The role of trait empathy in the processing of observed actions in a false-belief task

Christian Bellebaum; Marta Ghio; Marie Wollmer; Benjamin Weismüller; Patrizia Thoma

doi:10.1093/scan/nsaa009

The role of trait empathy in the processing of observed actions in a false-belief task

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience ◽

10.1093/scan/nsaa009 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 53-61

Author(s):

Christian Bellebaum ◽

Marta Ghio ◽

Marie Wollmer ◽

Benjamin Weismüller ◽

Patrizia Thoma

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

False Belief ◽

Reactivity Index ◽

False Belief Task ◽

Linear Mixed Effects ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Trait Empathy ◽

Empathy Quotient

Abstract Empathic brain responses are characterized by overlapping activations between active experience and observation of an emotion in another person, with the pattern for observation being modulated by trait empathy. Also for self-performed and observed errors, similar brain activity has been described, but findings concerning the role of empathy are mixed. We hypothesized that trait empathy modulates the processing of observed responses if expectations concerning the response are based on the beliefs of the observed person. In the present study, we utilized a false-belief task in which observed person’s and observer’s task-related knowledge were dissociated and errors and correct responses could be expected or unexpected. While theta power was generally modulated by the expectancy of the observed response, a negative mediofrontal event-related potential (ERP) component was more pronounced for unexpected observed actions only in participants with higher trait empathy (assessed by the Empathy Quotient), as revealed by linear mixed effects analyses. Cognitive and affective empathy, assessed by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, were not significantly related to the ERP component. The results suggest that trait empathy can facilitate the generation of predictions and thereby modulate specific aspects of the processing of observed actions, while the contributions of specific empathy components remain unclear.

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The Situational Mental File Account of the False Belief Tasks: A New Solution of the Paradox of False Belief Understanding

Review of Philosophy and Psychology ◽

10.1007/s13164-020-00466-w ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 717-744 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Albert Newen ◽

Julia Wolf

Keyword(s):

False Belief ◽

Cognitive Factors ◽

False Belief Task ◽

Mental File ◽

Mental Files ◽

False Belief Understanding ◽

Helping Behaviour ◽

Three Stages ◽

The Common

AbstractHow can we solve the paradox of false-belief understanding: if infants pass the implicit false belief task (FBT) by nonverbal behavioural responses why do they nonetheless typically fail the explicit FBT till they are 4 years old? Starting with the divide between situational and cognitive accounts of the development of false-belief understanding, we argue that we need to consider both situational and internal cognitive factors together and describe their interaction to adequately explain the development of children’s Theory of Mind (ToM) ability. We then argue that a further challenge is raised for existing accounts by helping behaviour versions of the FBT. We argue that the common two-stage accounts are inadequate: we need to allow for three central stages in a continuous development. Furthermore, drawing on Perner et al.’s (Cognition 145: 77–88, 2015) and Perner and Leahy’s (Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2): 491–508, 2016) recent mental files account, we provide a new account of the development of these three stages of ToM ability by describing the changes of the structure and organisation of mental files including the systematic triggering role of types of situations. Thereby we aim to establish a situational mental file (SMF) account as a new and adequate solution to the paradox of false-belief understanding.

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The relationship of counterfactual reasoning and false belief understanding: the role of prediction and explanation tasks

Psicológica Journal ◽

10.2478/psicolj-2020-0007 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 127-161

Author(s):

Antonio Contreras ◽

Juan Antonio García-Madruga

Keyword(s):

False Belief ◽

Theory Theory ◽

Counterfactual Reasoning ◽

False Belief Task ◽

Belief Attribution ◽

Theoretical Approaches ◽

Linguistic Comprehension ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Relationship

AbstractThe relation between the prediction and explanation of the false belief task (FBT) with counterfactual reasoning (CFR) was explored. Fifty eight 3-5 year-olds received a prediction or an explanation FBT, a belief attribution task and some counterfactual questions of increasing difficulty. Linguistic comprehension was also controlled. CFR highly predicted FBT in the explanation version but not in the prediction one. Additionally, results in the explanation version indicate that CFR underlies achievements prior to the understanding of the representational mind and stimulates the explicitness of the mental domain. This study identifies the conditions under which CFR becomes a fundamental cognitive tool for social cognition. The results obtained contribute to the dialog between the two major theoretical approaches: theory-theory and simulation theory.

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Neurophysiological evidence for rapid processing of verbal and gestural information in understanding communicative actions

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-019-52158-w ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Rosario Tomasello ◽

Cora Kim ◽

Felix R. Dreyer ◽

Luigi Grisoni ◽

Friedemann Pulvermüller

Keyword(s):

Brain Activity ◽

Semantic Integration ◽

Human Communication ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Brain Correlates ◽

Speed Up ◽

Human Participants ◽

Communicative Actions ◽

Rapid Processing

Abstract During everyday social interaction, gestures are a fundamental part of human communication. The communicative pragmatic role of hand gestures and their interaction with spoken language has been documented at the earliest stage of language development, in which two types of indexical gestures are most prominent: the pointing gesture for directing attention to objects and the give-me gesture for making requests. Here we study, in adult human participants, the neurophysiological signatures of gestural-linguistic acts of communicating the pragmatic intentions of naming and requesting by simultaneously presenting written words and gestures. Already at ~150 ms, brain responses diverged between naming and request actions expressed by word-gesture combination, whereas the same gestures presented in isolation elicited their earliest neurophysiological dissociations significantly later (at ~210 ms). There was an early enhancement of request-evoked brain activity as compared with naming, which was due to sources in the frontocentral cortex, consistent with access to action knowledge in request understanding. In addition, an enhanced N400-like response indicated late semantic integration of gesture-language interaction. The present study demonstrates that word-gesture combinations used to express communicative pragmatic intentions speed up the brain correlates of comprehension processes – compared with gesture-only understanding – thereby calling into question current serial linguistic models viewing pragmatic function decoding at the end of a language comprehension cascade. Instead, information about the social-interactive role of communicative acts is processed instantaneously.

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Health Profiling Using Event-Related Potential (ERP) Brain Signals and Spiking Neural Network (SNN)

International Journal on Perceptive and Cognitive Computing ◽

10.31436/ijpcc.v6i2.152 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 22-28

Author(s):

Cut Amalia Saffiera ◽

Raini Hassan ◽

Amelia Ritahani Ismail

Keyword(s):

Neural Network ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Mean Amplitude ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Spiking Neural Network ◽

Self Assessment ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Health Related ◽

Response Biases ◽

Occipital Lobes

Unhealthy lifestyles, especially on nutritional factors have become a major problem causing many diseases in Malaysians in recent years. Identification of lifestyle profiles such as preventive for individuals who adopt healthy and curative for individuals who do not maintain their lifestyle is needed to increase their awareness regarding their lifestyle. Because self-assessment is known to be vulnerable to produce response biases that lead to misclassification, identification of profiles based on brain responses needs to be done. An Event-related potential (ERP) is the main tools of cognitive neurologists and make ideal techniques for studying perception and attention. This research captured brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) during receiving images of healthy and unhealthy foods that act as health-related stimuli. These EEG signals converted mathematically into the ERP signals and entered into the classification interface as input. In terms of classification, the methodology used is a dynamic developing Spiking Neural Network (deSSN) based on the Neucube architecture. ERP analysis results shown the mean amplitude of the LPP component in the Parietal and Occipital lobes is higher for healthy food in the preventive group. Whereas in the curative group it has been shown to be higher for unhealthy foods. This result is thought to reflect their preference in choosing food in their daily lifestyle. However, the results of the classification have shown that unhealthy food stimulation in the LPP wave showed superior results compared to data analysis in other conditions. Classification with ERP data is believed to support the results of self-assessment and build methods of making profiles that are more accurate and reliable.

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Pragmatics in the False-Belief Task: Let the Robot Ask the Question!

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593807 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Author(s):

Jean Baratgin ◽

Marion Dubois-Sage ◽

Baptiste Jacquet ◽

Jean-Louis Stilgenbauer ◽

Frank Jamet

Keyword(s):

Mental Representations ◽

Human Condition ◽

False Belief ◽

Typically Developing ◽

False Belief Task ◽

Typically Developing Children ◽

First Order ◽

Initial Task ◽

Cognitive Knowledge

The poor performances of typically developing children younger than 4 in the first-order false-belief task “Maxi and the chocolate” is analyzed from the perspective of conversational pragmatics. An ambiguous question asked by an adult experimenter (perceived as a teacher) can receive different interpretations based on a search for relevance, by which children according to their age attribute different intentions to the questioner, within the limits of their own meta-cognitive knowledge. The adult experimenter tells the child the following story of object-transfer: “Maxi puts his chocolate into the green cupboard before going out to play. In his absence, his mother moves the chocolate from the green cupboard to the blue one.” The child must then predict where Maxi will pick up the chocolate when he returns. To the child, the question from an adult (a knowledgeable person) may seem surprising and can be understood as a question of his own knowledge of the world, rather than on Maxi's mental representations. In our study, without any modification of the initial task, we disambiguate the context of the question by (1) replacing the adult experimenter with a humanoid robot presented as “ignorant” and “slow” but trying to learn and (2) placing the child in the role of a “mentor” (the knowledgeable person). Sixty-two typical children of 3 years-old completed the first-order false belief task “Maxi and the chocolate,” either with a human or with a robot. Results revealed a significantly higher success rate in the robot condition than in the human condition. Thus, young children seem to fail because of the pragmatic difficulty of the first-order task, which causes a difference of interpretation between the young child and the experimenter.

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Feeling Touched: Empathy Is Associated With Performance in a Tactile Acuity Task

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnhum.2021.593425 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Schaefer ◽

Marcel Joch ◽

Nikolas Rother

Keyword(s):

Personality Trait ◽

Perspective Taking ◽

Empathic Concern ◽

The Body ◽

Reactivity Index ◽

Tactile Acuity ◽

Somatosensory Cortices ◽

Trait Empathy ◽

Healthy Participants

The concept of empathy describes our capacity to understand the emotions and intentions of others and to relate to our conspecifics. Numerous studies investigated empathy as a state as well as a stable personality trait. For example, recent studies in neuroscience suggest, among other brain areas such as the insula or the ACC, a role of the somatosensory cortices for empathy (e.g., when observing someone else being touched). Since the classic understanding of the primary somatosensory cortex is to represent touch on the body surface, we here aimed to test whether tactile performance is linked to the personality trait empathy. To test this, we examined the tactile acuity of 95 healthy participants (mean age 31 years) by using a two-point discrimination threshold task at the index fingers. Trait empathy was assessed by employing the interpersonal reactivity index (IRI), which measures self-reported empathy with four scales (empathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy, and personal distress). Results of regression analyses suggested the subscale empathic concern to be positively associated with performance in the tactile acuity task. We discuss this finding in the light of recent studies on empathy and consider possible implications of tactile training to enhance empathy.

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Brain Responses to Segmentally and Tonally Induced Semantic Violations in Cantonese

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/0898929052880057 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 1-12 ◽

Cited By ~ 76

Author(s):

Annett Schirmer ◽

Siu-Lam Tang ◽

Trevor B. Penney ◽

Thomas C. Gunter ◽

Hsuan-Chih Chen

Keyword(s):

Word Processing ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Sentence Completion ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Frontal Negativity ◽

Word Onset ◽

Tone Level ◽

Types Of Information ◽

Present Event

The present event-related potential (ERP) study examined the role of tone and segmental information in Cantonese word processing. To this end, participants listened to sentences that were either semantically correct or contained a semantically incorrect word. Semantically incorrect words differed from the most expected sentence completion at the tone level, at the segmental level, or at both levels. All semantically incorrect words elicited an increased frontal negativity that was maximal 300 msec following word onset and an increased centroparietal positivity that was maximal 650 msec following word onset. There were differences between completely incongruous words and the other two violation conditions with respect to the latency and amplitude of the ERP effects. These differences may be due to differences in the onset of acoustic deviation of the presented from the expected word and different mechanisms involved in the processing of complete as compared to partial acoustic deviations. Most importantly, however, tonally and segmentally induced semantic violations were comparable. This suggests that listeners access tone and segmental information at a similar point in time and that both types of information play comparable roles during word processing in Cantonese.

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Behavior in the Brain

Journal of Psychophysiology ◽

10.1027/0269-8803/a000016 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 76-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Martin M. Monti ◽

Adrian M. Owen

Keyword(s):

Motor Behavior ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Motor Output ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Ethical Implications ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Minimally Conscious ◽

Brain Insults ◽

Brain Behavior

Recent evidence has suggested that functional neuroimaging may play a crucial role in assessing residual cognition and awareness in brain injury survivors. In particular, brain insults that compromise the patient’s ability to produce motor output may render standard clinical testing ineffective. Indeed, if patients were aware but unable to signal so via motor behavior, they would be impossible to distinguish, at the bedside, from vegetative patients. Considering the alarming rate with which minimally conscious patients are misdiagnosed as vegetative, and the severe medical, legal, and ethical implications of such decisions, novel tools are urgently required to complement current clinical-assessment protocols. Functional neuroimaging may be particularly suited to this aim by providing a window on brain function without requiring patients to produce any motor output. Specifically, the possibility of detecting signs of willful behavior by directly observing brain activity (i.e., “brain behavior”), rather than motoric output, allows this approach to reach beyond what is observable at the bedside with standard clinical assessments. In addition, several neuroimaging studies have already highlighted neuroimaging protocols that can distinguish automatic brain responses from willful brain activity, making it possible to employ willful brain activations as an index of awareness. Certainly, neuroimaging in patient populations faces some theoretical and experimental difficulties, but willful, task-dependent, brain activation may be the only way to discriminate the conscious, but immobile, patient from the unconscious one.

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