Does context matter? Effects of robot appearance and reliability on social attention differs based on lifelikeness of gaze task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulaziz Abubshait ◽  
Patrick P. Weis ◽  
Eva Wiese
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioral Features

Social signals, such as changes in gaze direction, are essential cues to predict others’ mental states and behaviors (i.e., mentalizing). Studies show that humans can mentalize with non-human agents when they perceive a mind in them (i.e., mind perception). Robots that physically and/or behaviorally resemble humans likely trigger mind perception, which enhances the relevance of social cues and improves social-cognitive performance. The current ex-periments examine whether the effect of physical and behavioral influencers of mind perception on social-cognitive processing is modulated by the lifelikeness of a social interaction. Participants interacted with robots of varying degrees of physical (humanlike vs. robot-like) and behavioral (reliable vs. random) human-likeness while the lifelikeness of a social attention task was manipulated across five experiments. The first four experiments manipulated lifelikeness via the physical realism of the robot images (Study 1 and 2), the biological plausibility of the social signals (Study 3), and the plausibility of the social con-text (Study 4). They showed that humanlike behavior affected social attention whereas appearance affected mind perception ratings. However, when the lifelikeness of the interaction was increased by using videos of a human and a robot sending the social cues in a realistic environment (Study 5), social attention mechanisms were affected both by physical appearance and behavioral features, while mind perception ratings were mainly affected by physical appearance. This indicates that in order to understand the effect of physical and behavioral features on social cognition, paradigms should be used that adequately simulate the lifelikeness of social interactions.

scholarly journals A negative bias in decoding positive social cues characterizes emotion processing in patients with symptom-remitted Borderline Personality Disorder

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Kleindienst ◽  
Sophie Hauschild ◽  
Lisa Liebke ◽  
Janine Thome ◽  
Katja Bertsch ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Borderline Personality ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Negative Bias ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions

Abstract Background Impairments in the domain of interpersonal functioning such as the feeling of loneliness and fear of abandonment have been associated with a negative bias during processing of social cues in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Since these symptoms show low rates of remission, high rates of recurrence and are relatively resistant to treatment, in the present study we investigated whether a negative bias during social cognitive processing exists in BPD even after symptomatic remission. We focused on facial emotion recognition since it is one of the basal social-cognitive processes required for successful social interactions and building relationships. Methods Ninety-eight female participants (46 symptom-remitted BPD [r-BPD]), 52 healthy controls [HC]) rated the intensity of anger and happiness in ambiguous (anger/happiness blends) and unambiguous (emotion/neutral blends) emotional facial expressions. Additionally, participants assessed the confidence they experienced in their own judgments. Results R-BPD participants assessed ambiguous expressions as less happy and as more angry when the faces displayed predominantly happiness. Confidence in these judgments did not differ between groups, but confidence in judging happiness in predominantly happy faces was lower in BPD patients with a higher level of BPD psychopathology. Conclusions Evaluating social cues that signal the willingness to affiliate is characterized by a negative bias that seems to be a trait-like feature of social cognition in BPD. In contrast, confidence in judging positive social signals seems to be a state-like feature of emotion recognition in BPD that improves with attenuation in the level of acute BPD symptoms.

Developmental Pragmatics

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Rosenthal Rollins
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Child ◽  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Shared Intentionality ◽  
Communicative Intention ◽  
The Social ◽  
Early Interaction

This chapter traces the development of communicative intention, conversation, and narrative in early interaction from infancy to early childhood. True communicative intention commences once the infant acquires the social cognitive ability to share attention and intention with another. The developing child’s pragmatic understanding is reflective of his/her underlying motivations for cooperation and shared intentionality. As children begin to understand others’ mental states, they can take others’ perspectives and understand what knowledge is shared and with whom, moving from joint perceptual focus to more decontextualized communicative intentions. With adult assistance, the young child is able to engage in increasingly more sophisticated conversational exchanges and co-constructed narratives which influence the child’s autonomous capabilities.

scholarly journals Effect of relative social rank within a social hierarchy on neural activation in response to familiar or unfamiliar social signals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Won Lee ◽  
Hollie N. Dowd ◽  
Cyrus Nikain ◽  
Madeleine F. Dwortz ◽  
Eilene D. Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Subordinate Male ◽  
Male Urine ◽  
The Social

AbstractCompetent social functioning of group-living species relies on the ability of individuals to detect and utilize conspecific social cues to guide behavior. Previous studies have identified numerous brain regions involved in processing these external cues, collectively referred to as the Social Decision-Making Network. However, how the brain encodes social information with respect to an individual’s social status has not been thoroughly examined. In mice, cues about an individual’s identity, including social status, are conveyed through urinary proteins. In this study, we assessed the neural cFos immunoreactivity in dominant and subordinate male mice exposed to familiar and unfamiliar dominant and subordinate male urine. The posteroventral medial amygdala was the only brain region that responded exclusively to dominant compared to subordinate male urine. In all other brain regions, including the VMH, PMv, and vlPAG, activity is modulated by a combination of odor familiarity and the social status of both the urine donor and the subject receiving the cue. We show that dominant subjects exhibit robust differential activity across different types of cues compared to subordinate subjects, suggesting that individuals perceive social cues differently depending on social experience. These data inform further investigation of neurobiological mechanisms underlying social-status related brain differences and behavior.

Social Cognition in Personality Disorders

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Lis ◽  
Nicole E. Derish ◽  
M. Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Personality Disorders ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Schizotypal Personality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cognitive Processing ◽  
Interpersonal Dysfunction ◽  
Significant Disability

Changes in social cognition are increasingly recognized as core illness features in the personality disorders with a broad impact on social functioning. Despite the significant disability caused by social cognitive dysfunction, treatments for this symptom dimension tailored to the specific deficits of a disorder are still missing. This chapter characterizes the different domains of social cognitive processing and describes different approaches and instruments for measuring impairments. It provides a short overview of the evidence demonstrating changes in social cognition in schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial and avoidant personality disorder, as well as the neurobiology of social cognition. During the recent past the number of studies addressing this topic increased tremendously. Nevertheless, research in this area is still young and requires approaches that study these functions while emphasizing the social context and associate deficits observed in experimental paradigms with interpersonal dysfunction during every-day life.

scholarly journals Brain stimulation to left prefrontal cortex modulates attentional orienting to gaze cues

2019 ◽  
Vol 374 (1771) ◽  
pp. 20180430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wiese ◽  
Abdulaziz Abubshait ◽  
Bobby Azarian ◽  
Eric J. Blumberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Attentional Orienting ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
Internal States ◽  
Gaze Cues

In social interactions, we rely on non-verbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behaviour of others. How we react to these cues is determined by the degree to which we believe that they originate from an entity with a mind capable of having internal states and showing intentional behaviour, a process called mind perception . While prior work has established a set of neural regions linked to mind perception, research has just begun to examine how mind perception affects social-cognitive mechanisms like gaze processing on a neuronal level. In the current experiment, participants performed a social attention task (i.e. attentional orienting to gaze cues) with either a human or a robot agent (i.e. manipulation of mind perception) while transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied to prefrontal and temporo-parietal brain areas. The results show that temporo-parietal stimulation did not modulate mechanisms of social attention, neither in response to the human nor in response to the robot agent, whereas prefrontal stimulation enhanced attentional orienting in response to human gaze cues and attenuated attentional orienting in response to robot gaze cues. The findings suggest that mind perception modulates low-level mechanisms of social cognition via prefrontal structures, and that a certain degree of mind perception is essential in order for prefrontal stimulation to affect mechanisms of social attention. This article is part of the theme issue ‘From social brains to social robots: applying neurocognitive insights to human–robot interaction’.

scholarly journals Effect of relative social rank within a social hierarchy on neural activation in response to familiar or unfamiliar social signals

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Won Lee ◽  
Hollie N. Dowd ◽  
Cyrus Nikain ◽  
Madeleine F. Dwortz ◽  
Eilene D. Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Subordinate Male ◽  
Male Urine ◽  
The Social

AbstractCompetent social functioning of group-living species relies on the ability of individuals to detect and utilize conspecific social cues to guide behavior. Previous studies have identified numerous brain regions involved in processing these external cues, collectively referred to as the Social Decision-Making Network. However, how the brain encodes social information with respect to an individual’s social status has not been thoroughly examined. In mice, cues about an individual’s identity, including social status, are conveyed through urinary proteins. In this study, we assessed the neural cFos immunoreactivity in dominant and subordinate male mice exposed to familiar and unfamiliar dominant and subordinate male urine. The posteroventral medial amygdala was the only brain region that responded exclusively to dominant compared to subordinate male urine. In all other brain regions, including the VMH, PMv, and vlPAG, activity is modulated by a combination of odor familiarity and the social status of both the urine donor and the subject receiving the cue. We show that dominant subjects exhibit robust differential activity across different types of cues compared to subordinate subjects, suggesting that individuals perceive social cues differently depending on social experience. These data inform further investigation of neurobiological mechanisms underlying social-status related brain differences and behavior.

scholarly journals Maternal input and infants’ response to infant-directed speech

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Outters ◽  
Melanie Steffi Schreiner ◽  
Tanya Behne ◽  
Nivedita Mani
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Dynamic Interaction ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Gaze Following ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Maternal Input ◽  
Functional Relevance

Caregivers typically use an exaggerated speech register known as infant-directed speech (IDS) in communication with infants. Infants prefer IDS over adult-directed speech (ADS) and IDS is functionally relevant in infant-directed communication. We examined interactions between maternal IDS quality, infants’ preference for IDS over ADS, and the functional relevance of IDS at 6- and 13-months. While 6-month-olds showed a preference for IDS over ADS, 13-month-olds did not. Differences in gaze following behavior triggered by speech register (IDS vs. ADS) were found in both age groups. The degree of infants’ preference for IDS (relative to ADS) was linked to the quality of maternal IDS infants were exposed to. No such relationship was found between gaze following behavior and maternal IDS quality and infant IDS preference. Taken together, the current study speaks to a dynamic interaction between infants’ preference for different kinds of social signals and the social cues available to them.

scholarly journals Brain stimulation to left prefrontal cortex modulates mechanisms of social attention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wiese ◽  
Aziz Abubshait ◽  
Bobby Azarian ◽  
Eric J. Blumberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Social Attention ◽  
Attentional Orienting ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Attention Task ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
Intentional Behavior ◽  
Internal States ◽  
Post Hoc ◽  
Gaze Cues

In social interactions, we rely on nonverbal cues like gaze direction to understand the behavior of others. How we react to these cues is determined by the degree to which we believe that they originate from an entity with a mind capable of having internal states and showing intentional behavior, a process called mind perception. While prior work has established a set of neural regions linked to mind perception, research has just begun to examine how mind perception affects social-cognitive mechanisms like gaze processing on a neuronal level. In the current experiment, participants performed a social attention task (i.e., attentional orienting to gaze cues) with either a human or a robot agent (i.e., variation of mind perception), while transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied either to prefrontal or temporo-parietal areas, both regions that have been linked to mind perception in previous studies. The results show that stimulation to temporo-parietal areas did not modulate social attention, neither in response to the human nor the robot agent. In contrast, stimulation to prefrontal areas enhanced attentional orienting in response to hu-man gaze cues and attenuated attentional orienting in response to robot gaze cues. Post-hoc analyses revealed that prefrontal stimulation particularly affected those participants who have followed human gaze more strongly than robot gaze at baseline. These findings suggest that mind perception modulates low-level mechanisms of social cognition via pre-frontal structures, and that a certain degree of mind perception is essential in order to benefit from active stimulation to prefrontal areas.

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