Social Cognition and Theory of Mind

Vocabulary definitions from the Week 12 Social Cognition lecture, covering theories, neural systems, developmental milestones, and clinical conditions.

Social Cognition

The study of how people make sense of other people and of themselves, including thinking about motives, emotions, facial cues, and moral judgment.

Mentalism

One of the 4 assumptions of social cognition stating that we represent others’ mental states.

Computational level (social psychology)

A level of analysis in social cognitive neuroscience concerning how people influence each other through conformity and group decision making.

Algorithmic level (cognitive psychology)

A level of analysis in social cognitive neuroscience concerning how we think about others, including perspective taking and morality.

Implementational level (neuroscience)

A level of analysis in social cognitive neuroscience concerning what the brain is doing, involving structures like the amygdala and temporal parietal junction.

Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis

The hypothesis that intelligence evolved for complex social interaction, leading to social learning and culture, predicting humans excel specifically in social cognition.

General Intelligence Hypothesis

The hypothesis that intelligence evolved as a general problem-solving system for adaptability, reasoning, and tool use, predicting humans excel broadly across domains.

Joint attention

The ability to coordinate attention with a social partner, which begins to emerge around the age of $9$ to $12$ months.

Anterior Attentional System

The neural system involving the frontal eye fields and prefrontal association cortex that initiates joint attention.

Posterior Attentional System

The neural system involving the posterior parietal association cortex and superior temporal cortex that responds to joint attention.

Mirror Neurons

Neurons that fire both when performing an action and observing the same action; first identified in macaque monkeys in the inferior frontal gyrus and inferior parietal lobe.

Anterior cingulate cortex

The brain region that activates when watching someone in pain, providing evidence for emotional resonance in the mirror system.

Anterior insula

The brain region activated when observing disgusted expressions, suggesting that empathy may rely on simulation.

Medial Prefrontal Cortex (mPFC)

A specialized brain region where activation during social tasks predicts better memory for social information.

Right temporal parietal junction (rTPJ)

A specialized brain region active for false belief reasoning rather than physical errors.

Theory of mind (ToM)

The ability to understand others’ mental states like beliefs, desires, and intentions, and understand how they differ from our own.

Sally-Anne task

A False Belief Theory of Mind task that children typically succeed at by the age of $4$ years.

Second-order tasks

Tasks that require understanding what one person thinks about another person's belief, typically passed by children around age $6-7$.

Autism

A neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction and repetitive behavior, with a prevalence between $0.3\%$ and $0.7\%$ of the general population.

Asperger syndrome

A mild version of autism once characterized by a lack of cognitive and linguistic developmental delays, though it is no longer a valid diagnosis.

Williams syndrome

A genetic disease caused by a deletion on chromosome $7$ resulting in hypersociability, learning disabilities, and limited spatial skills.

Social anxiety

Anxiety related to social interaction and negative evaluation, often characterized by greater amygdala activation when viewing emotional faces.