between late childhood and adulthood and found that perspective taking develops in terms of efficiency and possibly strategy during adolescence. The second study investigated perspective taking in adult patients with positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including delusions of persecution, and suggested differences in processing one's own and other people's perspectives in patients compared to normal controls. The third study used fMRI to investigate the development of the neural circuitry for intentional causality during adolescence and found a shift from relatively higher activity in superior temporal cortex during adolescence to relatively higher activity in medial prefrontal cortex in adulthood. In light of motor theories of social cognition, the fourth study comprised three motor imagery experiments that investigated the development of action representation during adolescence. Results suggested that the action representation system is refined during adolescence. The final study compared action representation in typically developing adolescents and those with autism spectrum disorders and found no differences in performance between groups. Together, these studies have shown that certain social cognitive abilities develop during adolescence. The relation between social and motor cognition is discussed from a developmental perspective, as well as the link to brain maturation during adolescence. Finally speculations are made about how these processes may become dysfunctional in psychopathology.
24
Cupples, Sarah Anne. "Social cognition in children with visual impairment." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.248371.
Full text
25
Apps, Matthew. "Anterior cingulate cortex : contributions to social cognition." Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2012. http://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/ed1f2ffb-d93b-e7fa-1121-846d7f34efd8/9/.
Full textAbstract:
It has been suggested that the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) plays an important role in decision-making. Activity in this area reflects processing related to two principles of Reinforcement Learning Theory (RLT): (i) signalling the predicted value of actions at the time they are instructed and (ii) signalling prediction errors at the time of the outcomes of actions. It has been suggested that neurons in the gyrus of the ACC (ACCg) process information about others' decisions and not one's own. An important aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the ACCg processes others' decisions in a manner that conforms to the principles of RLT. Four fMRI experiments investigate activity in the ACCg at the time of cues that signal either the predicted value of others' actions or that signal another's predictions are erroneous. • Experiment 1: Activity in the ACCg occurred when the outcome of another's decision was unexpectedly positive. • Experiment 2: Activity in the ACCg varied parametrically with the discrepancy between another's prediction of an outcome and the actual outcome known by the subject, in a manner that conformed to the computational principles of RLT. • Experiment 3: Activity in the ACCg varied with the predicted value of a reward, discounted by the amount of effort required to obtain it. • Experiment 4: Activity in the ACCg varied with the value of delayed rewards that were discounted in a manner that conformed to a social norm. These results support the hypothesis that the ACCg processes the predicted value of others' actions and also signals when others' predictions about the value of their actions are erroneous, in a manner that conforms to the principles of RLT.
26
Mukherjee, Prerona. "Functional disconnection and social cognition in schizophrenia." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5901.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction Social and emotional functions play a key role in schizophrenia. Both positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and persecutory delusions, as well as negative symptoms such as social withdrawal, and flattened affect impact socioemotional function. These functions involve distributed brain networks. The ‘Disconnection Hypothesis’, a plausible unifying theory of schizophrenia, proposes connectivity within such networks as a core pathological feature of schizophrenia. Connectivity is also related to specific genetic risk factors. Therefore the present project addresses the hypothesis that individuals with schizophrenia might show disconnection within socio-emotional brain networks, and examines the effects of a functional polymorphism of the BDNF gene on connectivity within these networks. Methods Here I examined the brain activation and connectivity for implicit emotional reaction and social judgment in schizophrenia, as well as with variation in the val66met polymorphism of BDNF. Brain activation was examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging, and effective connectivity was estimated using psycho-physiological interactions, from the bilateral amygdala to the whole brain (using a facial image paradigm for explicit approachability judgement and implicit fear response respectively). Results Individuals with schizophrenia showed reduced activation in the right lingual gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus and left amygdala during fear processing, as well as reduced connectivity from the left amygdala to the right temporo-parietal junction and precuneus. During approachability judgments, patients overactivated the right inferior frontal gyrus and right precuneus and showed reduced connectivity from the bilateral amygdala to the right inferior frontal gyrus. Met allele carriers of the BDNF val66met polymorphism showed overactivation in the medial anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral insula, as well as reduced connectivity between the anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. For approachability judgment, met carriers overactivated the middle occipital gyrus, and showed reduced connectivity from the left amygdala to the right parahippocampal gyrus and medial frontal gyrus, as well as the left posterior cingulate gyrus, pre and post central gyrus, middle temporal gyrus and cerebellum. Conclusion In conclusion, connectivity between the amygdala and brain regions associated with a range of socially relevant functions were found to be reduced in both patients, and met allele carriers of the BDNF val66met SNP. Given the key role of the amygdala in affective processing this diffuse disconnection in networks for socio-emotional functions might mediate the aberrant emotional and social behavior seen in individuals with schizophrenia.
27
Pretorius, Natalie. "Social cognition in adeloescents with anorexia nervosa." Thesis, University of London, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.542323.
Full text
28
Ip, Ka-yan, and 葉嘉茵. "Social cognition deficits in frontal lesion patients." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2009. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B43224325.
Full text
29
Proops, Leanne. "Social cognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus)." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2012. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/39665/.
Full textAbstract:
The social intelligence hypothesis states that the main selection pressures driving increases in brain-to-body ratio are social rather than ecological. The domestic horse is an ideal animal to study within this framework because horses possess rich social lives but inhabit simple ecological environments. Here I assess the abilities of horses within two broad areas of social cognition; the classification of, and the use of information obtained from, social partners. In Section One I demonstrate that horses are capable of cross-modal individual recognition of conspecifics, an ability not previously demonstrated conclusively outside of humans. This ability extends to identifying familiar human companions suggesting that recognition systems are highly plastic in the individuals they can encode. These results also provide the first insights into the brain mechanisms involved in this process by revealing a clear left hemisphere bias in discriminatory ability. In Section Two I investigate the extent to which horses are capable of reading human attentional and communicative cues. It has been suggested that this skill was selected for through the process of domestication, however there have been no systematic studies of domestic animals other than the domestic dog. I found that horses were indeed highly skilled at determining if people were paying attention to them. In contrast they tended to only use basic stimulus enhancement cues to choose a rewarded bucket. A further study of young horses indicated that the ability to detect human attention requires significant experience to develop fully whereas the ability to use stimulus enhancement cues in an object choice task appears to require far less (if any) experience to develop. Overall my thesis extends our knowledge of comparative social cognition and in particular our knowledge of social cognition in horses. Taken together, these results clearly demonstrate that horses do indeed possess some complex socio-cognitive skills.
30
White, Elliott P. "Social cognition skills in borderline personality disorder." Thesis, Canterbury Christ Church University, 2014. http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/12836/.
Full textAbstract:
Section A reviewed 18 empirical behavioural studies on empathy and mental state inference (MSI) skills in those meeting Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) criteria. The review was situated within Mentalization theory (MBT), which posits a central link between such skills and complex needs presentation. Firm conclusions about BPD mentalization skills are difficult as deficits, enhanced abilities and no differences from non-patients are reported. None of the reviewed papers stimulated attachment system arousal, as warranted by mentalization theory. Economic game research was highlighted as offering value in assessing self-directed mentalization, an under-researched area. Section B sought to test MBT and other model’s claim that empathy and Mental State inference (MSI) skills are differentially degraded in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). 27 people meeting BPD criteria and a matched non-patient group had empathy assessed with the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Task and MSI assessed with a modified economic game. This was done before and after a novel attachment system intervention. Empathy skills were less accurate in the BPD group. Other findings including game behaviour, fairness ratings and a social cue selective prioritisation in non-patients only are discussed. The theoretical links and suggestions for clinical innovation and research development are provided.
31
Baron-Cohen, Simon. "Social cognition and pretend play in autism." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1985. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1349440/.
Full textAbstract:
The literature surrounding the autistic child's social impairment is reviewed. It is proposed that an impairment in some aspect of autistic children's social cognition could account for many of the observed abnormalities in their social behaviour. First, two "lower-level" aspects of social cognition are considered. These are mirror self-recognition and perceptual role-taking. The present sample of autistic children did not differ from MA control groups in either of these respects, confirming results from other studies. A "higher-level" aspect of self-other differentiation is conceptual role-taking. This ability is also called a "theory of mind". This literature is reviewed and a hypothesis is proposed which suggests that autistic children have an impairment in their "second-order" representational capacity which has been argued to underlie a theory of mind. This hypothesis is explored by means of 4 experiments. These showed that autistic children's "first-order" representational capacity, as manifested in their understanding of physical causality, is intact whilst their second-order representational capacity, as manifested in their ability to attribute mental states to others, is impaired. This deficit was not found in controls. Furthermore, those few autistic children who passed a test of attribution of belief at the ii year old level, failed at the ("third-order") 7 year old level, despite adequate MA. Pretend play can be related to conceptual role-taking, since both may require a second-order representational capacity. The literature surrounding the autistic child's impairment in pretend play is reviewed and the final experiment confirms and extends previous results in this domain. It is concluded that particular aspects of the social impairment and the impairment in pretend play can be seen as the result of a deficit in one cognitive mechanism. This deficit is discussed in terms of what has loosely been called an "impaired symbolic capacity".
32
Ip, Ka-yan. "Social cognition deficits in frontal lesion patients." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2009. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B43224325.
Full text
33
Brennan-Craddock, Anthony. "Influences on cognition : emotion, social cues, context." Thesis, Bangor University, 2016. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/influences-on-cognitionemotion-social-cues-context(92ba6818-8858-4c52-a692-96817903095d).html.
Full textAbstract:
People encounter a wide range of objects in the visual environment. Some of these are important and others are unimportant. Given that limitations on both attention and memory constrict people’s ability to process everything in an environment, they must somehow prioritize important over unimportant objects. One suggestion as to how people do this is that the contents of working memory (WM), likely pertinent to current objectives, bias attention to environmental stimuli with which they share features. This suggestion has received mixed support in the literature. The degree to which stimuli in WM bias attentional deployment may relate their task relevance, that is, their pertinence to one’s present activity. However, considering that emotional stimuli appear to command attention preferentially, this thesis asks how the presence of emotional stimuli, specifically expressive faces, bias attentional deployment. Research in the area of emotion-attention interactions suggests that emotions of different valence have distinct effects on attention. Positive emotion leads to a broader, more efficient, allocation of attention than negative emotion. Thus, emotion-related WM-attention interactions may result in distinct patterns of attention capture depending on the valence of the emotion involved. We tested whether this account describes the interaction between the emotion on a face held in WM and visual attention during the performance of a subsequent task involving emotional schematic faces. Consistent with expectations, emotion in WM influenced attention. Specifically, positive emotion led to a broader attentional focus than negative emotion. Importantly, emotion only influenced attention when it was task-relevant (Chapter 2). Event-Related Potential data indicated that when emotion was not task-relevant, participants processed WM-matching expressions more superficially than non-matching expressions, suggesting that WM-matching contents are dismissed more quickly when not task-relevant. Nonetheless, these stimuli interfered with visual processing; a result that may explain observed discrepancies in WM-attention interactions with non-task-relevant stimuli (Chapter 3). Finally, we extend the finding that positive emotion leads to faster target processing, to the concept of value. Here, we examined how the intrinsic value of an emotional expression related to its ability to capture attention. Research shows that people are willing to give up money for the chance to see genuine smiles. Thus, we hypothesized that a genuine smile’s subjective value would predict attention capture for genuine-smile targets in a flanker task. Results confirmed this prediction, suggesting that an expression’s intrinsic value also drives attention capture and may therefore have implications for how people navigate social interactions (Chapter 4). Together, these results suggest that emotion in WM biases attention in a manner that is sensitive to the demands of a current task. Specifically, whereas task-relevant positive emotion results in more efficient orienting of attention than task-relevant negative emotion, non-task-relevant emotion receives demoted priority in visual processing. These results extend to an item’s value, such that higher-value stimuli receive priority processing. This research extends our understanding of WM-attention and value-attention interactions to include long-term semantic associations as a factor. Collectively, the results of this research suggest that the allocation of attention to social stimuli is determined based on social implications, with positive implications having particular influence.
34
Nowotny, Ewa. "Social cognition and HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders." Thesis, University of East London, 2016. http://roar.uel.ac.uk/5399/.
Full textAbstract:
Introduction: The introduction of antiretroviral therapy has successfully transformed the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) into a long-term condition. However, nearly half of those living with HIV experience cognitive difficulties (HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorders; HAND). The adverse effects of HIV on cognitive function have been well-documented. However, it has not been established whether individuals with HAND present with deficits in social cognition, specifically related to the ability to understand other people’s intentions and feelings (Theory of Mind; ToM). The present study aimed to address this gap in the research and explore whether individuals with HAND show deficits in cognitive and affective aspects of ToM, and whether these are related to general cognitive abilities. Method: Sixteen individuals with HAND between the ages of 26 and 60 (mean age = 46.81 years) were recruited from a rehabilitation centre for individuals living with HAND. Participants completed a neuropsychological test battery and two social cognition tests (verbal test of cognitive ToM and visual test of affective ToM). Data obtained using standardised measures was analysed quantitatively and descriptively. Results: The individual and group-level analyses indicate that individuals with HAND show impairments in social cognition, with greater deficits observed in the domain of mentalising (cognitive ToM) than affect recognition (affective ToM). Consistent with the correlational analyses, tentative links can be made between social cognition and processing speed, executive function and memory, although the manner in which these domains impact on social cognition requires further research. Implications: A key clinical implication is that social cognition should be routinely tested in individuals with HAND as part of a standard assessment of cognitive function. The findings further indicate that it might be useful to evaluate multiple domains of social cognition and interpret the results in the context of findings from other neuropsychological assessments.
35
Shaw, Rachael Caroline. "The social cognition of Eurasian Jays : gaining insight into cognitive evolution in Corvids." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607951.
Full text
36
Rechtman, Elza. "Cognition sociale et cerveau social dans les troubles du développement de l’enfant." Thesis, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018USPCB005/document.
Full textAbstract:
Les troubles du spectre autistique (TSA) sont des troubles neuro-développementaux caractérisés notamment par des anomalies des interactions sociales. Des études en eye-tracking ont permis de mettre en évidence de façon objective des anomalies de la perception sociale dans les TSA, caractérisées par une diminution du regard vers des stimuli sociaux. Des études sur le fonctionnement cérébral, par des méthodes TEP et SPECT, ont mis en évidence une diminution du débit sanguin cérébral (DSC) au repos au niveau des régions temporales, notamment au niveau du sillon temporal supérieur (STS), chez des enfants avec TSA. Nous avons aujourd’hui la possibilité de mesurer le DSC au repos en IRM avec la séquence arterial spin labelling (ASL). Dans cette thèse nous avons confirmé la diminution du DSC au repos au niveau du STS chez des enfants avec TSA par la méthode IRM-ASL, ce qui pourraient permettre son utilisation en tant que biomarqueur dans les TSA. Nous suggérons également que le DSC au repos pourrait être un indice plus pertinent pour l’étude du fonctionnement cérébral de base dans les TSA. De plus, par une étude transversale en eye-tracking utilisant les mêmes stimuli sur une large tranche d’âge, nous avons montré l’impact de l’âge sur la perception sociale chez des participants avec TSA et des témoins. Enfin, nous avons mis en évidence des anomalies de perception sociale par l’eye-tracking et de fonctionnement cortical au niveau du STS par l’IRM-ASL, chez des enfants ayant un kyste arachnoïdien de la fosse postérieure. Une meilleure connaissance des difficultés sociales subjacentes à ce trouble peut avoir un impact majeur sur la prise en charge de ces enfantsAutism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by abnormal social interactions. Eye-tracking studies have objectively reported social perception abnormalities in ASD, characterized by a decrease of gaze towards social stimuli. Brain imaging studies, using PET and SPECT methods, have revealed a decrease in cerebral blood flow (CSF) at rest in the temporal regions, particularly in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), in children with ASD. Nowadays, it is possible to measure rest CBF with MRI using arterial spin labeling (ASL) sequence. In this thesis, we confirmed the decreased in rest CBF within the STS in children with ASD using MRI-ASL, which could allow its use as a biomarker in ASD. We also suggest that rest CBF could be a more relevant index for studying basic brain function in ASD. In addition, we performed a cross-sectional eye-tracking study using the same stimuli over a wide age-range and showed the impact of age on social perception in ASD and in typical development. Finally, we showed social perception abnormalities, using eye-tracking, and cortical functioning abnormalities within the STS using MRI-ASL, in children with posterior fossa arachnoid cyst. A better understanding of the social difficulties underlying this disorder could have a major impact on patient outcome
37
Higgins, Joe. "Being and thinking in the social world : phenomenological illuminations of social cognition and human selfhood." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/10640.
Full textAbstract:
At least since the time of Aristotle, it has been widely accepted that “man is by nature a social animal”. We eat, sleep, talk, laugh, cry, love, fight and create in ways that integrally depend on others and the social norms that we collectively generate and maintain. Yet in spite of the widely accepted importance of human sociality in underlying our daily activities, its exact manifestation and function is consistently overlooked by many academic disciplines. Cognitive science, for example, regularly neglects the manner in which social interactions and interactively generated norms canalise and constitute our cognitive processes. Without the inescapable ubiquity of dynamic social norms, any given agent simply could not cognise as a human. In this thesis, I aim to use a range of insights – from phenomenology, social psychology, neuroscience, cultural anthropology and gender studies – to clarify the role of sociality for human life. More specifically, the thesis can be broadly separated into three parts. I begin (chapters 1 and 2) with a broad explanation of how human agents are fundamentally tied to worldly entities and other agents in a way that characterises their ontological existence. In chapters 3 and 4, I criticise two recent and much-discussed theories of social cognition – namely, we-mode cognition and participatory sense-making – for failing to make intelligible the social constitution of human existence. In the later chapters (5-7), I then propose foundations for a more satisfactory theory of social cognition, as well as explicating a view of human selfhood as ‘biosocial', such that even the autonomy of biological bodies is socially codified from a human perspective. Taken together, the aforementioned chapters should contribute to calls for a new direction in social cognitive science, whilst also yielding novel insights into the nature of human selfhood.
38
Lombardo, Michael. "Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying self-referential and social cognition in autism and the general population." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.608982.
Full text
39
Taché, Emmanuelle. "Evaluation de la cognition sociale en situation d'interaction dans le traumatisme crânien." Thesis, Aix-Marseille, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018AIXM0054/document.
Full textAbstract:
La cognition sociale, i.e. notre capacité à attribuer des états mentaux à autrui et à identifier ses émotions, est souvent perturbée dans certaines pathologies telles que le traumatisme crânien (TC). Cette capacité est traditionnellement évaluée à l’aide de tâches sous format « papier-crayon » n’impliquant pas le participant dans une situation d’interaction sociale. Pourtant, la cognition sociale est fondamentale dans nos interactions sociales car elle nous permet de comprendre le discours et le comportement d’autrui. Ainsi, dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons évalué les capacités d’attribution d’états mentaux et de reconnaissance émotionnelle de personnes ayant subi un TC à l’aide de tâches les impliquant activement dans une situation de communication (tâche de communication référentielle et tâche EViCog), ce qui n’a jamais été fait dans cette pathologie. La tâche EViCog (Evaluation de la cognition sociale en interaction virtuelle), créée pour cette étude, permet d’avoir des conversations audio-visuelles avec des humains virtuels, qui expriment des émotions et produisent du discours nécessitant d’inférer leurs états mentaux. Les résultats ont montré que les difficultés des personnes TC étaient encore plus importantes pour la tâche en situation d’interaction (tâche EViCog) par rapport à des tâches traditionnelles au format « papier-crayon ». Par ailleurs, en situation d’interaction, les performances de cognition sociale semblent dépendre en partie des capacités mnésiques (mémoire autobiographique et du contexte), ainsi que des fonctions exécutives, alors que pour les tâches traditionnelles, les performances ne seraient expliquées que par certaines capacités exécutivesSocial cognition, i.e. the ability to attribute mental states to others and to identify emotions, is often impaired in various pathologies, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI). This ability is traditionally assessed with “paper-and-pencil” tasks that do not involve the participant in a social interaction situation. However, social cognition is central in our daily social interactions, as it helps us understand others’ speech and behavior. Thus, in this study, we assessed mental state attribution and emotion recognition abilities of TBI participants, using tasks that involve the participant in a communication situation (referential communication task and EViCog task). The EViCog task (social cognition evaluation in virtual interaction), designed for this research, provides audio-visual conversations with virtual humans, which express emotions and produce speech requiring mental state inference. The results showed that the difficulties of the TBI participants were even more important for the task in interaction situation (EViCog task) compared to traditional tasks in paper-and-pencil format. Moreover, in interaction situation, social cognition performance seemed to rely on mnemonic abilities (autobiographical memory and context memory), and on executive functions, while for traditional tasks, performances were only explained by some executive abilities
40
Majied, Hayfaa. "Social cognition assessment in relation to cognitive dysfunctions and brain lesions among stroke survivors." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7297/.
Full textAbstract:
Families of brain injured patients often report change in the patient’s everyday social behaviour. However, efficient instruments for the assessment of social cognitive (SC) abilities of these individuals have been lacking. To fill this gap, a novel instrument was designed and administered to healthy controls and stroke survivors in order to ascertain its psychometric properties. Further theoretical insights into SC have been carried out in three levels. First, it aimed to identify commonalities among the SC elements. The analysis revealed four factors that explained 71% of the total variance: Social Cognition Control; Motivation; Interest in Others; and Mindreading. At the second level, the thesis addressed the associations and dissociations between SC elements and ‘general cognitive domains’. This analysis revealed that SC elements are mostly processed independently. However, level of education and spatial attention predicted the patients’ ability to identify others’ emotions, and disinhibition predicted impaired belief attribution and misunderstanding figurative language. Third, ‘Hodological analysis’ was conducted to explore association of SC syndromes with integrity of white matter pathways. This analysis revealed ten white matter pathways that cluster into distinct networks, and which uniquely were associated with three of the SC factors. Finally, a single case study of a stroke survivor demonstrated degrees of convergence/divergence vis-à-vis the track-wise lesion-deficit analysis from the group study, and the result were in favour of the use of multi-faceted SC test battery in stroke patients, and underscore the importance of single-case studies in this population as a complement to group-based analyses.
41
Ostojić, Ljerka. "Social cognition in a cooperative context : are perceptions of a social partner distinctly social?" Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.607715.
Full text
42
Eddy, Clare Margaret. "Social cognition in disorders of the basal ganglia." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/366/.
Full textAbstract:
Patients with disorders of the basal ganglia, such as Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Tourette’s Syndrome, exhibit characteristic motor symptoms and less obvious cognitive deficits. These deficits can be understood with reference to the model of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry proposed by Alexander et al. (1986) which highlights how the basal ganglia can affect the functioning of the whole of the frontal lobe. This thesis explored the possibility that patients with these disorders also have difficulties with social cognition. Patients with Parkinson’s exhibited deficits in reasoning about mental states. These deficits can largely be attributed to executive dysfunction which results from disordered activity in the circuitry linking the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia. Patients with Huntington’s exhibited reduced fear responses which most likely results from abnormal amygdala activity. Patients with Tourette’s exhibited deficits on a wide range of social cognitive tasks involving reasoning about mental states, non-literal language interpretation and economic decision making. These difficulties probably reflect dysfunction in circuitry linking the anterior cingulate and insula with the basal ganglia. These studies offer insight into the neuroanatomical basis of the behavioural symptoms associated with these conditions whilst highlighting the necessity to develop more precise and inclusive models of frontostriatal circuitry.
43
Jones, Anna. "Emotion processing and social cognition in deaf children." Thesis, Anglia Ruskin University, 2013. http://arro.anglia.ac.uk/323072/.
Full textAbstract:
Understanding others’ emotions and false beliefs, known as Theory of Mind (ToM), and to recognise and produce facial expressions of emotion has been linked to social competence. Deaf children born to hearing parents have commonly shown a deficit, or at best a delay in ToM. The emotion processing skills of deaf children are less clear. The main aims of this thesis were to clarify the ability of emotion recognition in deaf children, and to provide the first investigation in emotion production. While deaf children were poorer than hearing controls at recognising expressions of emotion in cartoon faces, a similar pattern was found in both groups’ recognition of real human faces of the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and surprise). For deaf children, emotion recognition was better in dynamic rather than static, and intense rather than subtle, displays of emotion. With the exception of disgust, no differences in individual emotions were found, suggesting that the use of ecologically valid dynamic real faces facilitates deaf children’s emotion recognition. Deaf children’s ability to produce the six basic emotions was compared to hearing children by videoing voluntary encodings of facial expression elicited via verbal labels and emotion signed stories, and the imitation of dynamic displays of real facial expressions of emotion. With the exception of a poorer performance in imitation and the verbally elicited production of disgust, deaf children were consistently rated by human judges overall as producing more recognisable and intense expressions, suggesting that clarity and expressiveness may be important to deaf individuals’ emotion display rules. In line with previous studies, results showed a delay in passing the first and second order belief tasks in comparison to age matched controls, but not in comparison to a group of ‘age appropriate’ hearing control children. These findings encouragingly suggest that while deaf children of hearing parents show a delay in ToM and understanding disgust, emotion processing skills follow a broadly similar pattern of development to hearing control children. Language experience is implicated in difficulties faced in social and emotion cognition, with reduced opportunities to discuss more complex emotional and mental states.
44
Hiu, Chii Fen. "Adolescent social cognition across cultures : East vs. West." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e1fd8553-e084-4917-891e-9e67782c0c94.
Full textAbstract:
Background: Adolescence is a period during which humans undergo significant changes in the social cognitive domain - changes that are likely to be adaptive, by allowing adolescents to respond adequately to new challenges as they gain independence from the family, and establish themselves in society. Recent neuroscience data suggest protracted maturation of key brain circuits during adolescence, which are involved in the underlying cognitive processes of social understanding. While these age-associated changes are commonly recognised to arise from a biological program unravelling across time, it is also possible that development is driven by experience. To date, few studies have empirically studied the development of social cognition in adolescence, especially as compared to infancy and childhood. Outstanding questions also remain on whether variability in the experience of adolescence, such as is present across different cultures, can modulate the expression of adolescent-associated maturational changes in social cognition. Aims: The purpose of this thesis was i) to investigate developmental changes in social cognition during adolescence, and ii) to examine sociocultural factors that may influence this ability and its developmental trajectory. Methods: In total, 668 young people (aged 9 to 21 years) from the United Kingdom, China, and Malaysia took part in the studies outlined in this thesis. In Chapter 2 (UK: N = 226; China: N = 175; Malaysia: N = 225), the self-construal scale (Singelis, 1994) was administered to explore the adolescent 'self' as an independent entity as well as an interdependent social agent across all cultures. Chapters 3 and 4 consisted of a battery of cognitive and affective theory of mind as well as domain general cognitive tasks, which were completed by adolescents from the UK (N = 188) and China (N = 116). In Chapter 5, a novel social networks paradigm was used with a Game Theory task to investigate the impact of social reciprocity on cooperative investment in authentic adolescent school-based networks from the UK (5 classes; N = 70) and Malaysia (7 classes; N = 147). Results: First, young people from different cultures were characterised by culture-dependent construals of the self. In particular, youths from China defined themselves as more interdependent, i.e. in relation to others and in terms of social roles, than those from the UK and Malaysia. Second, although Chinese adolescents reported overall lower performance, they showed similar age associated changes in cognitive and affective theory of mind as UK adolescents. Finally, social reciprocity predicted cooperative investment behaviour within authentic adolescent networks in both the UK and Malaysia. Interestingly, there were no age effects or differences between cultures in the impact of social reciprocity on cooperative behaviour. Conclusions: Results from this combination of studies paint a multifaceted picture of adolescent social cognition across cultures. They suggest a complex interplay of factors both at the individual and sociocultural level that give rise to the sophisticated ability of social cognition as it matures across adolescence. They also highlight methodological issues in multicultural research.
45
Jones, Anna. "Emotion processing and social cognition in deaf children." Thesis, Anglia Ruskin University, 2013. https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/323072/1/PhD%20Thesis%20Anna%20Jones.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
Understanding others’ emotions and false beliefs, known as Theory of Mind (ToM), and
to recognise and produce facial expressions of emotion has been linked to social
competence. Deaf children born to hearing parents have commonly shown a deficit, or
at best a delay in ToM. The emotion processing skills of deaf children are less clear.
The main aims of this thesis were to clarify the ability of emotion recognition in deaf
children, and to provide the first investigation in emotion production.
While deaf children were poorer than hearing controls at recognising expressions of
emotion in cartoon faces, a similar pattern was found in both groups’ recognition of real
human faces of the six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and
surprise). For deaf children, emotion recognition was better in dynamic rather than
static, and intense rather than subtle, displays of emotion. With the exception of disgust,
no differences in individual emotions were found, suggesting that the use of
ecologically valid dynamic real faces facilitates deaf children’s emotion recognition.
Deaf children’s ability to produce the six basic emotions was compared to hearing
children by videoing voluntary encodings of facial expression elicited via verbal labels
and emotion signed stories, and the imitation of dynamic displays of real facial
expressions of emotion. With the exception of a poorer performance in imitation and the
verbally elicited production of disgust, deaf children were consistently rated by human
judges overall as producing more recognisable and intense expressions, suggesting that
clarity and expressiveness may be important to deaf individuals’ emotion display rules.
In line with previous studies, results showed a delay in passing the first and second
order belief tasks in comparison to age matched controls, but not in comparison to a
group of ‘age appropriate’ hearing control children. These findings encouragingly
suggest that while deaf children of hearing parents show a delay in ToM and
understanding disgust, emotion processing skills follow a broadly similar pattern of
development to hearing control children. Language experience is implicated in
difficulties faced in social and emotion cognition, with reduced opportunities to discuss
more complex emotional and mental states.
46
Gkika, Styliani. "The role of meta-cognition in social anxiety." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2011. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-role-of-metacognition-in-social-anxiety(a6a0994a-1d7d-4dd7-8a73-c574b7d51123).html.
Full textAbstract:
This PhD investigated the theoretical and clinical applications of a meta-cognitive model of psychological disorders in social anxiety. The main objective was to identify potential associations between meta-cognitive knowledge (i.e. meta-cognitive beliefs) and social anxiety. These associations could be direct or indirect via information-processing mechanisms, such as anticipatory processing (AP), focus of attention, and post-mortem processing (PM). The current thesis reports six studies (N = 686).Study 1 explored cross-sectionally the potential contribution of meta-cognitive beliefs about general worry to social anxiety. The results showed that positive and uncontrollability beliefs along with AP were individual positive predictors of social anxiety. Furthermore, these beliefs had an indirect effect on social anxiety through anticipatory processing and the post-mortem. These results prompted further exploration of the nature of meta-cognitive beliefs in social anxiety. Study 2 employed semi-structured interviews to elicit meta-cognitive beliefs that could be specific to social anxiety. High and low socially anxious individuals reported beliefs about anticipatory processing, focusing on an observer perspective (OP) self-image, and the post-mortem. The high socially anxious group reported greater engagement in both AP and focusing on the OP, and spending greater time trying to control AP, OP, and the post-mortem. Moreover, the two groups differed in beliefs about these mechanisms, in coping strategies, and in stop signals. The beliefs elicited informed two new questionnaires that were investigated in Study 3. Each questionnaire revealed three subscales of positive and negative beliefs about AP and about the OP self-image, respectively. The subscales showed good reliability and stability. In addition, the new beliefs revealed further associations with social anxiety. Study 4 investigated whether meta-cognitive beliefs could affect attentional bias in social anxiety. High and low socially anxious individuals completed a dot-probe task with emotional, social and physical words matched with neutral words. The results indicated a potential moderation effect of social anxiety and positive meta-cognitive beliefs on attentional bias. Moreover, meta-cognitive beliefs predicted attentional bias in both social anxiety groups. The above results implicated meta-cognitive beliefs in the maintenance of social anxiety. Study 5 explored whether these beliefs could affect state anxiety in high socially anxious individuals that engaged in either AP or a distraction task prior to giving a speech. The results replicated previous findings that AP was associated with more anxiety compared with distraction. Additionally, uncontrollability beliefs were associated with increased state anxiety before the speech, while positive beliefs interfered with distraction and were associated with the maintenance of anxiety after the speech was over. Finally, Study 6 explored whether a meta-cognitive intervention could be effective in the treatment of social anxiety. In a cross-over design, high socially anxious individuals practiced detached mindfulness and thought challenging prior to giving a speech. The results showed that detached mindfulness was associated with greater reductions in negative beliefs, worry, and the OP. In conclusion, the results of a series of studies support the application of the meta-cognitive model to social anxiety.
47
Robertson, Duncan. "Implicit cognition and the social evaluation of speech." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/7176/.
Full textAbstract:
For the past three decades, psychological research has repeatedly shown that it is not always necessary for us to be conscious of events in order to perceive them, a phenomenon referred to as implicit cognition (Underwood & Bright 1996). Although this has been the subject of much research in the disciplines of psychology and social psychology, sociolinguists have only recently begun to examine how implicit cognition functions with regards to how we perceive speech (Campbell-Kibler 2012). Consistent with social psychology research on implicit responses to visually-derived social information (Greenwald et al 1998; Karpinski & Hilton 2001), recent sociolinguistic research suggests that listeners make differing conscious and unconscious social evaluations upon hearing different regional and foreign-accented speech varieties (Kristiansen 2009; Pantos & Perkins 2013), and that this is at least partly driven by socially-marked phonetic variation (Campbell-Kibler 2012, 2013). While previous research has investigated this phenomenon in relation to different regional or international varieties of English, the current study investigates the conscious and unconscious associations listeners make towards different social accents in Glasgow. This was achieved over three experiments by adapting an established psycholinguistic eye tracking methodology for sociolinguistic research. The first experiment (N=32) was conducted without eye tracking, relying on pencil and paper responses. Participants were tasked with choosing between on-screen ‘working-class’ and ‘middle-class’ target images (determined via a separate norming task) of brand logos and objects while recordings of different speakers uttering words semantically related to both images were heard. Non-significant trends were found in the data, with participants more likely to choose ‘working-class’ brand logos when a working-class speaker was heard and ‘middle-class’ logos when a middle-class speaker was heard. A second experiment (N=42) recorded listener eye movements in real time towards the same experimental stimuli, finding listeners to have been significantly (p < .05) more likely to fixate upon ‘working-class’ brand logos when hearing a working-class speaker than when hearing a middle-class speaker. Listeners’ verbal choices of brand logos showed no significant effect of speaker heard, showing a divergence between the on-line and off-line responses made towards speakers. Conversely, the speaker heard was found to have had a significant (p < .05) effect on the images of objects verbally chosen by listeners, but no effect on fixations made towards objects. A third experiment (N=54) investigated listener fixations towards brand logos while hearing words containing different socially-marked phonetic variants. Socially-marked phonetic realisations of CAT, post-vocalic/post-consonantal /l/, and non-prevocalic /r/ were all found to have elicited significant (p < .05) effects on listener fixation behaviour, with response times ranging from 300-700ms. A supplemental subjective reaction test (N=60) found participants to have evaluated middle-class Glaswegian speakers significantly (p < .05) more favourably in terms of Zahn & Hopper’s (1985) status attributes than working-class Glaswegian speakers, in line with the findings of previous language attitude studies (Preston 1999; Zahn & Hopper 1985; Kristiansen 2001). Overall, the results indicate that speech varieties with varying levels of perceived social status elicit differing conscious and unconscious social evaluations in listeners, and that socially-marked phonetic variation plays a role in this.
48
Peyroux, Elodie. "Remédiation des troubles de la cognition sociale dans la schizophrénie et les troubles apparentés : le programme RC2S : études de cas uniques." Thesis, Lyon 2, 2014. http://www.theses.fr/2014LYO20124/document.
Full textAbstract:
Les difficultés à interagir dans le monde social et à s’y adapter sont une plainte centrale des personnes souffrant de troubles psychiatriques et notamment de schizophrénie ou de troubles apparentés. Ces difficultés, qui constituent un frein au processus de réhabilitation psychosociale, pourraient en partie être expliquées par un dysfonctionnement des processus regroupés sous le terme de cognition sociale. La cognition sociale est définie comme la capacité à construire des représentations sur soi-même et autrui, et sur les relations entre soi et les autres, ainsi qu’à utiliser ces représentations de manière flexible, afin de guider le comportement social ; et inclut des processus tels que le traitement des émotions, la théorie de l’esprit, le style attributionnel, la perception et les connaissances sociales. Des déficits concernant les différentes composantes de la cognition sociale ont été largement mis en évidence dans la schizophrénie et les troubles apparentés, et semblent par ailleurs avoir un lien fort avec les difficultés observées dans les domaines du fonctionnement social, mais également des relations privilégiées avec les processus neurocognitifs, même si ces deux composantes semblent relativement indépendantes. Afin de compenser ces troubles, de nombreuses prises en charge de remédiation cognitive ont été proposées ces dernières années. L’objectif de ce travail de thèse a été d’évaluer la possibilité d’améliorer les déficits touchant la sphère de la cognition sociale des personnes souffrant de troubles psychotiques à l’aide d’un outil de remédiation spécifiquement développé à cet effet, le programme RC2S. Etant donnée l’hétérogénéité des déficits touchant la sphère de la cognition sociale dans la schizophrénie, et l’importance fondamentale portée au transfert des compétences dans la vie quotidienne, RC2S a été développé comme une thérapie individualisée et flexible, qui permet aux patients de s’entraîner aux interactions sociales dans un environnement réaliste, et d’adapter la prise en charge aux difficultés spécifiques de la personne. Nous présenterons ici trois études basées sur la méthodologie du cas unique, mettant en évidence l’impact de cette thérapie sur les troubles de la cognition sociale de deux patients souffrant de schizophrénie et d’un patient présentant un trouble de la personnalité schizoïdeIn people with psychiatric disorders, particularly those suffering from schizophrenia and related illnesses, pronounced difficulties in social interactions and adaptation are a key manifestation. These disabilities, which are a serious impediment to psychosocial rehabilitation process, could be partly explained by impairments in processes grouped under the generic term of social cognition. Social cognition is defined as the ability to construct mental representations about others and oneself, and about one’s relationships to others, and to use these representations in a flexible way to guide social behavior. It includes abilities such as emotion processes, theory of mind (ToM), attributional style, and social perception and knowledge. In schizophrenia and related disorders, several components of social cognition are usually altered, and are strongly associated with functional outcome and independent but partly related to neurocognitive processes. The impact of several kinds of interventions and particularly of social cognitive remediation programs has been studied recently, and new strategies and programs in this line are currently being developed. The main objective of this doctoral thesis was to assess the feasibility of improving social cognition in people with psychotic disorders, using a cognitive remediation program specifically designed for this purpose, the RC2S program. Considering that the social cognitive deficits experienced by patients with schizophrenia are very diverse, and that the main objective of social cognitive remediation is to improve patient’s functioning in their social daily life, RC2S was developed as an individualized and flexible program, which allows patients to practice social interactions in a realistic environment, and to adapt therapy to the specificity of every patient’s profile. This manuscript present three single case studies, using specific methodology, to highlight the impact of this new therapy on social cognitive impairments of two people with schizophrenia and one patient with schizoid personality disorder
49
McCleery, Amanda. "PATHWAYS TO FUNCTIONAL IMPAIRMENT IN SCHIZOPHRENIA: CONTRIBUTIONS OF NEUROCOGNITION AND SOCIAL COGNITION." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1338234028.
Full text
50
Boulie, Elizabeth M. "The Impact of Friendships and Mutual Antipathies on Children's Social Behavior and Social Cognition." TopSCHOLAR®, 2009. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/89/.
Full text