scholarly journals Simulation Theory: An introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atesh Koul
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Physical Access

Navigating through social environment requires understanding and predicting complex interactions around us. This social understanding is in contrast to the understanding and predictions for inanimate objects that are governed by a set of fixed laws. Interactions with other individuals involves not only concrete observations like their height or physical appearance but their abstract states as emotions, beliefs, desires, intentions etc. Also most social interactions are dictated by judgments on such mental states than mere physical appearance. But how are humans able to achieve this? Considering that one individual doesn’t have any physical access to other’s mental states. And yet most individuals are highly adept at recognizing others’ mental states. In the recent years, multiple insights in this direction have been provided by cognitive psychology and especially by cognitive neuroscience. Broadly categorizing, three main propositions have been suggested to explain how humans understand others - a theory-theory based account, a simulation and an interactionistic approach. The current work provides a brief account of the simulation theory.

scholarly journals Adopting the intentional stance towards humanoid robots

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jairo Pérez-Osorio ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Humanoid Robots ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Intentional Stance ◽  
Societal Impact ◽  
Artificial Agents ◽  
Artificial Agent ◽  
New Era ◽  
Day By Day

On the day by day humans need to predict and understand others’ behavior in order to efficiently navigate through our social environment. When making predictions about what others are going to do next, we refer to their mental states, such as beliefs or intentions. At the dawn of a new era, in which robots will be among us at homes and offices, one needs to ask whether (or when) we predict and also explain robots’ behavior with reference to mental states. In other words, do we adopt the intentional stance (Dennett in The Intentional Stance. MIT Press, Cambridge (1987) [1]) also towards artificial agents—especially those with humanoid shape and human-like behavior? What plays a role in adopting the intentional stance towards robots? Does adopting an intentional stance affect our social attunement with artificial agents? In this chapter, we first discuss the general approach that we take towards examining these questions—using objective methods of cognitive neuroscience to test social attunement as a function of adopting the intentional stance. Also, we describe our newly developed method to examine whether participants adopt the intentional stance towards an artificial agent. The chapter concludes with an outlook to the questions that still need to be addressed, like ethical consequences and societal impact of robots with which we attune socially, and towards which we adopt the intentional stance.

scholarly journals Where is the love? The social aspects of mimicry

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1528) ◽  
pp. 2381-2389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick van Baaren ◽  
Loes Janssen ◽  
Tanya L. Chartrand ◽  
Ap Dijksterhuis
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Moderation

One striking characteristic of human social interactions is unconscious mimicry; people have a tendency to take over each other's posture, mannerisms and behaviours without awareness. Our goal is to make the case that unconscious mimicry plays an important role in human social interaction and to show that mimicry is closely related to and moderated by our connectedness to others. First we will position human unconscious mimicry in relation to types of imitation used in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Then we will provide support for social moderation of mimicry. Characteristics of both the mimicker and the mimickee influence the degree of mimicry in a social interaction. Next, we turn to the positive social consequences of this unconscious mimicry and we will present data showing how being imitated makes people more assimilative in general. In the final section, we discuss what these findings imply for theorizing on the mechanisms of imitation and point out several issues that need to be resolved before a start can be made to integrate this field in the broader context of research on imitation.

scholarly journals The Private Language Argument and a Second-Person Approach to Mindreading

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Joshua Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Private Language Argument

I argue that if Wittgenstein’s Private language Argument is correct, then both Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory are inadequate accounts of how we come to know other minds since both theories assume the reality of a private language. Further, following the work of a number of philosophers and psychologists, I defend a ‘Second-Person Approach’ to mindreading according to which it is possible for us to be directly aware of at least some of the mental states of others. because it is not necessary to assume a private language within the Second-Person Approach, I argue that this account of social cognition is superior to Theory-Theory and Simulation Theory since it avoids the objections of the PlA.

Einfühlen und Verstehen

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 220-243
Author(s):  
Verena Mayer
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Many

How do we understand other minds? The current debate uses the iridescent term “empathy” to explain our quite different mindreading capacities. Since no alternatives seemed to be available the discussion has been mostly in a deadlock between “simulation theory” and “theory theory”. Only recently the relevance of phenomenological findings on the issue has been brought forward. In this paper Husserl’s two concepts of “Einfühlung”, as developed in the second volume of his Ideas, are set against the background of the latest discussion. Husserl’s explanation of empathy in terms of analogical experience highlights the transcendental role of empathy in the context of constitution. At the same time it may solve some of the many riddles left by the recent debate.

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 Dominance relationships and coalitionary aggression against conspecifics in female carrion crows

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedikt Holtmann ◽  
Julia Buskas ◽  
Matthew Steele ◽  
Kristaps Solokovskis ◽  
Jochen B. W. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Rank ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dominance Relationships ◽  
Dominant Individual ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Cooperation is a prevailing feature of many animal systems. Coalitionary aggression, where a group of individuals engages in coordinated behaviour to the detriment of conspecific targets, is a form of cooperation involving complex social interactions. To date, evidence has been dominated by studies in humans and other primates with a clear bias towards studies of male-male coalitions. We here characterize coalitionary aggression behaviour in a group of female carrion crows consisting of recruitment, coordinated chase, and attack. The individual of highest social rank liaised with the second most dominant individual to engage in coordinated chase and attack of a lower ranked crow on several occasions. Despite active intervention by the third most highly ranked individual opposing the offenders, the attack finally resulted in the death of the victim. All individuals were unrelated, of the same sex, and naïve to the behaviour excluding kinship, reproduction, and social learning as possible drivers. Instead, the coalition may reflect a strategy of the dominant individual to secure long-term social benefits. Overall, the study provides evidence that members of the crow family engage in coordinated alliances directed against conspecifics as a possible means to manipulate their social environment.

The Person Model Theory and the Question of Situatedness of Social Understanding

2018 ◽  
pp. 468-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Newen
Keyword(s):  
Model Theory ◽  
Simulation Theory ◽  
Early Infancy ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Social Understanding ◽  
Interaction Theory ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Clear Cases ◽  
Person Model ◽  
Intense Debate

Humans are hyper-social beings, highly dependent on others and on successfully interacting with them. Which theory can adequately describe our ability to understand others? In the literature we have an intense debate among proponents of theory-theory, simulation theory, and interaction theory. I argue first that none of these accounts is adequate but that we need to go in the direction of what I call the “person model theory.” The second important question is which types of embodiment (or further aspects of 4E) are systematically relevant for social understanding according to the person model theory? I argue that there are clear cases of embodiment of social understanding, while extendedness and/or enactment seem to be only clearly implemented in early infancy. Furthermore, 4E features of being embodied, enacted, extended, or embedded can only be ascribed to an implementation, a token of a specific type which makes the 4E features intensely context-dependent.

scholarly journals Exploring Interactions between the Gut Microbiota and Social Behavior through Nutrition

Genes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristian Pasquaretta ◽  
Tamara Gómez-Moracho ◽  
Philipp Heeb ◽  
Mathieu Lihoreau
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Gut Microbiota ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Nutritional Ecology ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Nutritional Geometry ◽  
Social Animals

Microbes influence a wide range of host social behaviors and vice versa. So far, however, the mechanisms underpinning these complex interactions remain poorly understood. In social animals, where individuals share microbes and interact around foods, the gut microbiota may have considerable consequences on host social interactions by acting upon the nutritional behavior of individual animals. Here we illustrate how conceptual advances in nutritional ecology can help the study of these processes and allow the formulation of new empirically testable predictions. First, we review key evidence showing that gut microbes influence the nutrition of individual animals, through modifications of their nutritional state and feeding decisions. Next, we describe how these microbial influences and their social consequences can be studied by modelling populations of hosts and their gut microbiota into a single conceptual framework derived from nutritional geometry. Our approach raises new perspectives for the study of holobiont nutrition and will facilitate theoretical and experimental research on the role of the gut microbiota in the mechanisms and evolution of social behavior.

scholarly journals Doubling down on serendipity

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Snow
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Doctoral Student ◽  
To Come ◽  
Minority View ◽  
The Relationship

The lessons I have learned over the last many years seem always to come in pairs – a lesson about the findings that brings with it a lesson about life as a researcher...Lesson 1. Even as a doctoral student, I believed that the sorts of social interactions young children had with adults supported language acquisition. In 1971, when I completed my dissertation, that was a minority view, and one ridiculed by many. I was, unfortunately, deflected from a full-on commitment to research on the relationship between social environment and language development for many years by the general atmosphere of disdain for such claims. In the intervening years, of course, evidence to support the claim has accumulated, and now it is generally acknowledged that a large part of the variance among children in language skills can be explained by their language environments. This consensus might have been achieved earlier had I and others been braver about pursuing it.[Download the PDF and read more...]

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document