scholarly journals Task instructions: a part of the social context of participants? A N300 and N400 event-related brain potential study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Sinha ◽  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
Amanda Tardif ◽  
Tarlan Daryoush ◽  
Natalie Frye ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Cognitive Behaviors ◽  
Task Instructions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Motor Representations

The early and preconscious processing of stimuli that are meaningful in everyday life includes systematical activations of many semantic, emotional and motor representations. Inhibitions should then occur in order to select, among these primed representations, those that are consistent with the context. Even in a lab this context is social, as it typically consists of the experimenter and of the instructions and stimuli (s)he provides. Three recent N400 studies confirm this social view of experimental settings by showing that socially driven processes affect what was primed by prior stimuli. The small amplitudes of the N400 event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by stimuli preceded by semantical primes were found to be enhanced by the mere presence of a person next to participants when they know this person did not have the semantic primes. It thus seems that N400 processes inhibit what these primes have activated so that participants can also have the perspective of the uninformed person. This inhibition interpretation implies that N400s should be notably reduced when nothing allows to determine what should be inhibited, that is, when the social context is not defined and when task’s instructions require minimal inhibition. We tested this prediction by having a stranger next to participants (n=29) and by presenting meaningful unpredictable images in a simple memorization task. As foreseen, N400s were small. They were enhanced by definable social contexts, that is, in participants alone with the experimenter (n=30) and in those with a friend (n = 36). The amplitudes of the N300s were also enhanced. A second experiment revealed that these N300 and N400 enhancements were larger for friends who felt in the presence of their partner during most of the experiment. As to the late posterior positivities (LPPs) immediately succeeding the N400s, they were found to be larger in the unknown social context of the first experiment, suggesting that more information ended up being placed into the working memory when inhibitions could not occur. These results are compatible with a serial 3-stages framework of the processing of stimuli meaningful in everyday life. Early and broad systematic activations (priming) would be followed by automatic late selections done according to the social-context and then, by the participant’s consciousness of the meanings of the stimulus in this context. As inadequate late selections would cause impairments of social and cognitive behaviors, the present results could have implications for psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia.

scholarly journals Situating language in a minimal social context: how seeing a picture of the speaker’s face affects language comprehension

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hernández-Gutiérrez ◽  
Francisco Muñoz ◽  
Jose Sánchez-García ◽  
Werner Sommer ◽  
Rasha Abdel Rahman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Semantic Level ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Processing Resources ◽  
Mere Presence ◽  
Anterior Negativity ◽  
Communicative Context

Abstract Natural use of language involves at least two individuals. Some studies have focused on the interaction between senders in communicative situations and how the knowledge about the speaker can bias language comprehension. However, the mere effect of a face as a social context on language processing remains unknown. In the present study, we used event-related potentials to investigate the semantic and morphosyntactic processing of speech in the presence of a photographic portrait of the speaker. In Experiment 1, we show that the N400, a component related to semantic comprehension, increased its amplitude when processed within this minimal social context compared to a scrambled face control condition. Hence, the semantic neural processing of speech is sensitive to the concomitant perception of a picture of the speaker’s face, even if irrelevant to the content of the sentences. Moreover, a late posterior negativity effect was found to the presentation of the speaker’s face compared to control stimuli. In contrast, in Experiment 2, we found that morphosyntactic processing, as reflected in left anterior negativity and P600 effects, is not notably affected by the presence of the speaker’s portrait. Overall, the present findings suggest that the mere presence of the speaker’s image seems to trigger a minimal communicative context, increasing processing resources for language comprehension at the semantic level.

scholarly journals Encoding In Social Context Enhances And Biases Long-Term Recognition Memory: Behavioral And Electrophysiological Evidence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schindler ◽  
Ria Vormbrock ◽  
Johanna Kissler
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Memory ◽  
Verbal Learning ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Explicit Learning ◽  
Levels Of Processing ◽  
Social Feedback ◽  
Feedback Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
Related Potentials

Abstract Encoding often occurs in social contexts, yet research has hardly addressed their role in verbal memory. In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral and neural effects of encoding context on memory for positive, negative, and neutral adjectives, contrasting a social-feedback group (N=24) with an explicit verbal-learning (N=24) and a levels-of-processing group (N=24). Participants in the social-feedback group were not aware of a recognition session one week later, but their memory was better than the explicit learning or the levels-of-processing groups’. However, they also exhibited the strongest response bias, particularly for positive words. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed largest early negativities (EPN) and late positivities (LPP) in the social-feedback group. Only in the subsequent slow-wave did the explicit learning group show higher amplitudes than the other two groups, suggesting reliance on strategic rather than automatic processes. Still, context-driven incidental encoding outweighed explicit instructions, specifying a decisive role of social factors in memory.

scholarly journals Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick A. R. Jones ◽  
Helen C. Spence-Jones ◽  
Mike Webster ◽  
Luke Rendell
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Behavioural Phenotype ◽  
Social Species ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning. Significance statement Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.

scholarly journals Social Exclusion Down-Regulates Pain Empathy at the Late Stage of Empathic Responses: Electrophysiological Evidence

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Fan ◽  
Jing Jie ◽  
Pinchao Luo ◽  
Yu Pang ◽  
Danna Xu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Controlled Processing ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Central Regions ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
And Behavior

Social exclusion has a significant impact on cognition, emotion, and behavior. Some behavioral studies investigated how social exclusion affects pain empathy. Conclusions were inconsistent, and there is a lack of clarity in identifying which component of pain empathy is more likely to be affected. To investigate these issues, we used a Cyberball task to manipulate feelings of social exclusion. Two groups (social exclusion and social inclusion) participated in the same pain empathy task while we recorded event-related potentials (ERP) when participants viewed static images of body parts in painful and neutral situations. The results showed early N2 differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in the central regions in both groups. The pattern at the late controlled processing stage was different. Parietal P3 amplitudes for painful pictures were significantly smaller than those for neutral pictures in the social exclusion group; they did not differ in the social inclusion group. We observed a parietal late positive potential (LPP) differentiation between painful and neutral pictures in both groups. LPP amplitudes were significantly smaller in the social exclusion group than those in the social inclusion group for painful stimuli. Our results indicate that social exclusion does not affect empathic responses during the early emotional sharing stage. However, it down-regulates empathic responses at the late cognitive controlled stage, and this modulation is attenuated gradually. The current study provides neuroscientific evidence of how social exclusion dynamically influences pain empathy.

A Qualitative Study on Friends and the Social Context of Sexual Victimization: Implications for Campus-Based Interventions

2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122095427
Author(s):  
Jessica A. Blayney ◽  
Tiffany Jenzer ◽  
Jennifer P. Read ◽  
Jennifer Livingston ◽  
Maria Testa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Sexual Victimization ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Potential Danger ◽  
The Social ◽  
Barriers To Implementation ◽  
College Drinkers

Sexual victimization (SV) risk can begin in social contexts, ones where friends are present, though it is unclear how friends might be integrated into SV prevention. Using focus groups, female college drinkers described (a) the role of friends in preventing SV, (b) the strategies friends use to reduce vulnerability, and (c) the barriers to implementation. Friends-based strategies (keeping tabs on one another, using signals to convey potential danger, interrupting escalating situations, taking responsibility for friends, relying on male friends) and barriers (intoxication, preoccupation, situation ambiguity, social consequences) were discussed. Interventions can draw on these strategies, but must address the critical barriers.

Profiling “User Bases” of Online Social Contexts

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-126
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Current User ◽  
Social Spaces ◽  
The Social ◽  
Common Practices

One aspect of profiling to enhance teaching and learning involves the various contexts in which learners will engage, such as particular social media ecosystems and their attendant microcultures (the social norms and common practices in these spaces), particularly if learners will be engaging with individuals outside of the formal classroom. Understanding the larger online social context helps define the affordances and constraints of what can be effectively taught and learned. This involves profiling the current user base of the online social spaces where the learners will be engaging and interacting and co-creating knowledge.

scholarly journals Dialog Structure Through the Lens of Gender, Gender Environment, and Power

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Vinodkumar Prabhakaran ◽  
Owen Rambow
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Gender Information ◽  
The Social ◽  
Computer Scientists ◽  
Automatic Methods ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Textual Content

Understanding how the social context of an interaction affects our dialog behavior is of great interest to social scientists who study human behavior, as well as to computer scientists who build automatic methods to infer those social contexts. In this paper, we study the interaction of power, gender, and dialog behavior in organizational interactions. In order to perform this study, we first construct the Gender Identified Enron Corpus of emails, in which we semi-automatically assign the gender of around 23,000 individuals who authored around 97,000 email messages in the Enron corpus. This corpus, which is made freely available, is orders of magnitude larger than previously existing gender identified corpora in the email domain. Next, we use this corpus to perform a largescale data-oriented study of the interplay of gender and manifestations of power. We argue that, in addition to one’s own gender, the “gender environment” of an interaction, i.e., the gender makeup of one’s interlocutors, also affects the way power is manifested in dialog. We focus especially on manifestations of power in the dialog structure — both, in a shallow sense that disregards the textual content of messages (e.g., how often do the participants contribute, how often do they get replies etc.), as well as the structure that is expressed within the textual content (e.g., who issues requests and how are they made, whose requests get responses etc.). We find that both gender and gender environment affect the ways power is manifested in dialog, resulting in patterns that reveal the underlying factors. Finally, we show the utility of gender information in the problem of automatically predicting the direction of power between pairs of participants in email interactions.

scholarly journals Conversational Pragmatics: Memory Reporting Strategies in Different Social Contexts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatriz Martín-Luengo ◽  
Karlos Luna ◽  
Yury Shtyrov
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
General Knowledge ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Underlying Processes ◽  
Different Levels

Conversational pragmatics studies, among others, factors that affect the information we share with others. Previous research showed that when participants are unsure about the correctness of an answer, they report fewer answers. This behavior strongly depends on the incentive structure of the social context where the question-response exchange takes place. In this research we studied how the different incentive structure of several types of social contexts affects conversational pragmatics and the amount of information we are willing to share. In addition, we also studied how different levels of knowledge may affect memory reporting in different social contexts. Participants answered easy, intermediate, and difficult general knowledge questions and decided whether they would report or withhold their selected answer in different social contexts: formal vs. informal, and constrained (a context that promotes providing only responses we are certain about) vs. loose (with an incentive structure that maximizes providing any type of answer). Overall, our results confirmed that social contexts are associated with a different incentive structure which affect memory reporting strategies, and that the effect of social contexts depended on the difficulty of the questions. Our results highlight the relevance of studying the different incentive structures of social contexts to understand the underlying processes of conversational pragmatics, and stress the importance of considering metamemory theories of memory reporting.

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