Mindreading and Social Cognition

The cognitive ability to think about other people's psychological states is known as `mindreading'. This Element critiques assumptions that have been formative in shaping philosophical theories of mindreading: that mindreading is ubiquitous, underpinning the vast majority of our social interactions; and that its primary goal is to provide predictions and explanations of other people's behaviour. It begins with an overview of key positions and empirical literature in the debate. It then introduces and motivates the pluralist turn in this literature, which challenges the core assumptions of the traditional views. The second part of the Element uses case studies to further motivate the pluralist framework, and to advocate the pluralist approach as the best way to progress our understanding of social cognitive phenomena.

Exploring the relationship between loneliness and social cognition in older age

Understanding others is a key component of successful social interactions, and declines in social abilities during later life can lead to social isolation and loneliness. We investigated the relationship between different sub-components of social cognition and loneliness in a large sample of older adults. We tested perspective-taking and mentalizing skills, alongside self-reported loneliness and social functioning. Results revealed a significant effect of loneliness on older adults’ ability to resist egocentric interference when taking others’ perspectives. However, this effect was eliminated when age was added to models, which suggests that egocentric tendencies increase with age, and people experience increasing levels of loneliness and feelings of social isolation with increasing age. Mentalizing and interference from others’ perspectives were not influenced by loneliness or age.

SPATIAL COMMONING: RE-IMAGINING WELLINGTON’S CENTRAL-CITY LIBRARY & CIVIC SQUARE

<p><b>What if architecture could promulgate its resistance to urban inclinations of segregation, privatisation, and individualisation?</b></p> <p>The neoliberal climate of contemporary cities has reduced architecture to a mere tool for capital accumulation. Architecture, consumed and produced as a form of capital, is facilitating the progression of inequality and environmental degradation, nullifying its humanitarian agenda.</p> <p>In counter-reaction to the capitalistic conditions of the city, and the conviction that architecture can express social cognition, this thesis re-imagines, two essential community containers – Wellington Central Library and Civic Square as an urban common.</p> <p>The primary intent of this thesis is to develop a speculative commons framework that architectonically articulates sharing and commoning practices in the context of Wellington City centre.</p> <p>This research argues the pertinence of commoning theories in contemporary urban cities. It examines the genealogy and characteristics of the urban commons and how it could be spatially constructed.</p> <p>It examines the historical significance of the existing building to inform the tectonic characteristics of the urban commons. It investigates the conceptual and formal devices of Post-Modernism to drive the spatial and representational aspects of the design process.</p> <p>Moreover, it explores the evolving function and the societal role of libraries within the era of digitisation. It identifies an adaptable programmatic framework for the 21st-century library envisioned as a common.</p>

SPATIAL COMMONING: RE-IMAGINING WELLINGTON’S CENTRAL-CITY LIBRARY & CIVIC SQUARE

<p><b>What if architecture could promulgate its resistance to urban inclinations of segregation, privatisation, and individualisation?</b></p> <p>The neoliberal climate of contemporary cities has reduced architecture to a mere tool for capital accumulation. Architecture, consumed and produced as a form of capital, is facilitating the progression of inequality and environmental degradation, nullifying its humanitarian agenda.</p> <p>In counter-reaction to the capitalistic conditions of the city, and the conviction that architecture can express social cognition, this thesis re-imagines, two essential community containers – Wellington Central Library and Civic Square as an urban common.</p> <p>The primary intent of this thesis is to develop a speculative commons framework that architectonically articulates sharing and commoning practices in the context of Wellington City centre.</p> <p>This research argues the pertinence of commoning theories in contemporary urban cities. It examines the genealogy and characteristics of the urban commons and how it could be spatially constructed.</p> <p>It examines the historical significance of the existing building to inform the tectonic characteristics of the urban commons. It investigates the conceptual and formal devices of Post-Modernism to drive the spatial and representational aspects of the design process.</p> <p>Moreover, it explores the evolving function and the societal role of libraries within the era of digitisation. It identifies an adaptable programmatic framework for the 21st-century library envisioned as a common.</p>

Are Older Adults’ Difficulties on Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind Tasks Due to a Decline in General Cognitive Ability?

Older adults have both worse general cognition and worse social cognition. A frequent suggestion is that worse social cognition is due to worse general cognition. However, previous studies have often provided contradictory evidence. The current study examined this issue with a more extensive battery of tasks for both forms of cognition. We gave 47 young and 40 older adults three tasks to assess general cognition (processing speed, working memory, fluid intelligence) and three tasks to assess their social cognition (emotion and theory-of-mind). Older adults did worse on all tasks and there were correlations between general and social cognition. Although working memory and fluid intelligence were unique predictors of performance on the Emotion Photos task and the Eyes task, Age Group was a unique predictor on all three social cognitiaon tasks. Thus, there were relations between the two forms of cognition but older adults continued to do worse than young adults even after accounting for general cognition. We argue that this pattern of results is due to some overlap in brain areas mediating general and social cognition, but also independence, and with a differential rate of decline in brain areas dedicated to general cognition versus social cognition.

Heterogeneity of social cognition in temporo-parietal junction: Overlapping yet distinct representation between visual perspective-taking and theory of mind

Visual perspective taking (VPT), particularly level 2 VPT (VPT2), which allows an individual to understand that the same object can be seen differently by others, is related to the theory of mind (ToM), because both functions require a decoupled representation from oneself. Although previous neuroimaging studies have shown that VPT and ToM activate the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), it is unclear whether common neural substrates are involved in VPT and ToM. To clarify this point, the present study directly compared the TPJ activation patterns of individual participants performing VPT2 and ToM tasks using functional magnetic resonance imaging and within-subjects design. VPT2-induced activations were compared with activations observed during a mental rotation task as a control task, whereas ToM-related activities were identified with a standard ToM localizer using false-belief stories. A whole-brain analysis revealed that VPT2 and ToM activated overlapping areas in the posterior part of the TPJ. By comparing the activations induced by VPT2 and ToM in individual participants, we found that the peak voxels induced by ToM were located significantly more anteriorly and dorsally within the bilateral TPJ than those measured during the VPT2 task. We further confirmed that these activity areas were spatially distinct from the nearby extrastriate body area (EBA), visual motion area (MT+), and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) using independent localizer scans. Our findings revealed that VPT2 and ToM have distinct representations, albeit partially overlapping, indicating the functional heterogeneity of social cognition within the TPJ.