Critical Note

2018 ◽  
pp. 512-525
Author(s):  
Mitchell Herschbach
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Situated Cognition ◽  
Extended Cognition ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
Critical Note ◽  
Internal Capacity

I argue that the chapters in this section only modestly challenge the “traditional mindreading account,” which sees the capacity for mental state attribution as central to human social cognition. This internalist, cognitivist account has already been refined in recent years to give greater attention to unreflective, dynamic social interaction and non-mindreading processes. The chapters here support a kind of embodied social cognition that does not involve mindreading. They also support the idea that an embedded/situated cognition perspective can inform the nature of the mindreading and non-mindreading forms of social cognition, particularly their use during dynamic social interaction. Further, important empirical questions arise about the importance of social interaction in the development of mindreading. But the more radical extended cognition thesis only appears sporadically and is weakly defended. Thus, the 4E perspective represented here does not challenge the importance of the “representation-hungry,” internal capacity for mindreading.

scholarly journals Kinematics and observer-animator kinematic similarity predict mental state attribution from Heider–Simmel style animations

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bianca A. Schuster ◽  
Dagmar S. Fraser ◽  
Jasper J. F. van den Bosch ◽  
Sophie Sowden ◽  
Andrew S. Gordon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Correct Identification ◽  
Random Forest Analysis ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
Clinical Conditions ◽  
Clinical Populations

AbstractThe ability to ascribe mental states, such as beliefs or desires to oneself and other individuals forms an integral part of everyday social interaction. Animations tasks, in which observers watch videos of interacting triangles, have been extensively used to test mental state attribution in a variety of clinical populations. Compared to control participants, individuals with clinical conditions such as autism typically offer less appropriate mental state descriptions of such videos. Recent research suggests that stimulus kinematics and movement similarity (between the video and the observer) may contribute to mental state attribution difficulties. Here we present a novel adaptation of the animations task, suitable to track and compare animation generator and -observer kinematics. Using this task and a population-derived stimulus database, we confirmed the hypotheses that an animation’s jerk and jerk similarity between observer and animator significantly contribute to the correct identification of an animation. By employing random forest analysis to explore other stimulus characteristics, we reveal that other indices of movement similarity, including acceleration- and rotation-based similarity, also predict performance. Our results highlight the importance of movement similarity between observer and animator and raise new questions about reasons why some clinical populations exhibit difficulties with this task.

Social Attention Effects Do Not Depend On Mental-state Attribution

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff G. Cole ◽  
Daniel T. Smith ◽  
Rebeccah-Claire Billing
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Mental State Attribution

Dehumanization and Mentalizing Animals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Kasperbauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Mental State ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Mental State Attribution ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phenomenal States

This chapter applies the psychological account from chapter 3 on how we rank human beings above other animals, to the particular case of using mental states to assign animals moral status. Experiments on the psychology of mental state attribution are discussed, focusing on their implications for human moral psychology. The chapter argues that attributions of phenomenal states, like emotions, drive our assignments of moral status. It also describes how this is significantly impacted by the process of dehumanization. Psychological research on anthropocentrism and using animals as food and as companions is discussed in order to illuminate the relationship between dehumanization and mental state attribution.

scholarly journals Shot scale matters: The effect of close-up frequency on mental state attribution in film viewers

Poetics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 101480
Author(s):  
Katalin Eva Bálint ◽  
Janine Nadine Blessing ◽  
Brendan Rooney
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Mental State Attribution

scholarly journals Changing diagnostic practices: autism spectrum disorder

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Woodbury-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Classification System ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Psychiatric Nosology ◽  
Diagnostic Practices

SummaryIn medical practice it is crucial that symptom descriptions are as precise and objective as possible, which psychiatry attempts to achieve through its psychopathological lexicon. The term ‘autism spectrum disorder’ has now entered psychiatric nosology, but the symptom definitions on which it is based are not robust, potentially making reliable and valid diagnoses a problem. This is further compounded by the spectral nature of the disorder and its lack of clear diagnostic boundaries. To overcome this, there is a need for a psychopathological lexicon of 'social cognition’ and a classification system that splits rather than lumps disorders with core difficulties in social interaction.

scholarly journals The Influence of the Social Situation of Development on the Social Cognition in the Children-Orphans

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
T.V. Avakyan ◽  
S.V. Volikova ◽  
M.G. Sorokova
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Anxiety ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Multifactor Model ◽  
The Social

The influence of a specific social development situation on the operational and motivational components of social cognition in orphan adolescents investigated. The theoretical basis of the study was the provisions of the "social situation of development" L.S. Vygotsky, theories of attachment by J. Bowlby, the multifactor model of social cognition A.B. Kholmogorova, O.V. Rychkova. 68 orphans aged from 10 to 17 years old living in the orphanage examined. It shown that orphaned teenagers with an insecure type of attachment have more difficulty in understanding their own feelings, regardless of the length of their stay in the institution. Orphans living in institutions for more than 5 years have a higher level of social anxiety and distress during social interaction.

Can social interaction constitute social cognition?

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 441-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne De Jaegher ◽  
Ezequiel Di Paolo ◽  
Shaun Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction

Wordsworth, Keats and Cognitive Spaces of Empathy in Endymion

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Renee Harris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
John Keats ◽  
External Influence ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Anatomical Basis ◽  
Romantic Era

Eighteenth-century medicine provided an anatomical basis for the belief that our skin is not a barrier against but a channel to the feelings of others. Mutual adoption of the term ‘sympathy’ in medicine and moral philosophy exceeds metaphor to speak to the way Enlightenment and Romantic-era culture understood the body’s openness to external influence. While Romantic writers conceived of reading as an embodied social interaction between writer and reader, contrasting sentiments surfaced between those who celebrated the possibility for radical interconnectedness and those who feared the vulnerability of a penetrable self. William Wordsworth and John Keats experimented with poetic form to find how best to manage a reader’s engagement with the text and thereby shape their sympathetic faculties. Examining acts of reading in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Keats’s Endymion, I apply Giovanna Colombetti’s work on enacted spaces of empathy to show how Keats’s theory of feeling challenges Wordsworth’s and goes beyond Enlightenment models available to them to envision a more revolutionary model of social cognition. For Keats, poetry enacts a co-emergence of aesthetic experience where cognition and composition seem to occur between acts of writing and reading at the site of text.

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